Tips on Character Weapons?

[Great_Mage_Atari]

I would like to make weapon add-ons for characters. So what is the best way to add shadowing effects so swords and such?

[Shinobody]

Could you be more precise? Like, what weapons add-on? Like attack icons, or units, or what?

[Great_Mage_Atari]

All I need is a unit profile pic. Like the stationary elf with his sword drawn.

[Dorimen]

Uhm, I don't think I've undestand your question...
You want to create some new weapons for the core units and use them at the place of the originals? Or maybe you want create new icons for the attacks? Or you want to know how to create some effects on a portrait?

[Great_Mage_Atari]

I just want to make custom mods for fun. Not to incorporate into the game just yet

[Zerovirus]

Yes, we understand that you're trying to do something 'custom'. What do you mean by custom, though? Is it just something you want to keep on your local computer? An addon to upload for other people to see as well but not for mainline?

And what sort of graphics are you trying to edit to make your new weapons? The unit baseframes+animations? The attack icons? The unit portraits? Any or all of the above?

Clarity would definitely be useful here.

[Great_Mage_Atari]

All I am making is a portrait, like my avatar. I am making a "Frankenstein" creation, so I need to cut and paste multiple items onto one sprite.

[Zerovirus]

I'm going to interpret that as you want to make a portrait to go along with your avatar, because your avatar is certainly not a portrait.

In order to do that- well, I posted the whole 'wesnoth>core>whatever' thing, so when you hit Images just go into Portraits instead of Units.

Of course, all this is documented in the tabs above so you could probably find instructions for accessing your core files by perusing the wiki.

[Great_Mage_Atari]

Thanks, I found exactly what I needed.

[Zerovirus]

Alright, I'm sure you could have found it by yourself anyways.

Now, as for your original question- I'm thinking you mean how can you get several frankensteined portraits to look good together?

The short answer is you can't.

The long answer is you can't without practically redrawing the whole thing at a similar skill-level as the portrait artists of Wesnoth themselves, and then you'd just be better off drawing a custom portrait instead of using a frankenstein as a guide.

There's no real shorthand shortcut to portrait, or indeed to art in general. There's no 'best way' to cast shadows- casting shadows as a subset of drawing to imitate life is by itself an extremely complicated topic; you'll find that most subtopics of art tend to be that way.

So yeah- the old adage applies. Practice, learn, observe reality and imitate it.

[Crendgrim]

I am not sure if a misunderstanding is existing here — Great_Mage_Atari: Do you want to create a portrait (like these) or a sprite (like your avatar)? You said the former, but somehow it seems to be the latter... just a question for clarification.
Frankensteining portraits isn't possible as Zerovirus described, but frankensteining sprites is.


Crend

[Trubbol]

I love spriting weapons

[professor_max]

Now, as for your original question- I'm thinking you mean how can you get several frankensteined portraits to look good together?

The short answer is you can't.

The long answer is you can't without practically redrawing the whole thing at a similar skill-level as the portrait artists of Wesnoth themselves, and then you'd just be better off drawing a custom portrait instead of using a frankenstein as a guide.

There's no real shorthand shortcut to portrait, or indeed to art in general. There's no 'best way' to cast shadows- casting shadows as a subset of drawing to imitate life is by itself an extremely complicated topic; you'll find that most subtopics of art tend to be that way.

Not that I would want to contradict the likes of Zereovirus, but I think that frankensteining portraits can be done, providing that there are several portraits of the unit type that you are trying to create. For example, here is a mage of light made from Menther, Hylas, and the female white mage. It isn't very good, and it isn't very distinctive; but if you are creating a UMC campaign, it would do for a place holder.

Test

Franken-portrait.png (231.96 KiB) Viewed 3122 times

EDIT: removed noise for Shinobody

[Shinobody]

...No.
Just no.
IMO, I prefer not too good compared to mainline hand-drawn portraits as seen in "TGI" thread, and earlier in "Vulcan Portraits", than frankied ones...
NO. It's... Evil.
Besides, UMC campaigns DO NOT get a lot of portraits, usually they stick with mainline or (bigger ones) have their own with [acronym=quality of portraits from Wesnoth 1.5, silly!]1.5[/acronym] quality...
EDIT: And it is not so good placeholder, you forgot to clean up upper border from remains of white glow. (It's totally amazing how much junk left is on the pictures, that is visible when you switch to AcidTech... Absolutely amazing...)

[professor_max]

You misunderstand, I didn't mean that this portrait would be any use, in fact, it's quite useless; but GMA asked if it were possible, and it is possible. I only redrew two or three places here, which mounted to selecting the eye-dropper, and marking over a tiny piece of hair, the coat, and his old staff. I know it is useless - I put it together in minuets - it was only meant as proof of concept. If one were to do a portrait for real, you could do much better. And yes of couse, hand drawn portraits are much, much better than this; but if you can't draw your own, you could, in theory, frankenstine one. Purpose drawn sprites are considered better than frankenstines, but it is still done ( although some franlenstines are very good. )

I didn't mean that it was a good place holder as in this image was any good, only than in, if you needed a portrait*, frankenstining a place holder is better than having nothing. IIRC, this is said in 'How to get art made for your Wesnoth addon'.

I noticed the noise, and I thought I had removed it, but it's come back. Perhaps that was when I had to reload to get one of the layers back.

Sorry again for any misunderstanding.

* If, for example, your campaign had two white mages/mages of light.