LordBob's commissionned work

Contribute art for mainline Wesnoth.

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Thrawn
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by Thrawn »

Basically, it's the "Rule of Cool." In a fantasy setting, exaggerating things for impressive visuals is widely accepted. Just be glad that Wesnoth tries hard to keep it under control, except for times where it's acceptable (and super strong trolls seems pretty acceptable to me ;) )
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by lipk »

LordBob, do we really need that one fang for the adult ogre? For me, it's not simply ugly, but makes the portrait unpleasant to look at :?
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by taptap »

Given the amount of double-bitted war axes Wesnoth isn't particularly successful in limiting oversized weapons. In particular the sketch for the alternative troll hero is pretty much over the top regarding weapon size for my taste. I don't disagree with the rule of cool: But since when padded plastic weapons are cooler than the real thing? Sure sprites have to exaggerate, but a hammer head bigger than the head of the bearer in a portrait? (What is cool in the troll portraits is the rocky skin, the surprise when recognizing that the sling is in fact a saddle etc. they don't need a half ton hammer head to convince - how is any handle able to bear this strain for more than one hit?)
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by Jetrel »

taptap wrote:Given the amount of double-bitted war axes Wesnoth isn't particularly successful in limiting oversized weapons. In particular the sketch for the alternative troll hero is pretty much over the top regarding weapon size for my taste. I don't disagree with the rule of cool: But since when padded plastic weapons are cooler than the real thing? Sure sprites have to exaggerate, but a hammer head bigger than the head of the bearer in a portrait? (What is cool in the troll portraits is the rocky skin, the surprise when recognizing that the sling is in fact a saddle etc. they don't need a half ton hammer head to convince - how is any handle able to bear this strain for more than one hit?)
Yes, they do. We're aware of the non-linear extrapolation of thing's masses. Our trolls aren't humans with makeup and rubber foreheads. They get described as "living stone". They're not animals, and they're not plants - you cut them open, and there aren't organs inside - at least not anything like those in an animal. They're something else entirely. I'm not gonna foist a hard and fast decision on what exactly they are; I'll give all the hard-scifi geeks plenty of room to play there, but I am saying what they aren't.

The point is that they're scary strong, especially when they grow up. "Lift a horse" strong. Our game stats reflect this; a L3 troll can kill several L0 human units with one blow at any time of day, and a few L1s under auspicious circumstances.


Another idea worth playing with for the hard scifi crowd is that maybe their strength works differently than ours - with mammalian (and avian, and reptile) musculature, if we lift an object, we must exert constant effort to maintain its elevation. We have to keep some muscle tense the entire time. Perhaps theirs works differently, though? Some creatures, like certain quadrupeds, can lock their knees and stand without expending much energy - but I'm suggesting something much bolder. A tree can lift something as it grows, and it only has to exert the energy to translate the object's position; the tree's structure itself supports it once lifted. Perhaps a troll can lift an object, "set" the muscles that are holding it, and expend no effort to hold it in that position? From a serious scifi/materials-science standpoint, I could see this being accomplished with state-based microstructures that can be in either a mutable, or rigid state depending on, say, a change in crystalline structure that's more expensive to change from rigid->mutable than from mutable->rigid.

It's just so myopic, so tragically unimaginative, to assume when you parse a fantasy world, that stuff in it works like humans do. There are ways this stuff could function even without breaking the laws of physics. We can and have built human sized machines (not necessarily anthropomorphic, but filling similar volumes as our muscles) that can easily lift this kind of weight. So it's clearly possible that nature could do so as well.
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by Jetrel »

lipk wrote:LordBob, do we really need that one fang for the adult ogre? For me, it's not simply ugly, but makes the portrait unpleasant to look at :?
I really like that portrait in almost every respect - I even think that one errant tooth can be made to work, but I agree that the particular shape of it looks a little silly. It's really sharp and canine - even a human's bicuspid doesn't usually grow like that, I think. Brilliant work on the facial features, though.

More generally, teeth growing in in the wrong place/direction, or not ceasing to grow (like a rabbit's incisors) could work well. All of which I think might occasionally be real, but very rare, dental problems (not sure about the last one).
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by LordBob »

@Jetrel: thanks for the support. :) I reckon I did go a bit far with that tooth (if anyone's interested, the general shapewas inspired by a warthog's tusks, which probably explains why it suits a human so poorly :whistle: ). Still, I want the ogre to be ugly and repulsive for real, not the actually-cool kind of repulsive that is often seen in fantasy, so I'll definitely keep some misplaced teeth or other anomalies.

Taptap: be it humans, orcs, dwarves or elves, usually I'm myself rather strict about weapons & armour in a fantasy setting (have a look at the loyalist and orc portraits. No blatantly oversized weapons there); but I do feel that trolls are the one species with which we can (and should) take some liberties. Besides, I'm sure someone with a good knowledge of engineering could name a dozen steel alloys that can serve as a handle and withstand the impacts.
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by taptap »

@LordBob: Yeah, I know and this is something I really appreciate in Wesnoth. I am not asking for pseudo-scientific explanations or something, who cares. It is just that the effectiveness of impact weapons is likely greater when you deliver the kinetic energy to a smaller area and I thought the trolls are getting better equipment when they are more experienced, general expectation seems to be better = bigger unfortunately. Remember the scene in LotR film where the Witchking of Angmar fields his enormous morning star (on overlength chain)? My first thought was "plastic", my second "if he fails to hit her with his first strike she can cut him apart" not "awesome". It is just too much to convince, which doesn't mean I have some physical knowledge about the strength of Nazgul or am eager to enter an argument about it (no I'm not Jetrel!), it just didn't look convincing to me.

Although, if there were cast-iron lanterns in a steampunk version of Wesnoth and a troll would field one of them, this would be something completely different and truly awesome even for me.
Last edited by taptap on June 5th, 2012, 2:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by Jetrel »

taptap wrote:@LordBob: Yeah, I know and this is something I really appreciate in Wesnoth. I am not asking for pseudo-scientific explanations or something, who cares. It is just that the effectiveness of impact weapons is likely greater when you deliver the kinetic energy to a smaller area and I thought the trolls are getting better equipment when they are more experienced, general expectation seems to be better = bigger unfortunately.
Neither trolls nor orcs are smart enough to really get this. To their naive design sense, bigger = better.
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by alexanderthegre »

lipk wrote:LordBob, do we really need that one fang for the adult ogre? For me, it's not simply ugly, but makes the portrait unpleasant to look at :?
Ogres are supposed to be unpleasant to the eye. It's not as bad as the ghoul, though.

I personally like where you're going with the ogre portraits, they seem to fit the race description nicely.
Jetrel wrote:
taptap wrote:@LordBob: Yeah, I know and this is something I really appreciate in Wesnoth. I am not asking for pseudo-scientific explanations or something, who cares. It is just that the effectiveness of impact weapons is likely greater when you deliver the kinetic energy to a smaller area and I thought the trolls are getting better equipment when they are more experienced, general expectation seems to be better = bigger unfortunately.
Neither trolls nor orcs are smart enough to really get this. To their naive design sense, bigger = better.
The SotBE orcs seem very smart, if slightly barbaric, but yeah, trolls are pretty much at that level of intelligence.
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by thespaceinvader »

Jetrel wrote:
taptap wrote:Given the amount of double-bitted war axes Wesnoth isn't particularly successful in limiting oversized weapons. In particular the sketch for the alternative troll hero is pretty much over the top regarding weapon size for my taste. I don't disagree with the rule of cool: But since when padded plastic weapons are cooler than the real thing? Sure sprites have to exaggerate, but a hammer head bigger than the head of the bearer in a portrait? (What is cool in the troll portraits is the rocky skin, the surprise when recognizing that the sling is in fact a saddle etc. they don't need a half ton hammer head to convince - how is any handle able to bear this strain for more than one hit?)
Yes, they do. We're aware of the non-linear extrapolation of thing's masses. Our trolls aren't humans with makeup and rubber foreheads. They get described as "living stone". They're not animals, and they're not plants - you cut them open, and there aren't organs inside - at least not anything like those in an animal. They're something else entirely. I'm not gonna foist a hard and fast decision on what exactly they are; I'll give all the hard-scifi geeks plenty of room to play there, but I am saying what they aren't.

The point is that they're scary strong, especially when they grow up. "Lift a horse" strong. Our game stats reflect this; a L3 troll can kill several L0 human units with one blow at any time of day, and a few L1s under auspicious circumstances.


Another idea worth playing with for the hard scifi crowd is that maybe their strength works differently than ours - with mammalian (and avian, and reptile) musculature, if we lift an object, we must exert constant effort to maintain its elevation. We have to keep some muscle tense the entire time. Perhaps theirs works differently, though? Some creatures, like certain quadrupeds, can lock their knees and stand without expending much energy - but I'm suggesting something much bolder. A tree can lift something as it grows, and it only has to exert the energy to translate the object's position; the tree's structure itself supports it once lifted. Perhaps a troll can lift an object, "set" the muscles that are holding it, and expend no effort to hold it in that position? From a serious scifi/materials-science standpoint, I could see this being accomplished with state-based microstructures that can be in either a mutable, or rigid state depending on, say, a change in crystalline structure that's more expensive to change from rigid->mutable than from mutable->rigid.

It's just so myopic, so tragically unimaginative, to assume when you parse a fantasy world, that stuff in it works like humans do. There are ways this stuff could function even without breaking the laws of physics. We can and have built human sized machines (not necessarily anthropomorphic, but filling similar volumes as our muscles) that can easily lift this kind of weight. So it's clearly possible that nature could do so as well.
That's a really nice concept, and I wish I had thought of it before.
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by LordBob »

Setting aside troll matters for a second, here comes the finished young ogre. Next will be either the older ogre or the troll hero. Stay tuned !
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by Dixie »

I'm just noticing this (a bit late, a relatively superficial, I know, feel free to ignore): wouldn't it be impossible to pull that cleaver out of its "scabbard", the way it presently is (at leaast not without trashing said "scabbard")? It seems to completely wrap around the blade, which is larger at the end, so... Maybe the cord is intended to loosen that wrapping, but it looks very unpractical. You might say ogres (young ones especially?) might lack the intelligence to realise and better the concept, but constructing such an object with a small cord also seems a advanced... Wouldn't it be better if they just put the cleaver under their belt or something?

Just saying, sorry for the inconvenience... Good job for the rest of the portrait, anyway, the hair is pretty cool :)
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by zookeeper »

Looks perfect (really nice detailing), except for the fact that I can't really read what those dark things on his head are (the ones that are thicker than the individual hairs). I don't see how it could be hair, but on the other hand I don't see what else it could be either.
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by LordBob »

@Dixie: I'm glad you're getting the wrap-and tighten concept. Ironically, I initially went for a cloth waistband and then added the leather belt late in the design phase because I thought someone might suggest that they risk cutting themselves when tucking the cleaver under said waistband... :roll:

Either way we do agree that leatherwork isn't a craft within their range, but then so is ironworks. So the likeliest answer is that he probably got that belt from the same humans who taught him the use of blades in the first place. And gave him clothes, too.

@Zookeeper: yup, that's what they're meant to be. Loose strands of greasy hair. :augh:
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Re: LordBob's commissionned work

Post by pyrophorus »

LordBob wrote:@Zookeeper: yup, that's what they're meant to be. Loose strands of greasy hair. :augh:
I fully agree with Zookeeper. Maybe it will be clearer if you add some more strands (just my two cents).
BTW, the whole picture is splendid.
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