My unit attempt

[1Rob1]

I've been trying to make new units, and this is my best attempt jet. (I hope the image loads, this is my first post ever, so I'm not sure. I uploaded it as an attachment so it probably sticking somewhere to my post)
If anyone can give me pointers on how to improve it, that would be great, I think it might look a little small, and there's probably lots of problems with the shading outline and posture as well.
I'd also like to know whether it's worth to fix this unit or if I should start fresh.

On a related note: I'd like to know how other people draw new units, I've been looking around a little on the forum and the wiki, but I didn't find much.
Do you directly draw in 72X72 or do you draw large and then resize?
For this unit I started with a drawing on paper, I scaned it in and coloured it roughly, then I resized it and started adding details (all in paintbrush on mac).

(excuse my spelling errors, english isn't my first language)

[perseo]

I regret telling you that you haven't understood unit painting.
The sprites are pixel art:
¿What does it mean?
You work with pixel, you don't resize, rotate... etc
You don't use normal colouring technics, you have to use a palette with some colours and then paint EACH pixel with the colour you think it will fix in that place. i.e. You have a red armour so probably 2 tones of red will be great, then you have to add a somehow purple color for the shadows and a yellowish one for the ligths. Then you have to repeat this process which each different part of the sprite you do.
See ya!
I've done some rough re-paint in order to give you a general idea, obviously this unit still have a lot to work on and I have only played a bit with the armour and arms fabric.

warrior90%.png (2.92 KiB) Viewed 4999 times

There's people in the forum who can give you a better idea but I have tried my best.

[1Rob1]

Actually with this one I did the real colouring on pixel niveau,I used a sketch for the posterior,gave it some colour so that I could make out the different parts when I resized it and then started to ad the real colours and details on pixel niveau.
But if you think I can get better results by starting already in 72X72 I'll give it a try. For the shading I did use transparant colours to get smoother transition between colours, I dont know whether that's a good technique.

At the moment I'm resizing the head because I think its bigger for most units. I think its going to look a little better, but if you think this suck pretty bad and that I'm wasting my time on it, please tell me .
It usually takes some time before I can see this for my own work, because right after I've drawn something the way it should look is still in my head and that sometimes disables me from seeing the simplest errors.

[1Rob1]

I gave it a try with only the colours that are currently on my pallet. It looks ok, but not much better, but thats probably because I'm pretty bad at pixel art, and because I didn't use extra colours .
I didn't recoulor the face.

[perseo]

I've not enough time now to give you my complete opinion but don't worry tomorrow it will be the first thing I'll do.
See ya!
BTW: the head is too big and square-shaped

[doofus-01]

I'm not a sprite-master, but I think you are making some mistakes, from what you write (the sprite itself is OK for a first try - the ax is nice, the head is a bit bizarre). Sprite dimensions, at least in Wesnoth, are not realistic, so use mainline sprites as a reference. Use as few colors as possible, add one if you find you really need it. Depending on what you are trying to draw, ~5 colors might be all you need.

In the end, do whatever works for you, but drawing, re-scaling, re-shading is probably just making the process take longer. Don't rescale, especially.

[SFault]

The pose is very nice, but the style is bit far from the Wesnoth's core style. The units tend to have also their limbs exaggerated not just the head. Drawing by hand, scanning and rescaling isn't the best idea. It will leave the art pretty smudgy. I would recommend that you would use the image only as a base and draw the actual sprite on top of the rescaled image using the hand drawing just a guide, not as final.

You should reduce the amount of colors in your palette a lot. Try using about 6 colors per each element (e.g. skin, armor, weapon) instead of 60 colors and add some outlines. This way the unit will not be so smudgy. (Also, you shouldn't use the pure black color.)

In general, you might want to start doing pixel art with something bit simpler. Here is a site that might give you some idea how to approach the pixel art.

[1Rob1]

Thanks for all the advice, it's been really helpfull, and especially using way less colours is going to save me loads of time if I ever deem them worthy of animating .

I recoloured it using colours of in game units (for the steel and gold ones).
Also I made the axe bigger, enlarged te plates on his arms and upper legs, and made the whole thing one pixel wider.
The steel and red coloured ones look alright in the game, the yellow one is a little to light I think, and I made the green one a little too dark and green .
I should probably change the armour as well to better match the style of the game (they are starting to look a little like powerrangers or something with all these flashy colours ).

If somebody else sees some other obvious errors I forgot (especially with the red and grey ones) , please tell me.

I also made a mummy to try to create something without resizing a larger picture.
I created it quickly just to try the process, and its therefore probably full of errors, but I thought I'd add it anyway cause I think it looks kinda funny.

[homunculus]

why is the other foot so high in the picture?
doesn't look very consistent with the alignment of the shoulders.

is it your intention to have the ax head at the same side as the back foot (which may make sense with a long ax)? i think in this case you would be better off with ax head in the left side of the picture.

light from south-east would produce a convex (not hollow like you have done) highlight on a round surface (like the chest armor), look at a real life ball or egg or something for reference.

[1Rob1]

I enlarged the left leg of my axe-warrior unit to make the posture more realistic (still doesn't look 100% right with the axe head though).
But I decided to stop working on that unit because it's just not that interesting (just another knight), and the style doesn't really fit the game.

I'm now working on a demon unit. I think the posterior is ok, perhaps I need to adjust the legs or the sword a little. The colours seem a little weird and dark, and I probably need to adjust the ligthing too.

Criticisms are welcome.

[Sleepwalker]

Nice for your first sprites.

I think the position of the foot looks wrong partly because the leg is still shorter than the other one, and partly because the foot looks like its seen head on and not slightly above. To improve the length i would suggest to make the leg a bit more bent, then to make the pose look more comfortable i would point the leg and foot to our left more towards us.

Legs and feet on sprites always seem to be a bigger problem than arms. I guess they have a smaller margin of error before they look wrong.

The pig demon looks like he has a pretty low waist or short legs, it also looks like he is wielding a big key to me. :p If your going with hooves I'd try make the legs look more unguligrade and have fat thighs.

[ancestral]

There aren’t many axe-wielding units, so the fact you’re drawing one is great. You’ve got a good pose, but you can still look at and reference the haldberdier.



The torso looks great on the warrior, and shading is closer to those units found in mainline. It’s getting better.

Keep up the good work!

[1Rob1]

I recouloured my demon unit, made his legs one pixel higher and added some more form to its legs (gave it thicker knees).
I changed the weapon and made him hold it in a more natural pose.

[1Rob1]

I slightly changed my pig demon unit and drew some extra units.
If they turn out ok I'll use them in a campaign.
criticisms are still welcome!

pig demon:
I fixed the body armour, but I'm still considering changing the shield or weapon.
Maybe I'll recolour the skin too, because It looks very dark and grey.

demon mace pig:
lvl2 (or 3 since hes kinda big), I might change his weapon too.
This one still needs some work, I think it looks a little boring.

demon mage:
Drew this one recently so I can't see whats wrong with it jet .

demon beast:
I probably need to redraw most of the body and legs.
It might also be to big.
I'm going to try to give him an extra head for each lvl, but that might be difficult (at least for me :p )

[1Rob1]

I cleaned up my demon pigs and "accidentally" drew a lvl 3. (I was trying to replace my bad lvl 2 version).

I still need to find a way to add team colours to the first one, replace the second one and fix colours and perhaps the position of the third one.
If anyone sees anything wrong (especially with the first and last one) please let me know.