Northern rebirth portraits

[TheDragonLady]

afaik the northern rebirth portraits are the ones in most need of an upgrade? I'm not sure if my art is up to standard or not but here are some concepts that might have potential

I might redo the pose for this as his arms are annoying me, but here's tallin

and here (in all his dwarf glory) is hamel

[Pentarctagon]

doofus-01 is the current Art Director, so ultimately he'll be the one to talk to. He's only online on weekends though, so he won't see this for a few days.

[TheDragonLady]

Done a sketch for Eryssa, tried to make the lineart bolder and cleaner as I think it fits the wesnoth style better

[doofus-01]

Hello TheDragonLady,

Northern Rebirth portraits do need an update and it would be great to have one artist tackle all the portraits, so the style is consistent. That is a big task though, so hopefully you are in for a long haul.

These initial sketches are not bad, but the shading and perspective are a bit off if they are intended as completed works. If they are just sketches, I'd say Tallin has some character and isn't a bad start. There would ideally be a few versions of him, like how HttT has different versions of Konrad.

Eryssa's shoulders are getting a little too "facing the camera", so the pose looks stiff and unnatural. Absolutely continue to sketch out the poses you want, but also spend significant time trying to find a reference image (but be careful you don't get burned by AI garbage in a web images search - I mention this because it is a very recent concern).

The linework could be much thicker; think of it as local shadows. For a ~1600-2400px image (will eventually be scaled down to 400px), a 3px line is thin, a 6px line is thick for where there are no obvious shadows.

[TheDragonLady]

I'd definitely be in it for the long haul! I played Wesnoth a lot as a kid so getting my art in the game would be really cool. These drawings are just sketches since I didn't really put in the time in that I would like to for finished portraits with the details etc. I'll keep my guard up against AI references thank you (I tend to use pinterest for references and I have noticed a huge increase in generic ai fantasy art recently). I'll make a note about the line art too, it was also the main feedback I got from some other people when I showed this work to them vs other Wesnoth art (somewhat annoyingly I recently put in effort forcing myself to use thinner line art since I always thought my previous work looked "blocky" but hey ho, shouldn't be too much trouble to thicken it up). I'm not sure if I'll have the time to do any more sketches or work on proper portraits this week but I'll certainly give it a shot next week! Many thank Doofus.

[Domonkos]

A portrait refreshment for northern rebirth would be great. Great work so far.

For Hamel I like the generic idea, looks like a dwarf who seen some [censored]. I would change the pickaxe for a hammer tho. The pickaxe is more unique but dwars seem to have hammers prettz consistentl in the portaraits nowadazs so I would stick to it.

Love the vibes of Eryssa, fits the charatcter. Maybe she could be more magicy in the end?

[Very_good_at_wesnoth]

Ur art is gr8

[egallager]

Re: Hamel: I've also commissioned a portrait of him for an add-on I maintain ("The Earth's Gut"), so if you'd like to install that for inspiration, you could do that, or just take a look at the separate repo I maintain for the full-size originals of the art: https://github.com/cooljeanius/TEG_art
...or, if GitHub is confusing, they're also in my thread in the Art Workshop forum: https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?t=56747

[TheDragonLady]

Did a sketch for sister Thera, the rendering needs a lot more work I'm afraid. I think I'm just going to work on getting all the sketches out of the way first and then go through and redo it all properly. I should have more time to work on this than I previously did

Also thank you egallager! I'll have a look at your version of Hamel as in my sketch I mainly just had the dwarf lord unit art to go off of.

[doofus-01]

I think I'm just going to work on getting all the sketches out of the way first and then go through and redo it all properly.

Do you have examples of more finished works? I see some issues with the hands and edges in general; I don't mean this to be discouraging, but I also don't want to lead anyone down the garden path. Kitty and LordBob set a very high bar.

[TheDragonLady]

I think I'm just going to work on getting all the sketches out of the way first and then go through and redo it all properly.

Do you have examples of more finished works? I see some issues with the hands and edges in general; I don't mean this to be discouraging, but I also don't want to lead anyone down the garden path. Kitty and LordBob set a very high bar.

I totally get that, tbh I wasn't expecting to get this far in the first place so I don't really see this as discouraging. Sorry I was unresponsive for a week (I ended up getting sick and didn't really feel like doing any art :/). I'll try and get some of the sketches more finalised this week

[doofus-01]

No problem. It's a volunteer project, we all have to move a little slowly.