Musing on character portraits
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Musing on character portraits
I've been playing wesnoth for a while; I like the game in almost all respects -- except for one ... teensy thing, that really bothers me. I don't like the character portraits. A lot. No offense to the person who drew them, this is after all, only my own humble opinion. I'm not sure if it's just the style - something reminiscent of Lupin III(?), an old anime tv show, or what, but there's just something about them that would embarrass me if my friends caught me looking at them - about the same feeling I'd get if I sat down for a nice healthy show of Dragonball-Z right after all my buddies just got done watching UFC.
It's just ... not ... right ... somehow.
So, I ... thought about this for a second and suddenly realized "hey, this is an open-source game, isn't it?". It dawned on me that I could, at least in theory, make some replacement of my own volition. Now this is a tough call - I hate doing this, because the mere suggestion of replacement carries an implicit insult to the creator of the previous art. I have no idea if those are intended as the final images, or if they are placeholders (which is what my anime-obsessed roomate is inclined to think), or a bit of both.
Quality of work is, on many levels, a function of opinion. I'm not the creative director of this game - I don't make any of the decisions. However, I feel so strongly about this that, at risk of insult, I would ask that any submissions for replacement at least be fairly evaluated.
Obviously, they need to fit with the style of the game, such as it is - likely my largest complaint with the existing graphics. Seeing the graphics when they were first included was somewhat jarring to me - it was not at all like how I had visualized the characters. Some, like Delfador, hit reasonably close to the mark, but others, like kalenz and Li'sar were markedly different from how I had originally visualized them.
(sigh)
I don't go off complaining about something like this without at least offering some sort of solution, if you could call it that, to the problem I'm complaining about.
Thus, in this thread, I'm going to post drawings. Piles of them, in all sorts of different styles. Hopefully, one style will hit a general concensus of being better than the other, perhaps the one already included in the game. I ask for your opinions, and hell, if you've got drawings to throw up here, please do by all means. Hopefully, this will rectify, not only for me, but for everyone working on the game, what the visual style of the characters is to be.
It's just ... not ... right ... somehow.
So, I ... thought about this for a second and suddenly realized "hey, this is an open-source game, isn't it?". It dawned on me that I could, at least in theory, make some replacement of my own volition. Now this is a tough call - I hate doing this, because the mere suggestion of replacement carries an implicit insult to the creator of the previous art. I have no idea if those are intended as the final images, or if they are placeholders (which is what my anime-obsessed roomate is inclined to think), or a bit of both.
Quality of work is, on many levels, a function of opinion. I'm not the creative director of this game - I don't make any of the decisions. However, I feel so strongly about this that, at risk of insult, I would ask that any submissions for replacement at least be fairly evaluated.
Obviously, they need to fit with the style of the game, such as it is - likely my largest complaint with the existing graphics. Seeing the graphics when they were first included was somewhat jarring to me - it was not at all like how I had visualized the characters. Some, like Delfador, hit reasonably close to the mark, but others, like kalenz and Li'sar were markedly different from how I had originally visualized them.
(sigh)
I don't go off complaining about something like this without at least offering some sort of solution, if you could call it that, to the problem I'm complaining about.
Thus, in this thread, I'm going to post drawings. Piles of them, in all sorts of different styles. Hopefully, one style will hit a general concensus of being better than the other, perhaps the one already included in the game. I ask for your opinions, and hell, if you've got drawings to throw up here, please do by all means. Hopefully, this will rectify, not only for me, but for everyone working on the game, what the visual style of the characters is to be.
Here is an example of my usual drawing style, which is done with a mechanical pencil and was, in this case, heavily colorized in photoshop. I pinched this thing off in a few hours, when I had some time to kill a few nights ago.
I, at the time, had no idea how to contribute to wesnoth - I fired off an email to anyone I could find (dave ended up being the guy - hi dave). Dave redirected me to here, and I then found out all sorts of wonderful ways I could contribute to the game (sprite graphics, sprite graphics!).
Dave also politely declined this, enclosed, picture, likely due to that fact that it ill fits the style of the game. Which I can see, myself. It kinda ends up like putting an afro on the pope; out of place if you will.
Still, here it is at least for thought.
I, at the time, had no idea how to contribute to wesnoth - I fired off an email to anyone I could find (dave ended up being the guy - hi dave). Dave redirected me to here, and I then found out all sorts of wonderful ways I could contribute to the game (sprite graphics, sprite graphics!).
Dave also politely declined this, enclosed, picture, likely due to that fact that it ill fits the style of the game. Which I can see, myself. It kinda ends up like putting an afro on the pope; out of place if you will.
Still, here it is at least for thought.
Here's another look at the sketch I posted later in this message, with preliminary shading done. Note that there is much shading left to do. I found some wonderful tutorials at http://www.alpha-shade.com, the home of an online comic.
I hope the shading of this image turns out as I've planned; there's a lot of specular highlighting to do, still.
Alpha-shade's work is an example of one style (one of many different styles, including the huge-eyed, exact correlation I mentioned), that I think would well-fit Wesnoth.
I hope the shading of this image turns out as I've planned; there's a lot of specular highlighting to do, still.
Alpha-shade's work is an example of one style (one of many different styles, including the huge-eyed, exact correlation I mentioned), that I think would well-fit Wesnoth.
Last edited by Jetrel on March 18th, 2004, 8:37 am, edited 2 times in total.
I'd like them less Anime too, but that's just personal taste. I did bring up the idea of theming, but Dave rightly pointed out that the look of the game is as important to its identity as the gameplay itself.
Still, if you wanted to produce a complete set of graphics based around more traditionally Western portraits, I wouldn't complain
Still, if you wanted to produce a complete set of graphics based around more traditionally Western portraits, I wouldn't complain
I must but agree 'bout the portraits (no offence fmunoz 
) but they rellay miss the comparative look with their small/sprite counterparts... I specially dislike also the story images, and most over other details, the blurred feel and look.
Thera are many gfx aspects in wesnoth I am not too pleased with, both in concep and execution, but then I am also not in charge of the gfx style so my work on gfxs for wesnoth has been for now relegated to non-critical style elements, like the weapons (neutral ground there... a sword is a sword you know... even though i'd say my coloring/shading style differs a bit from the other attack buttons).
A set of themes for wesnoth will be great for sure... but then I think this should be done at campaign level... thus current campaing has this feel and look, and then another one has another... I'd go for a totally independent entigne against the gfx/object layer. This is almost a reallity in the current state as most if not all of the gfx settings are hard-coded in the config files... this brings upfront... would those totally different camapign themes be still Wesnoth? The game has evolved to a point where the current feel and look is a critical part in the game... you see some sprites... they look "wesnoth"... good... but then... if they don't look "wesnoth" they are not too valid for the game...
It is a hard and possibly a heavy discussion the one presented in this threadm but sure the full wesnoth community can come to an agreement.
) but they rellay miss the comparative look with their small/sprite counterparts... I specially dislike also the story images, and most over other details, the blurred feel and look.Thera are many gfx aspects in wesnoth I am not too pleased with, both in concep and execution, but then I am also not in charge of the gfx style so my work on gfxs for wesnoth has been for now relegated to non-critical style elements, like the weapons (neutral ground there... a sword is a sword you know... even though i'd say my coloring/shading style differs a bit from the other attack buttons).
A set of themes for wesnoth will be great for sure... but then I think this should be done at campaign level... thus current campaing has this feel and look, and then another one has another... I'd go for a totally independent entigne against the gfx/object layer. This is almost a reallity in the current state as most if not all of the gfx settings are hard-coded in the config files... this brings upfront... would those totally different camapign themes be still Wesnoth? The game has evolved to a point where the current feel and look is a critical part in the game... you see some sprites... they look "wesnoth"... good... but then... if they don't look "wesnoth" they are not too valid for the game...
It is a hard and possibly a heavy discussion the one presented in this threadm but sure the full wesnoth community can come to an agreement.
Fmunoz has created a theme for the main "Heir to the throne" campaign with the anime style portraits, which I happen to like. But this doesn't necessarily have to be the theme for the entire game, I could imagine someone working on very different styled portraits for other compaign. Circon's undead campaign is currently looking for artists to do portraits, so perhaps you could help out there. And there's benj's orc campaign and the new loyalist campaign.
"heir to the throne" may not be set in stone, but there are also many other venues where you could work on developing an alternate style of portraits.
However now that I think of it, when designing units we often do refer to a "wesnoth style" as a way of deciding which units fit in the game and which don't. Do the portraits fit into those style guidelines as well? Would the game look odd if different campaigns have very different looking portraits? As an open-source project how much work should we put into making sure that all the artwork looks well together? I'm not sure.
"heir to the throne" may not be set in stone, but there are also many other venues where you could work on developing an alternate style of portraits.
However now that I think of it, when designing units we often do refer to a "wesnoth style" as a way of deciding which units fit in the game and which don't. Do the portraits fit into those style guidelines as well? Would the game look odd if different campaigns have very different looking portraits? As an open-source project how much work should we put into making sure that all the artwork looks well together? I'm not sure.
That sounds like a very good compromise, and a good way to avoid doing unecessary work.quartex wrote:Fmunoz has created a theme for the main "Heir to the throne" campaign with the anime style portraits, which I happen to like. But this doesn't necessarily have to be the theme for the entire game, I could imagine someone working on very different styled portraits for other compaign.
I agree with quartex and telex4 completely. I do like the pics used currently for "heir to the throne" , but there's no reason not to use different ones in other campaigns. In fact, I'd prefer it.. it'd get boring, and silly, to see the same characters showing up in every campaign... and it'd be even worse to use the same pictures for different characters.
So, anyway, I think there's plenty of room for your drawings in wesnoth, just not in the Heir to the Throne if you prefer to do a different style. To comment on the two you've posted, though: the first looks like a frightened half-orc and the second way over-emphasizes the "big-eyes" theme so common.. not to mention you started this as a (kind of) "anti-anime" thread, and the drawing looks pretty close to anime... this isn't meant so much as a critique as my opinion, the difference being that a critic at least pretends to know what he's talking about. I don't. But, judging from what you've posted, I wouldn't mind a campaign that uses your pics for profiles/storyboard...
Now if we only had animated cut scenes!
So, anyway, I think there's plenty of room for your drawings in wesnoth, just not in the Heir to the Throne if you prefer to do a different style. To comment on the two you've posted, though: the first looks like a frightened half-orc and the second way over-emphasizes the "big-eyes" theme so common.. not to mention you started this as a (kind of) "anti-anime" thread, and the drawing looks pretty close to anime... this isn't meant so much as a critique as my opinion, the difference being that a critic at least pretends to know what he's talking about. I don't. But, judging from what you've posted, I wouldn't mind a campaign that uses your pics for profiles/storyboard...
Now if we only had animated cut scenes!
Yeah, the drawing was meant to be anime - not unlike what's already included. I'm just suffering from the exact same issues fmunoz was when he made his drawings, which is why mine aren't any better.
Big eyes are good, at least in something like wesnoth, where the sprite graphics actually have eyes covering half their face (simply because nothing else would be visible - hard to work with when you have a face five pixels wide). Still, this binds you by laws of consistency.
The main graphics in the game are the sprites. Because of that, people like me are going to expect every other graphical representation of them to be a big version of the sprite graphics, not the other way around (a little version of the character graphics). I can't help it - it's just the way my brain is wired. A hierarchy forms, and anything that does not defer to it seems out of place.
And besides, at least in the game, the character Li'Sar seems to be wearing a lot of white, and in the character portrait, she's wearing none; instead she's wearing green leather.
It's possible, I might just go off and do some other characters in the style fmunoz used, like Moremiru, for example.
Big eyes are good, at least in something like wesnoth, where the sprite graphics actually have eyes covering half their face (simply because nothing else would be visible - hard to work with when you have a face five pixels wide). Still, this binds you by laws of consistency.
The main graphics in the game are the sprites. Because of that, people like me are going to expect every other graphical representation of them to be a big version of the sprite graphics, not the other way around (a little version of the character graphics). I can't help it - it's just the way my brain is wired. A hierarchy forms, and anything that does not defer to it seems out of place.
And besides, at least in the game, the character Li'Sar seems to be wearing a lot of white, and in the character portrait, she's wearing none; instead she's wearing green leather.
It's possible, I might just go off and do some other characters in the style fmunoz used, like Moremiru, for example.
For more ... exacting illustration of the point I'm trying to make here are sized up versions of the sprite graphics made by fmunoz (these, by the way, are very good. Hats off to fmunoz for making these.) My problem is this - the character portraits don't look like these.
Now, obviously I don't mean for people to do something [censored] like actually oversampling graphics and using them in the game but what I'm saying that that the physical proportions of the characters in these pictures are exactly the proportions that should be used in the game's character portraits.
I intend to do something like these - obviously in a different pose, but this should be considered the holy bible of what the character portraits should look like. Any deviation simply looks bad due to inconsistency.
(and I'm fully aware of the fact that the exact same guy did both sets of graphics)
One of the ironic things I noticed, as I was enlarging these, was the fact that these graphics would look right at home in the game Chrono Trigger. This is of course ironic, because chrono trigger suffered from the exact same problem that I'm trying to prevent in BFW. Square hired (again ironically) the main artist for Dragonball-Z to make portraits of the main characters. (Hats off to my roommate for knowing such ... bizarre trivia). These were included in the character info screens, but looked jarringly different from the graphics in the game. It also certainly didn't help that they were trying to do this on a super nintendo, but I digress.
The difference in that game was somewhat more pronounced than it is in BFW - in that game they went from having sprites where the eyes took up 80% of the face to character portraits where the eyes took up only 5%, if that.
I just don't want to see the same thing happen here. Hopefully history can teach us a lesson.
---------------------
(I'm so glad I've never watched dragonball-z. I hate that show, and anything like it.)
Now, obviously I don't mean for people to do something [censored] like actually oversampling graphics and using them in the game but what I'm saying that that the physical proportions of the characters in these pictures are exactly the proportions that should be used in the game's character portraits.
I intend to do something like these - obviously in a different pose, but this should be considered the holy bible of what the character portraits should look like. Any deviation simply looks bad due to inconsistency.
(and I'm fully aware of the fact that the exact same guy did both sets of graphics)
One of the ironic things I noticed, as I was enlarging these, was the fact that these graphics would look right at home in the game Chrono Trigger. This is of course ironic, because chrono trigger suffered from the exact same problem that I'm trying to prevent in BFW. Square hired (again ironically) the main artist for Dragonball-Z to make portraits of the main characters. (Hats off to my roommate for knowing such ... bizarre trivia). These were included in the character info screens, but looked jarringly different from the graphics in the game. It also certainly didn't help that they were trying to do this on a super nintendo, but I digress.
The difference in that game was somewhat more pronounced than it is in BFW - in that game they went from having sprites where the eyes took up 80% of the face to character portraits where the eyes took up only 5%, if that.
I just don't want to see the same thing happen here. Hopefully history can teach us a lesson.
---------------------
(I'm so glad I've never watched dragonball-z. I hate that show, and anything like it.)
Last edited by Jetrel on March 5th, 2004, 6:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
By the way, here are some screen grabs from the SNES game Chrono Trigger, just so people have a clue of what on earth I'm talking about.
Note the striking resemblance to fmunoz's sprite graphics
(usual disclaimer applies - don't anybody get any stupid ideas; like somehow thinking that I am suggesting putting these into BFW - I'm NOT. I'm simply posting these so people can see what style of sprite fmunoz used.)
I do, by the way, really like this style of sprite, and really like most of the sprites used in BFW.
Note the striking resemblance to fmunoz's sprite graphics
(usual disclaimer applies - don't anybody get any stupid ideas; like somehow thinking that I am suggesting putting these into BFW - I'm NOT. I'm simply posting these so people can see what style of sprite fmunoz used.)
I do, by the way, really like this style of sprite, and really like most of the sprites used in BFW.
If I only knew how to shade like Hawk or Ian McConville, I'd be in business. I don't though, which is why you guys saw those embarrassing attempts earlier.
I have had almost no practice inking and coloring graphics - this is where the process usually stops for me.
Here's a final version of this sketch:
I have had almost no practice inking and coloring graphics - this is where the process usually stops for me.
Here's a final version of this sketch:
Last edited by Jetrel on March 5th, 2004, 6:41 am, edited 3 times in total.
Just a couple of comments:
- all aspects of the game are open to change, if someone proposes and supplies something that is better.
- currently I don't think that any of the suggested portraits are better than the ones currently in-game, but....if you can make ones that are better, we will use them
David
- all aspects of the game are open to change, if someone proposes and supplies something that is better.
- currently I don't think that any of the suggested portraits are better than the ones currently in-game, but....if you can make ones that are better, we will use them
David
“At Gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.” -- Ian Fleming
Don't be so hard on yourself, give yourself some credit. It's obvious you have artistic skill, and most of us don't have standards as high as the ones you seem to be imposing upon yourself. My point is do you best, and have fun creating new art, but we'll accept whatever you create if it fills a gap or is obviously better than whatever we have right now. We can always use new artists, whatever their talent or skill is. Even the crudist drawings have often inspired others to create new kinds of images.