Naga Hunter

[Ranger M]

That arm still looks wrong, and the bow is too consistently thick, and it has no texture. Something about his chest also makes it look too thin.

Your right about the arm, I'll make it bigger and the other one smaller.

As for the bow, it's a bone, a massive whale's rib cage bone (or some other convinenetly shaped fish bone), therefore it is very smooth. I'll be fixing the chest soon.

so this is the list of things that need fixing (including things not mentioned) this is mostly so that people don't mention something twice once I've acknowlaged it, but also so that I have a list that I can easily see.

1) the chest needs to be made to look thicker
2) his left arm is still to small compared to the other one
3) the base of his neck to our left is f@#ked up
4) shading on the right hand edge of the quiver is wrong
5) shading on the ear is wrong (needs to have a more curved shadow)
6) the bow needs algae
7) possibly needs finger nails
some pixelation needs fixing
9) body patterns need adding

anything else?

[halleck]

If he is a naga then why does he look so happy???

[Ranger M]

If he is a naga then why does he look so happy???

Because he has just killed four mermen and poisoned three others who are now running away (isn't it obvious?)

I was actually going for a confident grin, but a smile after killing his enemies will do for me.

Anyway, finished version (hopefully):

[Ryorin]

His right side arm is extremelly odd looking.

[Thrawn]

Anyway, finished version (hopefully):

mind if I critique? I'm basing it off my views and a comparison w/ Jorg's work.

The face:
1.The cheekbone takes precedence over the skin flap. On his left side, a clearly defined cheeck bone should be clear, not just the flap of skin...don't worry, I've posted a hack.
2. The ears look too...static?... if you look at Jorg's, they have varying lengths and all, and it adds something that yours lacks...trying that out may make it look better, I have no clue, really.
3. The eyes are too close to the nose, which looks to simple. If you look at the current portraits, the shading gives hint to a flattened triangle as the nose, and trying to get that effect would greatly improve the face. Move the eyes out a bit, and re shape the nose slightly add that would look much better, IMVHO. Also, try for thinner lines for the nose.
The body:
1. The neck joiuns the body really oddly, but this has been said before. To me it seems the lines are too horizantal, i.e. not realistic enough. the triangular neck muscle is wrong.
2. The arm that people say look wrong. The arm should come in front of the body, even if going back. If going back, the arm connects to the chest with that odd shaped upper shoulder muscle, not how you have it (again, my hack will make this clearer...I suck at explaining things)
3. I think better defined chest muscles/ bone structure would help. Sam egoes for the belly, and lower body actually.
4. The hand...I know drawing hands suck, but making it more elongated and bony would fit better with Jorg's style.
5. The alternate skin color...is the same as the underbelly...and looks odd. making it a different color, as Jorg does will make this look better.

Also, remember that nagas are slimyish...skin gleams will look good, and further help the imatation of Jorg's style!

I hope I don't seem too critical...but I'm pointing out things I see wrong. No offense.

Oh, also, work on making thinner lines in general...it will help immensely.

could you give me the layers, so I can play with it? please!!!?

[Ranger M]

mind if I critique? I'm basing it off my views and a comparison w/ Jorg's work.

sure, thats why I've posted it here.

1.The cheekbone takes precedence over the skin flap. On his left side, a clearly defined cheeck bone should be clear, not just the flap of skin...don't worry, I've posted a hack.

I noticed this before, then forgot about it, but I'll try to fix it later (doing this would also involve changing some of the shading as well)

2. The ears look too...static?... if you look at Jorg's, they have varying lengths and all, and it adds something that yours lacks...trying that out may make it look better, I have no clue, really.

I see what you mean, and I can fix this relatively easily.

3. The eyes are too close to the nose, which looks to simple. If you look at the current portraits, the shading gives hint to a flattened triangle as the nose, and trying to get that effect would greatly improve the face. Move the eyes out a bit, and re shape the nose slightly add that would look much better, IMVHO. Also, try for thinner lines for the nose.

I can see what you mean, and I think that I have a good idea of how to fix it.

1. The neck joiuns the body really oddly, but this has been said before. To me it seems the lines are too horizantal, i.e. not realistic enough. the triangular neck muscle is wrong.

I suppose that some more muscle on his sholders wouldn't hurt, although is will complicate things a little, I'll see what I can do.

2. The arm that people say look wrong. The arm should come in front of the body, even if going back. If going back, the arm connects to the chest with that odd shaped upper shoulder muscle, not how you have it (again, my hack will make this clearer...I suck at explaining things)

I know what you mean, that arm didn't come out how I had hoped that it would, but I'm not entirely sure that I understand your proposed fix, could you do a clearer edit?

3. I think better defined chest muscles/ bone structure would help. Sam egoes for the belly, and lower body actually.

On Jorg's they don't seem to have any defined muscles on their chests, so I'm a little doubtful about that, but I agree with the bone structure part.

4. The hand...I know drawing hands suck, but making it more elongated and bony would fit better with Jorg's style.

Good point.

5. The alternate skin color...is the same as the underbelly...and looks odd. making it a different color, as Jorg does will make this look better.

Personally I don't mind either way, I think it is fine as it is, but I'm ok with it being different too.

Also, remember that nagas are slimyish...skin gleams will look good, and further help the imatation of Jorg's style!

There are already some, but they aren't particularly visable/clear, I'll try to change that.

I hope I don't seem too critical...but I'm pointing out things I see wrong. No offense.

Don't worry, this is what I wanted when I posted it here.

Oh, also, work on making thinner lines in general...it will help immensely.

I can't do very much for the general thinkness of the lines right now, as I only have my touchpad to draw with, and doing that much careful work to get the whole line equally thin would require my tablet.

could you give me the layers, so I can play with it? please!!!?

Sure (be sure you post the layers along with your edit too though).

[Darth Fool]

minor niggle: the bow should not be colored the same as the naga.

[Ranger M]

minor niggle: the bow should not be colored the same as the naga.

although they do look very similar, it isn't the same (look at the light areas instead of the dark ones and the difference will become more obvious), but the fact that you can make the mistake of thinking that they are means that I should edit it to make them more distinguishable.

[Ranger M]

Ok, this is how I decided to fix most of Thrawns comments, in which I mostly agreed with what he said. The only time that I didn't was with his first point, which I did slightly differently, but it works as well if not better.

Anyway, the only thing I haven't fixed is his right arm, because my attempts so far haven't worked (although I'm still trying) so I'm counting on an edit from Thrawn (or anybody else who has a good idea of how it should work) to show me the best way of doing it while sticking the the atonomy that Jorg's Nagas have. I'm going to keep on trying in the meantime, but I'm posting this so that if whoever does the edit has the most recent version.

[halleck]

Looks better. Probably just my but im still having trouble coping with the fact that he is smiling at me while trying to kill me.

[irrevenant]

Personal impressions:
* his face still looks caved in to me.
* he looks a bit crosseyed.

[Ranger M]

Looks better. Probably just my but im having trouble coping with the fact that he is smiling at me while trying to kill me.

Well, he's obviously one of those crazy scary people who enjoy killing so much that they just have to smile, freakishly, all of the time, even when you've stabbed them through the heart....

On a more serious note, most dialogue doesn't occur during combat, and in IoA (the only campaign that this will be in so far, because no nagas have lines in UtBS, I checked with quartex) the nagas are on your side, so they aren't trying to kill you.

Anyway, scrap that last request, I managed to make a version that works, I doubt that there will be any more problems that I actually address (I'm satisfied with the proportions and the layout, so you'd need to find something which was blaringly wrong with it for me to fix it) unfortunately it turned out quite different from the other nagas (style wise and atonamy wise) so I failed in that bit, but I'll live.

I do have one question though, to satisfy my curiosity and see weather my cell shading skills have reached a certain level (I know that they are better, but I want to know how good and how close to the proper wesnoth style this is), if this was a mainline unit (and it wasn't so different from the others in it's race) would it get accepted?

[Jetrel]

I do have one question though, to satisfy my curiosity and see weather my cell shading skills have reached a certain level (I know that they are better, but I want to know how good and how close to the proper wesnoth style this is), if this was a mainline unit (and it wasn't so different from the others in it's race) would it get accepted?

Your cell-shading is actually getting quite good; The technical aspects of *how* you are doing it are almost spot-on (in fact, they're decent, they're good enough. Lines are clean, consistent, regions are clearly done, everything's anti-aliased, etc. The *where* of your shading is actually pretty good - some of the finer points are a little iffy - you'll see how I added a slight patch of shading to his right shoulder to separate the shoulder and pectoral muscle, but you've got the basic idea going reasonably well.

It is in .. not so much anatomy, but how anatomy gets foreshortened for this pose, that you start sucking. I've done a (admittedly half-assed) paint-over, and here are some bits of input. Take special note of the red items, these are *major* lessons you should try to learn here, and work into your stuff from now on.


• Note: When his left shoulder is in a pose like that, it will be behind the back. You need to come to peace with this, and try drawing a few poses where this is the case. It was tough for me to wrap my head around that as I learned, because the whole time my mind was screaming that it just made more sense to see the whole arm, but it's wrong. It's a natural fallacy that artists have, to want to show all the body parts and not hide any behind others, but more often than not, body parts *will* be hidden, and to be good you have to understand and correctly depict this - there's no way around it.

• likewise, having his left arm flush against the body put him in this awkward, unbalanced/uncomfortable-looking pose; I would dare say it looked nerdy (think Napoleon Dynamite). Breaking it out made him feel more relaxed.

• His left shoulder was pulled up in a very awkward way. It just wasn't right; it's hard to describe. Likewise, the collar-bone bent in the wrong direction.

• The bow bent down at the wrong angle. My version is wrong too - reality is probably about halfways between the two.

• Too much of the far side of the face, and the facial features weren't far enough over on that side of the face.

• Note: Finally, all humans crane their necks forward to a certain degree - even the olympian ideal. Take this into account; It's not so much that the neck is craning forward, but that the bottom of the neck and the top of the back protrude behind it.



So, clean up the hacks (especially the lines) on my traceover, and change the color of the bow, and you'd actually have something mainline-quality.

[Oreb]

That is a nice looking naga, but the one thing that I think should be changed like everyone agrees is the bow colour. I do prefer the new mouth look over the old smile, as the old smile made him look like he had gas.

Though because the new mouth is a rough edit it looks sorta like a cat mouth

[halleck]

Though because the new mouth is a rough edit it looks sorta like a cat mouth

Yay!
At least the new mouth isnt smiling.

Looks good Jetryl.