Valkiers portraits: It's like I can touch you!

[thespaceinvader]

DO one portrait covering both units, as with... most of our portraits for unit lines, actually...

[Valkier]

Now where's the fun in that? We'll see what I can come up with. I had plans do have them separate. Having too much fun to deprive myself of that.

[thespaceinvader]

Not so much fun as time saving and practicality. It's a lot quicker to do one portrait, and it can often be difficult to visually distinguish two units which are essentially the same, only one slightly bigger and better than the other.

But you're welcome to provide portraits for all of them, it would be a most pleasant surprise.

[Valkier]

Update:

[Sapient]

The belt looks a lot cooler now.
With the new weapon arm, it seems you might have sacrificed some of the representation just to make it fit in the dimensions, mainly because he would need to be gripping it lower to get any momentum on his swings, and it seems slightly smaller.

Personally, I'd like it if he was holding that arm up in the air as if he was preparing to swing downward with a great deal of force. Attack poses are more acceptable for such fearsome evil minions, IMO.

[Valkier]

The belt looks a lot cooler now.
With the new weapon arm, it seems you might have sacrificed some of the representation just to make it fit in the dimensions, mainly because he would need to be gripping it lower to get any momentum on his swings, and it seems slightly smaller.

Personally, I'd like it if he was holding that arm up in the air as if he was preparing to swing downward with a great deal of force. Attack poses are more acceptable for such fearsome evil minions, IMO.

If I had it my way, our boney friend here would be covered in the blood of the innocent, cackling evily at his own reflection into his rusted and blood stained reflection off his recently used axes. I've been told on numerous occasions however that action poses aren't really desired here. Well, to be more specific, they don't want anything that doesn't look like it couldn't be idle to some extent. I hear conflicting opinions on this frequently, but that is what I've carried away from it all. If Jetrel or Kitty wants to tell me that I can go ahead and make it look like he's about to swing, I'll certainly do it.

As for the axes themselves, they have such a long blade that he'd need to grip it higher on the shaft to have any sort of control since there's a lot of weight at the top. Honestly, with the weight of the weapons I have him holding, I don't think where he grips it is going to make a whole lot of difference. They're basically very top heavy one edged swords. As for the perspective of the weapon itself, I'm still working on it. Foreshortening is a pain on that sort of oddly shaped object.

My thoughts on the green side is to make his arm look like it's being held back away from us at his side. Haven't decided if it's worth it yet however. Figure I'll wait and see some more opinions on this one currently before I make a change like that.

[Jetrel]

The belt looks a lot cooler now.
With the new weapon arm, it seems you might have sacrificed some of the representation just to make it fit in the dimensions, mainly because he would need to be gripping it lower to get any momentum on his swings, and it seems slightly smaller.

Personally, I'd like it if he was holding that arm up in the air as if he was preparing to swing downward with a great deal of force. Attack poses are more acceptable for such fearsome evil minions, IMO.

If I had it my way, our boney friend here would be covered in the blood of the innocent, cackling evily at his own reflection into his rusted and blood stained reflection off his recently used axes. I've been told on numerous occasions however that action poses aren't really desired here. Well, to be more specific, they don't want anything that doesn't look like it couldn't be idle to some extent. I hear conflicting opinions on this frequently, but that is what I've carried away from it all. If Jetrel or Kitty wants to tell me that I can go ahead and make it look like he's about to swing, I'll certainly do it.

It's hard to say. Really, the question is - "would this pose be appropriate for practically any situation where this unit would be delivering dialogue?"

Action poses are cool, but they have really, really limited uses in dialogue. Given the inventiveness of our community, they have a tendency to plausibly give any unit, not matter how "single-minded killing machine" they are, a reason to give calm dialogue, so as a rule, action poses are generally just not a good idea (because they don't work for that).

[doofus-01]

The skull is cool and it would be a shame for all the detail to get tossed out when the image is scaled down to 250 X 250 px (I think it's that). It may be boring in some ways, but a neutral pose with the arms less extended and the ax closer to the head would let the cropping be tighter, so the details wouldn't get crushed away.

If his right ax & arm position are finalized, then never mind.

[Valkier]

Most likely going to be changing up the arms tonight and cutting him down to his waist since the legs showing that much looks.. well.. stupid.

[Valkier]

I started reworking it a bit here and there. Resized the image, change the position of the axe on the left, and completely redid the arm on the right.

If you want to crit it, crit the overall stance and perspective. There are very obvious flaws which I am very well aware of and will be fixing tonight.

[Sapient]

This is a cool portrait.
That pose looks far awesomer now.

[Valkier]

Fixed most of the problems I mentioned before. Still a couple floating around here and there. My main goal tonight was to restate the lighting since it was starting to look like the left side was just red bones, metal, and cloth instead of bones metal and cloth with red light on them. I think it's looking much better now actually since I reemphasized it.

Otherwise his hand on the right needs rendered out properly, and then I think he's just about done.

[LordBob]

The reemphasized red light looks better - previously there was a gap in lighting between the face and body. Nevertheless, it also emphasizes the feeling of two different drawings pasted together : I think it is because of how you carefully separate the lightings in the picture.
This feeling ought to disappear if you insert spots of red light in the green area and vice versa (for instance, his elbow or the lower half of the handle are likely touched by red light. Likewise, areas in the left half that are shadowed from the red lightsource will likely appear green)

Other than that, the handles of the axes feel like frail sticks that might break under the strain of repeated blows. Thickening them will help.
Last but not least, his belt (or what looks like a belt, at any rate) feels plastic-smooth and could do with some more love : texturing, wear, and tear, ...

[Valkier]

The reemphasized red light looks better - previously there was a gap in lighting between the face and body. Nevertheless, it also emphasizes the feeling of two different drawings pasted together : I think it is because of how you carefully separate the lightings in the picture.
This feeling ought to disappear if you insert spots of red light in the green area and vice versa (for instance, his elbow or the lower half of the handle are likely touched by red light. Likewise, areas in the left half that are shadowed from the red lightsource will likely appear green)

Other than that, the handles of the axes feel like frail sticks that might break under the strain of repeated blows. Thickening them will help.
Last but not least, his belt (or what looks like a belt, at any rate) feels plastic-smooth and could do with some more love : texturing, wear, and tear, ...

Thanks for catching the lighting thing for me. I remember thinking about it at one point and then a shiny object moved and I forgot all about it. Just added them in, but I'll wait till I have more than just a lighting fix to show before I post another update. I can't go too nuts with the side swapping without flattening the whole thing out, but I think the few touches I made have it balanced to a decent point now.

Noted about the blade handles. I'll fix that tomorrow.

Belt and his entire green side needs wear and tear on the metal, plus some bolts and the like on the newly rendered metal there. Just been too lazy tonight to get to it since I had to make some major changes to what was already there as a whole.

Thankfully, all pretty quick fixes. Unless I get lazy (likely) tomorrow I'll probably get it finished and start whatever I feel like starting.

[Valkier]

And there we go.