Portrait sketches

[Girgistian]

Alrighty, future sketches shall be here, thanks for the transfer.

[kitty]

Good to have you back active again!

I like the sketche's general feel! The pauldon's are a bit too leave shaped for my taste, if it was smaller it could fit an elf And what is that spike in the middle of the head? part of the armour or an additional horn? The hands are a bit small and appear too weak due to that. And please loose that skull, that's really cheesy

Can't wait to see your visions for the other ones!

[thespaceinvader]

Part of the armour, I think - that's certainly how i'd render it. The drakes have two horns on their head, and one pointing off each cheekbone (for want of a better word) at the back, one off each side of the lower jaw. I'll be doing my best to keep that consistent across the portraits.

[Girgistian]

Thanks, I'll be busier with Cloud's viking era than mainline stuff if this is really a beginning of a comeback, but I'll try to fit some sketching in too. Remains to be seen.

Yeah, the skull's a bit cheesy, as you said, but I thought I'd add it anyway, to prevent the breastplate from looking too blank if nothing more. As for the pauldrons, I'd like to keep it somewhat the way they are, but I could make em a bit spikier and more threatening - I kinda thought they, along with the other armor, could be almost black or just very dark, so they wouldn't seem too elvish. Or should I try something completely different?

And the middle-spike on the back of his head was actually meant to be a horn, but if tsi's thought drake anatomy farther than me, then sure, it might as well be armor. I'll try to take another look at to this guy either later tonight or at the start of next week. I might bulk him up a bit when I get to it, in addition to making the hands bigger.

[Girgistian]

So yeah, stuff fixed and stuff added.

[thespaceinvader]

One thing worth noting here, by the way: I'd render the armour a great deal differently than what you see here. Given the need for lightness, and the relative lack of protection, I've discussed with jetrel making the armour for all non-clasher drakes a combination of ceramic plates in leather bases - the drakes have fires to make the ceramic, and lots of animal skins around given their diet, so this makes sense I'd envision something (haven't firmed up any designs yet) whereby the ceramic plates are replaceable reasonably easily, since they'd still be brittle, and contained within a leather housing, much like current flak jackets. Again, they'd be (well, not the Blademaster, given the whole black armour thing) mostly brightly coloured and decorated.

I thought I'd include this...somewhere... since it will invariably affect the sketches, and I haven't yet mentioned it on the forums. Been meaning to.

[Girgistian]

Alright then. I was kinda thinking about the blademaster more when I was drawing this fella, hence the current type of armor. I can, of course, try to draw another one with armor more fitting to your plans (already got something in mind...), if you'd like. I take it a lot of the planning takes place on irc? I've been meaning to check that out, but haven't bothered.

[thespaceinvader]

Very little - that's an idea I came up with by myself, and ran past jet briefly in private chat whilst talkign about other things - he's rarely on the #wesnoth-x channels. This is the first time it's seen the forum mainly because I haven't posted it anywhere yet. I only mentioned having discussed it with him because it's a slightly out-there idea, and I wanted to get his OK on it before I mentioned it.

The sprites won't be changing significantly to accommodate it, mainly because showing such things in sprite scale would be bloody hard.

But it is probably worth you getting IRC anyway - it is easier to knock ideas about in real time.

[kitty]

Given the need for lightness, and the relative lack of protection, I've discussed with jetrel making the armour for all non-clasher drakes a combination of ceramic plates in leather bases - the drakes have fires to make the ceramic, and lots of animal skins around given their diet, so this makes sense I'd envision something (haven't firmed up any designs yet) whereby the ceramic plates are replaceable reasonably easily, since they'd still be brittle, and contained within a leather housing, much like current flak jackets.

That is such a cool and consistent idea! And adds a lot to drake culture

[Girgistian]

So I came up with something for the burner... I have no idea if this is even close to the sort of armor you were after, but it took me almost 3 hours to design it over and over again so I'm damn right going to post it anyway. I also tested something with the head, since you wanted them to have just 2 horns. It was really hard to try to make it look convincing, so go ahead and use the previous one if you want.

[thespaceinvader]

It'll be usefull, I'm sure - i'll make some combination of the two =)

Thanks.

[Girgistian]

So yeah, I'll just make a short comeback to the contributions section now, and I'm presenting an old, common favourite - the orc warrior. I'm very well aware that LordBob's about to work on the orcs as well, but I'd like a final attempt now when he's still away, and since almost all the other cool units are already taken. So, upcoming drake sketches aside, this is most likely going to be my last attempt at mainline portraiture. Starting with a sketch.

[melinath]

No chance of you doing sketches for campaign art? (Sorry... no comment on the art... I really like it, but I don't have any useful criticism.)

[kitty]

but I'd like a final attempt now when he's still away, and since almost all the other cool units are already taken. So, upcoming drake sketches aside, this is most likely going to be my last attempt at mainline portraiture. Starting with a sketch.

I'm not sure what you see as "cool units" but apart from portraits for nearly all of the mainline campiagns (I haven't even dared to count how many that will be...) we still miss generic portraits for the higher level saurians, the higher level trolls and serveral monsters (spider, cuttle fish, dragon, scorpion, mudcrawlers, sea serpent, wolf, yeti etc.). So feel free to grab some of those if you feel like it!

For the orc: I still like the nordic feeling your orcs have! His stance seems a bit too upright for an orc to me and his arm muscles and hand could stand a bit more definition. Apart from that he's really orcish!

[thespaceinvader]

I'll probably get to the higher level saurians at somne point. I'd like to give them a go, but I'm not so attached to them that i'd stop someone else.

I'd like to add that orcs in particular will likely always be in need of alternate portraits. We'll probably give LordBob's ones priority as the default ones, but we'd like lots of extra dialogue ones.