My Unfinished Heavy Infantryman Portrait

Gorzan · Post by **Gorzan** » February 14th, 2007, 4:33 am

I smoothed it out a bit, looks ok I think the anti-aliasing is a bit better then the last...

Rev. V! · Post by **Rev. V!** » February 14th, 2007, 6:23 pm

You REALLY need to look at pictures of real armour and see how it's constructed, especially on a piece of art that focuses on the armour.

All the shading and anti-aliasing in the world won't help you if the core aspect of what you are drawing is wrong to begin with.

My suggestions to make your picture better would be this-

#1- Find a picture of some real armour you like and would like to portray in your picture. The intarweb is a VAST resource for this.

#2- Study the SHAPES of the individual components, how they reflect light, and how the components work together in the suit.
The pieces are there, and shaped the way they are, for a REASON.
Armour isn't just a hodgepodge of metal bits slapped onto the human form.
For example- your pauldrons (the bits covering the shoulders) kinda look like a cross between a manhole cover and a DeSoto "moon" hubcap.
Real pauldrons don't look like that.
I've attached a pic of some pauldrons I made about 10 years ago, notice the difference between what I made, and what you drew, how they "flow" with the shoulder and upper arm, not sit on top of it, and how the light reflects on the individual pieces.
(These are based upon German "Gothic" armour, circa 1485.)

#3- Find some shiny objects that approximate the shapes in the armour you are drawing and base your shading/reflections (you'll have to do some fine tuning though...) in your artwork on those pieces.

If you try what I have suggested, I really think you will be able to improve the quality of your core art when rendering armoured figures.
The anti-aliasing and such can come later, get your basics down first and the rest will work out.

Rev. V!

(EDIT)- the type of armour you're drawing, based on the helm (a barbute) you are depicting, seems to be along the Italian lines, to my eye anyway.....I have a link in an earlier post in this thread that depicts Italian plate armours in line drawings, take a look through that and see if you find something you like and want to depict, then you can narrow down your search trying to find examples of the real thing.

Gorzan · Post by **Gorzan** » February 14th, 2007, 8:01 pm

I'll try and fix the pauldrons, but the body I made was to model the heavy infrantry sprite. I looked at some italian armour and many are shaped in a "V" shape. Not corrisponding to the sprite appearance.

Post by **turin** » February 15th, 2007, 2:19 am

There's no need to follow the sprite exactly. Portraits of necessity include more detail than sprites ever can. The HI sprite is just supposed to get across the idea of "big, heavy, armored guy with a mace". The exact details of his armor aren't exactly realistic.

Hectigo · Post by **Hectigo** » March 6th, 2007, 9:59 am

Well, here's my quite different take on the heavy infantry. Wesnoth-styled cel shading does not seem to be my thing, so I doubt this could be useful as a portrait, but I guess someone else could draw some inspiration from this. I modeled the picture mostly after the HI sprite, so it's not very realistic, but I think the design gets the idea of big, armored guy with a mace through quite well.

Edit: Added some detail to the pictures.

Edit 2: Changed the proportions slightly. It's still not perfectly realistic, but hey, it's a big guy.

Rocket Slug · Post by **Rocket Slug** » March 6th, 2007, 5:08 pm

Wow, that's really cool! You're right that it wouldn't fit as a portrait, but I think it's a great piece of fanart. I do love the pose, though. It conveys some sort of primal energy that just make it scary to look at.

Post by **zookeeper** » March 6th, 2007, 5:52 pm

That's basically a really cool image, but there's one thing that really stands out: wacky proportions. The upper body seems way too large compared to the legs. Perhaps technically a body of proper proportions could fit under that armour, but it still very much looks like there's something wrong.

Hectigo · Post by **Hectigo** » March 6th, 2007, 6:33 pm

Well, yeah - like I said, I modeled the picture after the sprite, so I guess some of those wacky proportions come from there. I could try to do a different version with more anatomically correct proportions, though. I should probably make the helmet smaller too. But hey, thanks for the positive comments!

Gorzan · Post by **Gorzan** » March 7th, 2007, 4:14 am

turin wrote:There's no need to follow the sprite exactly. Portraits of necessity include more detail than sprites ever can. The HI sprite is just supposed to get across the idea of "big, heavy, armored guy with a mace". The exact details of his armor aren't exactly realistic.

Very nice, Turin did mention about the sprite though. I just came back on because I had viruses on my computer, and it was under mataince for about a week. Of course i forgot about it after I got my computer work. I never really put any new pics because the pauldrons i just couldn't get it right, everytime I made it, it looks too odd.

As you can see the pauldrons looks a bit strange, but I say that Hectigo portrait is much more better. I just couldn't get the pauldrons right (O_o) I really like the angle of Hectigo pic as well.

Rocket Slug · Post by **Rocket Slug** » March 7th, 2007, 5:26 am

Move them down and have them follow the contours of the shoulder more. I don't think there's a need to have them looking like water wings or something, hehe

Gorzan · Post by **Gorzan** » March 7th, 2007, 7:24 pm

Rocket are u tell me that or Hectigo? If it is to me, I not quite sure if I should continue this for we see that Hectigo is more better in pose as well as detail. So in truth Hectigo is much more closer to have a finished product then I.

Rocket Slug · Post by **Rocket Slug** » March 8th, 2007, 3:21 am

Gorzan wrote:Rocket are u tell me that or Hectigo? If it is to me, I not quite sure if I should continue this for we see that Hectigo is more better in pose as well as detail. So in truth Hectigo is much more closer to have a finished product then I.

Sorry, I was talking about your pauldrons since you said you couldn't get them to look right. I guess I didn't make that clear. But still, keep messing around with it if you want. Just because it's not going to make it into the game doesn't mean you can't learn anything from it. Look at Thrawn for example (yes, I've watched him grow and develop while lurking on the forums).