Portrait styles.

[Zhukov]

One question that gets asked over-and-over again is what style unit portraits should be done in. Each time we get different people giving different answers in different ways. Personally, I'm still not 100% sure I have it right.

So...As I understand it, two different general styles are excepted.

Cell-shaded simplified cartoons with minimal exaggeration. Examples:


Digital paintings. Examples:


Is this right? If not, please correct me.

(Example images by Jormungandr, Jetryl, Thrawn and Lutes.)

[Eleazar]

So...As I understand it, two different general styles are excepted.

Cell-shaded simplified cartoons with minimal exaggeration.
Digital paintings. Examples:

Is this right? If not, please correct me.

Um, while portraits that look like these portraits will be accepted, you description of the second 2 is rather lacking. There are all manner of "Digital paintings" which are too stylistically different. The Drake-faction images aren't a radically different style. The lines are finer, details a bit smaller, and the areas of color are not so hard-edged, but it's essentially the same approach.

[pekka]

Hi, I'm still alive.

I never got response, but this is what I think about the portrait styles.

Quoting mainly myself:

I prefer, personally, the painted style. I could offer some speculative reasons for that, but largely it's a matter of opinion. The lutes style is more procedural, and yields easier results for beginners - unfortunately, it absolutely requires good linework to equal lutes' own work in quality (and it needs to equal that to be worth having). Unfortunately, doing said "good linework" is something that very few people around here can do - I had to personally tweak Thrawn/Tatmf's portraits into shape to fit that level of cleanliness, and a certain je ne sais quoi in the shaping of the lines which might have something to do with fractal density (though I'm just grabbing at straws; I really don't know what that secret ingredient is - it might also be a series of conventional symbols used for things like cloth folds). In other words, it is easier to make the Lutes style, but not vastly easier.

I prefer the lutes style and I can speculate a bit. The portraits drawn in lutes style have minimum amount of individual features and the characters are very generic. Therefore that fits very well for numerous recruitable units.

Then there is the point that lutes style portraits are much quicker to produce well. Both styles need good linework, yes, but lutes style needs only a rather quick cellshading procedure after that. Texturizing a lutes portrait is much easier to do well. With painted style the result can be easily much more messy. The dark adepts and the new Kalenz portraits come firstly to my mind. I'm sorry to say but they are messy and I don't like it.

I'm not saying that Jormungandr's superior portraits should be compensated with new "lutesian" portraits, but we really have only one Jormungandr around here.

By these words my opinion is that we favour lutes style in every faction which doesn't have any portraits yet. That includes also the undead and the elves. In the other hand painted style fits perfectly for the main chracters. There would be desired contrast with the hero units and generic units.

[Zhukov]

Um, while portraits that look like these portraits will be accepted, you description of the second 2 is rather lacking. There are all manner of "Digital paintings" which are too stylistically different.

Of course. However I don't have a better term to describe this second style. If you do, then by all means let's hear it.

(The saurian was a better example of what I had in mind then the drake.)

[Shadow]

Well some references for Jasons Lutes style.

http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/artPre ... cfc&type=2

His style is also disputed under Comic artists so take this as a grain of salt.
(For the sake of clarity the style of Jason Lutes)

On Topic I also prefer the painted style. Good art is messy. Or draw me something like this in Jason Lutes style.
http://ic1.deviantart.com/fs13/f/2007/0 ... oah_kh.jpg

[Max©]

Hello,

I'm a french beginner at Battle for Wesnoth. I'm very kind of Digital art (and computer science studying but not skilled enough yet to help this way). I have done things not bad using Photoshop so I was wondering if I could help.

Concerning Portraits I have something to say, something that I found shocking the first time I played BfW :

Obviously someone has decided to use Jason Lutes style for units portraits.
I understand that it was necessary to choose a particular style but you are using this style only for portraits, everywhere else in the game we can see what you seem to call "painted style". I'm sorry to say It's just not coherent.

This is an exemple of what I mean :



The two illustrations boxed have the same purpose : one for unit and one for weapons; But the two illustrations show two different styles. When I read you have deliberately decided this contrast I asked other friends about it (in particular gamers and artists) : they all found it strange.


Moreover I would say it is very difficult to produce a good work using Jason Lutes style. Indeed the artist need an accurate understanding of shades and lines.

One last thing in favour of the "painted style" :
In my opinion, people would prefer this style because it looks more complex and as a consequence more popular. I mean there is no Jason Lutes style in video games in general...


Sorry to begin with such a critic but I'm sure it can help to improve the game.

[doofus-01]

Hi,

It looks like there is some confusion concerning portrait styles (http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=20353). While I'm sure the guidelines are spelled out somewhere, this sticky would be a good place to look if it were updated.

Can someone with authority update this?

Thanks.

EDIT: This might do. Quoting Jetryl from a post below.

The best examples of "canonical wesnoth style" would currently be the portraits that kitty is making, or pickslide's portraits for "Under the Burning Suns".

BTW, sorry if I'm breaking protocol. I won't make a habit of posting in stickies.

[Jetrel]

The last post in this is precisely the current policy. We've now got a "canonical style" for the game, and we're going to replace or modify what we already have to match it.

I'm unstickying this post - if it proves necessary, I'll make an addition to the readme about this point.