Elf Fighter Portrait

[Sgt. Groovy]

And just after I said I like, I go and change everything. The elves are supposed to be androgynous, to which his prominent chin plays against. To alleviate this a further edit: I stretched the nose vertically and moved the mouth down a bit.

[Woodwizzle]

I dunno. I like the long face better. Looked more elvish to me. Also you're eliminating the character that the square chin had added. The original version of the new elf fighter portrait was the most elvish while remaining masculine which is a GOOD thing; I like it very much. After all its supposed to be obvious that he is an elf and a male. Also you haven't fixed the biggest problem of all which is the enormous ear. I really dislike that style of elf ear. They remind me of furrys. *shudders*

[Sgt. Groovy]

I totally agree about the ear. I didn't touch it in my quick edits, because I think it needs to be completely redone.

[theotherhiveking]

that doesnt look much like a elf, looks like rambo

[Shadow]

While I never drawn this guys I always liked this style of appeareance.



Perhaps not the thing you imagine but perhaps a source of inspiration.

[Beholder]

Apart from the rabbit-ear and the turtleneck, this is pretty nice, mostly anatomically realistic, yet cartoonish.

On the technical side, the linework should look inked (solid, crisp lines) and the shading should be done in cell-shading style, solid areas of colour instead of brushwork.

The final portrait should also show a bit more than just a face, pererably something that tells about his occupation (an armour).

Wait.. there are no guidelines about color, or tracing. I even make a post earlier about guidelines about portrait and people claimed you just need to do "a good piece" to be added.

I think you guys are wanting people to copy Lute style, which is fine from a programmer / designer point of view, but for the artist, there is little incentive of copying someone else art unless he is either studying or being paid for it.

If the art is to copy Lute style, I'd like to know right now... saves a lot of time and make me decide if it's worth the effort or not. Frankly, if is to copy someone else art I'd prefer to go make some Wesnoth fanart because there is little reward artistically in doing it. Could as well put Lute as the official campaign artist and recommend people to work on another scenarios.

I like the big ears.. the sprites have huge ears and I decided to keep it. Will give a look on the hair thou.

[Shadow]

For example the styles compatible for for mainline.

Jormungandr
http://exong.net/wesnoth-attach/files/b ... er_860.png

Jetryl colors Xandar86 lines

http://exong.net/wesnoth-attach/files/cart5_828.png
http://exong.net/wesnoth-attach/files/camerin_100.jpg

Jason Lutes

http://img259.echo.cx/img259/1133/grandknight6wc.png

Jason Lutes and Jormungandr style is for core units and the rest is campaign specific used. It's up to you.

[Sgt. Groovy]

Don't worry, the maintainers of the user-made campaigns are less picky. Also, if you want to make bigger works, you could always make story art, there are less stylistic restrictions for them (they only need to look consistent over a single campaign).

Besides, there kinda are two "official styles" for the mainline portraits, the other being more painting-like, though I'm not sure if your style is "painting-like" enough. Jetryl, the Wesnoth Art Czar, can fill you in with that.

[Jetrel]

I think you guys are wanting people to copy Lute style, which is fine from a programmer / designer point of view, but for the artist, there is little incentive of copying someone else art unless he is either studying or being paid for it.

If the art is to copy Lute style, I'd like to know right now... saves a lot of time and make me decide if it's worth the effort or not. Frankly, if is to copy someone else art I'd prefer to go make some Wesnoth fanart because there is little reward artistically in doing it.

I really have to ask ... what do you mean by this?

Studying+Imitating master illustrators, especially those whose style differs from the ones you typically employ, is a wonderful way to learn things - you'll learn a lot of things from doing it, because you have to consider why they choose to do things their way, and you have to decipher the logic behind their decisions. It's probable that you'll find certain elements in their work that are worth borrowing wholesale. That's how art evolves, after all; for one example, what we now call manga was originally borrowed wholesale, in the 50s, from american styles of cartooning. And now the cycle is going in reverse.

Besides the point, it's a wonderful way to see the world from another artist's perspective, to walk in their shoes for a while. But if you've got some sort of instrinsic, emotional revulsion to doing that - well, I guess you're not really open-minded.

Could as well put Lute as the official campaign artist and recommend people to work on another scenarios.

Jason Lutes has been gone for ~1.5 years - it's assumed that he ain't coming back. Having one person make all the portrait art for the game is a herculean task; but all the portrait art for the core game needs to have a single, consistent style, or it looks really, really amateur. This means that; just like any team of artists working on a commercial videogame, or any team of artists working on a comic book, or any team of artists working on an anime - we've all got to use the same style.

I have a bad feeling that, given how grossly our community* has been screwing this up, I may have to do this entire thing myself; after I finish a certain set of the TC sprites.


*with certain exceptions; you know who you are

[Blarumyrran]

after I finish a certain set of the TC sprites.

is it the ghosts?

[Beholder]

I think you guys are wanting people to copy Lute style, which is fine from a programmer / designer point of view, but for the artist, there is little incentive of copying someone else art unless he is either studying or being paid for it.

If the art is to copy Lute style, I'd like to know right now... saves a lot of time and make me decide if it's worth the effort or not. Frankly, if is to copy someone else art I'd prefer to go make some Wesnoth fanart because there is little reward artistically in doing it.

I really have to ask ... what do you mean by this?

Studying+Imitating master illustrators, especially those whose style differs from the ones you typically employ, is a wonderful way to learn things - you'll learn a lot of things from doing it, because you have to consider why they choose to do things their way, and you have to decipher the logic behind their decisions. It's probable that you'll find certain elements in their work that are worth borrowing wholesale. That's how art evolves, after all; for one example, what we now call manga was originally borrowed wholesale, in the 50s, from american styles of cartooning. And now the cycle is going in reverse.

Besides the point, it's a wonderful way to see the world from another artist's perspective, to walk in their shoes for a while. But if you've got some sort of instrinsic, emotional revulsion to doing that - well, I guess you're not really open-minded.

Could as well put Lute as the official campaign artist and recommend people to work on another scenarios.

Jason Lutes has been gone for ~1.5 years - it's assumed that he ain't coming back. Having one person make all the portrait art for the game is a herculean task; but all the portrait art for the core game needs to have a single, consistent style, or it looks really, really amateur. This means that; just like any team of artists working on a commercial videogame, or any team of artists working on a comic book, or any team of artists working on an anime - we've all got to use the same style.

I have a bad feeling that, given how grossly our community* has been screwing this up, I may have to do this entire thing myself; after I finish a certain set of the TC sprites.


*with certain exceptions; you know who you are

Ugh.. huge block of quote...

Anyway, I said before on my previous post one of the two reasons to copy someone else style would be a learning experience.

However, this assume you want to use that opportunity as a learning experience. I do lots of study every and usually, I choose beforehand what kind of reference I want to study.

Even if I admired Lute work, this doesn't means I want to do this at this time... sometimes you really want to put "your mark" on a piece and is useful to know if this is allowed.

I am not interested in the way Lute do his works. Not saying there is something wrong with it.

Bottom line is... even if I do a wonderful piece, Lute takes the credit because at the end of the day, I just copied his style.


It would be far easier if there was a guideline saying people need to do works similar to Lute's. Yeah, I do agree you need a consistent art across all pieces, but it's even nicer to know this beforehand.

I noticed most of the mainline have Lute works, but then I saw the Drakes pieces and figured the control wasn't so tight.

I think if the art need to be consistent -in a faction- make things plausible because to wait a single person do all the work may not be a realistic ideal.

[Thrawn]

^^
Dude, what Jetryl is saying is that we *need* a unified style for the core units. As Lutes did a lot of units already (and other people have used his style to work on even more core units), it makes sense to continue in his style to preserve the unity of portrait style.

Also, IIRC he was a "professional" artist, and definately knew what he was doing. By imitating his work one can learn alot, about costume design, as well as cell shading in general.

I can understand your not wanting to work in another's style, but unfortunately, if you want to contribute positively the game, you should either remake every single portrait in your style, or give UMC's good quality work, as you obviously have talent. Or do the simple: work in Lute's style.

[torangan]

A more realistic task in a different style would be story screens for a campaign. They can have a different style which should just be consistent for that one campaign and you don't need hundreds of them.

[Sgt. Groovy]

but all the portrait art for the core game needs to have a single, consistent style, or it looks really, really amateur.

The problem is, of course, that most of the contributors are amateurs.

This means that; just like any team of artists working on a commercial videogame, or any team of artists working on a comic book, or any team of artists working on an anime - we've all got to use the same style.

In collaborative comic production, stylistic consistency is usually achieved by each member only sticking to certain stage of the procedure. One artist doing penciling, one inking and one colouring. Maybe you should only ask for lineart/concept sketches, and have the inking and colouring done by yourself and by the few contributors who are good enough with the style. This would also probably help to retaing more artists in the project.

[Beholder]

but all the portrait art for the core game needs to have a single, consistent style, or it looks really, really amateur.

The problem is, of course, that most of the contributors are amateurs.

This means that; just like any team of artists working on a commercial videogame, or any team of artists working on a comic book, or any team of artists working on an anime - we've all got to use the same style.

In collaborative comic production, stylistic consistency is usually achieved by each member only sticking to certain stage of the procedure. One artist doing penciling, one inking and one colouring. Maybe you should only ask for lineart/concept sketches, and have the inking and colouring done by yourself and by the few contributors who are good enough with the style. This would also probably help to retaing more artists in the project.

Sgt. Groovy got what I trying to say.

I found curious, or better, dangerous, the use of "commercial" on the above post.

Free projects are usually happy in accepting any help they got specially when there are no art for the subject in question.

When you pay, sure... you can ask the artist to do anything you want. I can accept a refusal by the art not being good enough, this is fine, but because it doesn't match a previous artist vision is just asking too much for someone who went out of the way to contribute.

For the artist, I repeat, there is little to no incentive in copying another artist job.

I close saying if you really want unity, you need to have the same guy doing all the thing like Jerkyl wants to do. Even if I wanted to copy Lute I couldn't make it 100% and anyone with a keen eye would notice the difference.