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shiremct
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by shiremct »

I'm working on expanding the color palettes i use to add more depth and texture to my sprites. For now I'm drawing heavy influence from Jetrel's work and stumbling through it by trial and error, seeing the effect the different colors have on each other as I go. It's a learning process and it puts me a bit outside my comfort zone, so comments and critiques would be very helpful and much appreciated (as always.)

This image is the "normal" one with the bronze armor shaded with just browns/yellows/oranges, same as I've been using for quite some time.
Hypaspites.png
Hypaspites.png (2.92 KiB) Viewed 4101 times
In this image, I've added quite a bit of purple to the shadowed and back-curving edges of the bronze items as well as some more saturated yellows to try to compensate adding in the cooler purple colors.
Hypaspites2.png
Hypaspites2.png (3.17 KiB) Viewed 4101 times
The result seems (to me) to be pretty subtle... but I don't know if it has much of a positive effect. I think it is positive... but I may need to get a little bolder with the contrasts and there are probably better color choices as the normal and shadow palettes blend surprisingly well :hmm:

I'll try another version and take it even further, probably with a different palette just to see how that works out.
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Vranca
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by Vranca »

I really like your last sprite,and i would say the purple is an improvement,but someone better then me would advise you better about this. But it does seem like you are using a lot of shades,and if i understand correctly there shouldn't be too many shades.
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by ElGrillo »

The shading on the shield is amazing!
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shiremct
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by shiremct »

ElGrillo wrote:The shading on the shield is amazing!
Thank you :D I'm pleased with the way it turned out.
Vranca wrote:I really like your last sprite,and i would say the purple is an improvement,but someone better then me would advise you better about this. But it does seem like you are using a lot of shades,and if i understand correctly there shouldn't be too many shades.
I did add on the purples and then add on some more saturated yellows onto my already somewhat large bronze palette shades, so you are quite right, it is a bit out of hand and would need to be cleaned up.



I started trying with a bolder palette, this time picking out a foreground and background shadow color (red and purple) and picked rather heavily saturated colors to test with. Using this palette, i began reshading from scratch the bronze pieces with the new colors, following the same general shading style of the original.
unit2.PNG
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Original is first, followed by the previous shading with the purple, followed by the newest with the saturated purples and reds. I used items from the second version for the stuff I have not yet shaded with the third's palette yet to display in the bottom.

When I began shading this third version's chest, layering on the colors from the edges in, I almost immediately gave up thinking there was no way such a composition of colors would come even close to working, with purple/yellow/red sides clashing fiercely. :shock: However, somehow it managed to work; It's like a rainbow of colors when I'm zoomed in shading, but together, they pass for something acceptable. I may or may not do the helmet too just for curiosity, but I think I've gathered what I needed from this attempt. I don't think there was much value gained from using the red shades as a foreground shadow. Maybe on larger areas with less to break up the shading, it could prove useful, idk, but I think I'll drop that concept for now.
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by thespaceinvader »

These are really, really nice. Great work.
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shiremct
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by shiremct »

New units very close to completion, featuring new and hopefully final palettes for several materials, the primary one being the final metal palette.

SW/SE Hypaspites
SE Thureophoros
SE Hetairos

Excluding the need to rework old units with the new palettes (and my un-ending tweaking,) the faction is getting frightening close to completion, at least for an initial version anyway.
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Reepurr
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by Reepurr »

These look frighteningly close to mainline quality. :shock: Awesome work.

The rider's spearhead seems to be angled strangely though, and I get the same feeling about the third spearman.
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by SFault »

The spear shadows seem quite odd. They don't look like they are on the surface but sticking out of the ground in an unnatural way. Only few mainline units have such shadows, so it might also be better just to remove them and leave a blot under the unit.
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homunculus
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by homunculus »

there's some very long bodies compared to legs, especially visible with the legs of the mounted unit.
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by StDrake »

I think that's the effect of those man-skirts. You just don't see the upper parts ofthe legs, but that doesn't mean it's part of the body
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shiremct
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by shiremct »

I've tried to keep proportions very close to mainline loyalists where possible as these are also humans. The leg visible on the mounted unit is just the knee down and the belt on the infantry units lines up with the waists of the loyalist Royal Guard and Master Archer (the units posted above are all level 3.)

Tweaked the Hetairos' spearhead. Still not perfectly aligned, but much better than before, I think. Mostly finished updating the level 2 mounted unit. I'm mucking about with them both to add some additional differentiation but not sure what direction to take yet... probably most useful to do something on the horse itself as the riders are already quite different but the overall silhouette is very similar. Do they need further differentiation and if so, any suggestions? Maybe the horse color...

Not sure what to do with the lvl 2's TC-ed mantle, so I've left it kinda shapeless atm. The level 1 has it and the level 3 has it so it almost has to be there, somehow, but I'm trying to come up with something a little different than the level 3's style and the setup on the level 1 won't work without obscuring all of the scalemail, which is a no-go.

The level 1 Hippeus should be reworked soon to complete the branch.


Edit: Full branch added.
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Zigg
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by Zigg »

I couldn't tell the difference at a glance, maybe make different color horses and give the level 1 and bronze spear?
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by Scaeb »

OK, i found where your avatar came from ;-)

More than two years since you started your work. Wow!
They are amazing sprites, keep up the good work!
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shiremct
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by shiremct »

I was quite attached to the overall look of the Hetairos as it matched well with the reference that had inspired it, but I decided to try some tweaks to seperate the level 2 and 3 units so I shifted the level 3's horse decoration down to the level 2 and added some scale armor to the level 3 horse.
unit.PNG
unit.PNG (3.98 KiB) Viewed 3529 times
I personally prefer the old level 3, but I'm biased toward the reference, so what do others think?
Next up is the light cavalry branch, which will have a more standard pose/direction like most mainline cavalry. The horse for that branch will also double for the SW directions of the heavy cavalry lines, when I get that far.
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Re: Ancient Mediterranean-Themed Units

Post by bonehead11 »

Nice job, your AA skills are great. But there is one thing that bugs me most, those legs on horsemen are really really awkward,weird, I would redo them totally, but I agree with you, that former lvl 3 unit looks better.
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