Zero's art

[JackBarber]

Right, well I can see the things now... is it that site back up or something?

Speaking of being able to see them now, holy crap Zero, go help with making a entire game or something, your a sprite/pixelart making machine. With your style I think you'd do really well doing some Castlevania/Megaman-ish game, as for those giant ice face things they look like something out of Zelda or some other RPG thing.

As for the Skeletal Dragon thing, isn't the difference between Dragons and Wyverns(?) that the Wyverns(?) lack the front feet/paws and are usually upright?

[Zerovirus]

Three things! A frankensheet which might be fun to play with, a big boss sprite which isn't really meant for Wesnoth, and some new monster-sprites!

[artisticdude]

Ooh, I see some steelhive influence in that last one.

Your palette skills have become seriously impressive. I'd never have thought the super-saturated blue in the one "franken-sprite-pack" costume (RGB #1547ca in particular) would have worked... but somehow it does!

The only critique I can give here is that there's a bit of banding on the lvl 3 flame creature in lower right corner of the monster spritesheet. Specifically, on the flame coming out of the tube on its right shoulder.

Good stuff!

[Zerovirus]

Yeah okay I'm getting tired of the goofy titles I had for this thread.

[battlestar]

Pretty much sums up to impressive

[homunculus]

Something made me feel like the palette of the saturated and desaturated parts does not match very well, and I felt like slightly darkening all the orange shades except the brightest one to see if the integrity would improve.

[Zerovirus]

A few small doodles. (Has anyone thought about replacing that old Scorpion image? Seriously, that baseframe could definitely use a revamp.)

[battlestar]

Thank you for posting these, I'm learning a lot from just looking at your sprites closely. (And thanks to Homunculus for pointing out where to look in the first place.) Have you thought of sharing your techniques with a walkthrough or somesort? It would be wonderful to have such a source for learning how to sprite.

[Zerovirus]

Thank you for posting these, I'm learning a lot from just looking at your sprites closely. (And thanks to Homunculus for pointing out where to look in the first place.) Have you thought of sharing your techniques with a walkthrough or somesort? It would be wonderful to have such a source for learning how to sprite.

Sure why not.

[battlestar]

Oooooo, that's nice, thanks!

[homunculus]

[...](And thanks to Homunculus for pointing out where to look in the first place.)[...]

I can't believe that people need some homunculi to point out where to find Zerovirus.

That doesn't mean I agree with his shading in every point (at least what it has developed into lately), mainly in the too light and too little saturated midtones, as it seems to me.
And I suspect that I will be expressing some different opinions about his scorpion shading soon.
But if you notice homunculus before you find Zero it hints at some 'living under the rock' syndrome.

Ok, accepting the role of popularizing Zero, I might as well point out how poeple somehow use (and reuse) this:

rather than using this (by Zero, page 14):

It has always been an endless bewilderment for me.

[battlestar]

No, I've known Zero does nice art for a long time. The only thing was that I reallized more about his drawing after talking to you. Knowing something exist is not knowing what it's about. That's why I asked him to do a tutorial, and that's why teachers exist as a profession.

Thanks again, Zero.

[Zerovirus]

Well, all this talk about styles and shading has caused me to take an interest in comparing my style with some other artists around the wesnoth forums. I've been trying to imitate the styles of Neorice, Sleepwalker, and Jetrel for a while now.

style_comparison.PNG (14.05 KiB) Viewed 5151 times

I think I've managed to get my tendencies towards creeping biggerism under control. However, there are still some differences- most noticeably in my palette choice. I almost always use a dark purple shade as my darkest color, while apparently everyone but me uses a color so close to black that it's effectively indistinguishable. I think my tendency to use purple stems directly from a comment I read from Jetrel along the lines of 'never use black, black as a shadow nearly never appears in reality' which I took to heart.

In addition, the palette I used for shading metal in the bottom row bounced around a lot more from hue to hue than Sleepwalker's palette (which I suspect was ripped from our current mainline units and not actually a new palette in that respect). Also, apparently a common trait in wesnoth sprites upon this analysis is a quick hop from the darkest near-black outliner shade to a mid-tone shade, as opposed to the way that I usually insert one or two blending shades between the darkest and the middling tones before I go up into the lighter tones.

I'm also obviously less skilled than all of the other artists I'm citing here, as is obvious by my tendency to use straight lines and angles instead of the curvy shapes seen in Sleepwalker's armor designs and Jetrel's clothing on the elf fighter.

If there's any other thoughts, I'd actually be interested in looking in more detail at differences in style now.

[homunculus]

[...]Also, apparently a common trait in wesnoth sprites upon this analysis is a quick hop from the darkest near-black outliner shade to a mid-tone shade, as opposed to the way that I usually insert one or two blending shades between the darkest and the middling tones before I go up into the lighter tones.[...]

Are you trying to say that your intention is to shade a ball as (2) rather than as (1) where the full shadow is flat, or as (3) that gets brighter towards the shadow edge from the reflex light (otherwise 3 = 1)?
In other words, are you trying to shade the full shadow darker depending on how much it is turned away from the primary light source (while the primary light is not even hitting the full shadow area)?

I would be surprised if the answer was 'yes', but reading what you wrote I don't seem to be able to understand it in any other way.

[Zerovirus]

I have no idea what you're talking about, and the difference between 1 and 2 seems ridiculously negligible to my eyes.

I don't know how my mind works when it comes to art- I just draw stuff, and the diagrams you're putting up don't really resonate with me at all. What I'm saying is that I seem to have less of a jump between my two darkest shades than most mainline sprites do, apparently.