C&C for seige equipment sprite(s)

[Neilarmius]

Work In Progress. Critique please?

I've not worked out what I'm doing with the end of the arm yet. Do I need to to continue lightening the lines? Also could someone remind me what I should be doing with shadow- 40% transparent pure black right?

p.s. This is for the great Brave Wings campaign.

[thespaceinvader]

Creating_shadows_under_units

[Captain_Wrathbow]

This is very good. (to my untrained eye )
I think you should TC the gray parts, though.
Are you planning on animating this? That would be really cool.

[Neilarmius]

Cheers. I was pretty pleased but I suspected my own opinion has a great deal of bias. My understanding is that TC is not required for monster-type one-off units. The grey sections are meant to be metal bracing but U suppose they need speculars. Shadow done- too much?

[Captain_Wrathbow]

My understanding is that TC is not required for monster-type one-off units. The grey sections are meant to be metal bracing but U suppose they need speculars.

TC isn't strictly "required" for any units, it just helps see which side a unit is on. You are right though, most monster-type units with limited appearances aren't TC'ed, since they rarely appear on more than one side and there's no need to distinguish them. In this case, it would look pretty strange if the catapult had purple braces or some weird color like that.

[Issyl]

- Flip the unit horizontally; remember that all Wesnoth units should be facing to the bottom right of the hex.
- The shadow is about the right size, but there should be slivers of light under the trebutchet due to light coming in-between the beams.
- The various parts of the trebutchet don't face the same way. See attached picture - try and get the red lines to be parallel.

[stimj]

What kind of wood is this supposed to be made from? I think that there is a bit too much contrast between the grain and the rest.

[TheJM]

Suggestion: tone the hi-lights down, and give it some more depth with some shading. It's almost easier just to illustrate what I mean, so I gave it a whirl.. By toning down the really bright colors, you get a more natural look. It may actually be a bit dark, but you get the idea. (note the subtle shading, also)

..don't have to use it or anything, just thought I'd put in my 2 cents.

[Frogger5]

The lighting needs work, right now all the highlights are scribbled about therefore making it look lumpy and weird. Try taking a look at the several wooden mainline items. I'm not saying work to that standard, but wood isn't so textured that the light reflects everywhere.
All the rest I think is great.

[artisticdude]

I've been waiting a long time for somebody to do this sort of thing. I've tried before, but... I don't think you really need TC on this sprite, but you could add a TC flag if you wanted to. I agree the shading seems a bit chaotic, like the highlights need to be better defined. Other than that, this is looking good. Can't wait for the finished sprite.

[Neilarmius]

Tada. The zip has frames and the missile. Beginning to get bored so any minor revisions? Remember blurriness is an artifact of the gif.

thunderthrow.zip

(35.18 KiB) Downloaded 335 times

thunderthrow.gif (5.04 KiB) Viewed 4801 times

I used the Wose as a reference (and palette) which is may be why it turned out knobbly looking. I was conflicted between pencilling dead straight lines to imitate grain and edges and avoiding the very same as its apparently bad form.

What kind of wood is this supposed to be made from?

Er.. I hadn't thought about that. Probably the pine tree we see so much of!

See attached picture - try and get the red lines to be parallel.

Thanks. Thats was a great help.

About the facing; I did the this way to suit the scenario setting (in whch it fires in the south-west direction). It's Skyone's call whether to use it as scenery or unit. Should I flip it anyway?

Thanks for all your input. I should have given up embarrassing my self in Art Contributions long ago

[Issyl]

If it's terrain, keep it the way it is, because you need it to face the way it fires.

If it's ever a unit though, the sprite in the current form will fire in the opposite direction of which it is actually attacking. You definitely want to flip it horizontally in this regard.

Finally, a bit of critique on the new version:
- Shadows are great, except the weight (box) doesn't have a shadow.
- In the .gif, the box moves in front of the pillar closest to us, which it should not do.
- The motion blur should not have borders.

Great animation though.

[Neilarmius]

Right you are.

Except:

- The motion blur should not have borders.

The naga example on the tutorial does this exact thing.

[Issyl]

Fair enough. I would personally remove the border and see how it looks though.

[Neilarmius]

I think you are right about the motion blur border.