The Hammer of Thursagan portrait repaints

[DUHH]

I´ve just started doing repaints of the portraits for the Hammer of Thursagan. I´ll be sticking pretty closely to the original portraits, doing simple paintovers when I can.

The three I´ve sketched out so far are Ainglondur(Just sketching over the original with tiny tweaks), Angarthing(Using the original for some parts, but redoing the pose), and Elurin(Completly from scratch).

I know Elurin wasn´t high-priority, but I wanted to draw a horsie. I don´t draw enough horsies.

Anyhow... My sketching-style is pretty loose(I´ve tightened it up considerably in order to have chance at getting relevant critique), and I usually do a lot of stuff straight in the inking and coloring. But in order to get msot fault out before they´re hard to change, I submit them now as early as possible.

I´m not really up on the Wesnoth lore yet, and I haven´t finished the campaign either. Actually, I´m stuck on scenario 6, because I managed to get the Griffin killed early on. Do I need to redo the early scenarios?

Now... back to the drawings...

I need some help with a few things, lorewise:

- Does the Northern Alliance have a symbol? (Would be fitting for Ainglondurs shield, wouldn´t it?)
- I want to decorate some of the rich dwarves armour. I know that celtic designs in gold have been the standard for decorating dwarves, but my original idea was to do it more silvery, like etched into the armour. Would that be distracting in terms of keeping continuity?
- Elurin, also being rich, needs some decoration too. Any place I could study higher-res versions of Kittys elven decorations, or the source material for them?

Anyhow... All comments and critique very welcome.

[thespaceinvader]

Aiglondur either needs slightly thicker arms or a slightly smaller hand. And something bothers me about the horse's head, though i can't put my finger on what exactly.

Regarding symbols: I used something based on a compass with a massive north point for Howgarth in Son of the Black Eye, so something like that would be good =) But feel free to do something else if that works =)

You're welcome to decorate these guys how you like, really - they're campaign characters rather than generic ones, so we can just say their clan/tribe/whatever has a different way from usual of decorating their armour. Don't feel tied to the exact armour designs, either - in particular i'd meant to replace Aiglondur and Hamel's shoulder pads with somethign significantly more realistic and in line with the mainline dwarves. But again, as you feel like really.

You'd have to ask kitty for high-res versions of her portraits. I'm sure she'd be willing to provide, though.

Other than that... looks great. Fantastic start.

[beetlenaut]

And something bothers me about the horse's head, though i can't put my finger on what exactly.

I notice that too. I think the head is too small and its features too large in comparison making it look like a newborn.

[DUHH]

The main problem with the horse head is that I can´t draw horses.

But I´ll probably go over it a few more times and exaggerate and charicature the features slightly, so that it´s more in style with the rest of the drawing. Not so much that it will start to look cartoony, just enough that it will look more natural even if everything isn´t "perfect". And hopefully it will stop looking like a newborn babie-horsie.

[Sgt. Groovy]

The main problem with the horse head is that I can´t draw horses.

One word: reference. Find an image with the same angle as your horse.

[thespaceinvader]

Indeed - I can't draw horses for love nor money. i basically traced reference for both of them.

[DUHH]

The main problem with the horse head is that I can´t draw horses.

One word: reference. Find an image with the same angle as your horse.

Oh, I do reference. I´m working from a couple of photos on this one, but the problem is 1- Not spending too much time, and 2- getting it stylistically to fit with the rest of the drawing.

Indeed - I can't draw horses for love nor money. i basically traced reference for both of them.

I´m fascinated with tracing for some types of art, but that won´t do here. First of all I don´t think it would be beneficial to the style, secondly I need to draw more horses or I will never do it naturally.

I´ve drawn horses before that I´m very satisfied with, but it´s never easy. But isn´t that half the fun?

[kitty]

nice starts

concerning the elf pattern, i have this tree i used on the elvish captain's flag and basically just cut the branches from it and rearrange them all the time. it would certainly come in handy if i vectorized it sometime, but up to now i never came around to doing it...

[Livor]

I figured this would be useful for any artist drawing elves, so attached is the elven tree vectorized.

[kitty]

Thanks Livor!

[LordBob]

It's nice to see an artist taking care of a single campaign. To be honest, I'd prefer that you take liberty with the existing portraits : you're good at it and most deserve more realistic armour and better poses anyway. I'd especially reframe the portraits so that they show approximately the same amount of character as recent portraits (Kitty's elves and TSI's dwarves are a good reference)

Back to the drawings now.
- Both dwarves have overlarge hands. This wouldn't be a problem if it didn't...well, dwarf their weapons - especially the axe. Large, manly hands are fine for a dwarf, but let's not overdo it.
- Dwarves are famous for those, but if combined with a shield I'd replace the double-headed axe with something akin to a danish axe. Deadly, awesome and easier to wield single-handedly.
- Angarthing's grip on his flail would feel more natural if his hand was lower down the handle (ready for use). This would also allow for a more relaxed position of the arm.

[DUHH]

Thanks Kitty and Livor! That´ll surely help!

LordBob: The reason that I´m sticking close to the original poses is... if it ain´t broke, don´t fix it. I save a lot of time doing what I can as simple paintovers, and it´s a waste to throw away the old stuff "just because".

Regarding redesigning armor... Armor is a huge weak-point(Pun intended) in my artistic arsenal. I really need time to practice on doing armor to get up to the level of you and TSI, so for this one I´ll stick to adding and tweaking small stuff on the original designs.

Reframing the shots however... That might be more doable. I´ll look into it.

- Hands... Yes... I often draw way too large hands in my sketches, but I usually fix them in the inking. Thanks.
- The double-axe is a requirment from the writer, I think.
- Yeah, I´m struggling with the grip on the morning-star.

[thespaceinvader]

The unfortunate thing there is that the armour designs in these are very weak, particularly with Aiglongur - I did little research work before I started, and consequently, i basically made stuff up (less so for the Masked dwarf and Karrag, i had reference there). Copying the shoulder plate armour style of the Dwarvish Lord or the Sentinel or Guard would be ideal for Aiglondur.

I'm not suggesting you throw stuff out for no particular reason, but equally, keeping it when it's broken is exactly what we're trying to avoid. The aim of reworking the portraits is to fix the mistakes, primarily in faces and in costume design (and a few other areas - realistic chainmail, for instance).

[DUHH]

Cool. Will do. Any help I can get in pointing out the wrongs in the old armors is very appreciated. As said, armor is not my strong suit(Oh snap. Another pun!).

[thespaceinvader]

Sure. With Aiglondur, the breast plate is reasonable (though it doesn't have the paunchy belly we see on all the other dwarves) but the shoulder plates are just not the right shape or perspective, and fix really strangely onto the front. Something more akin to this http://www.tinb.co.uk/images/pauldron-red-bw.gif would be good. Fairly squarish, simple and solid to fit in with the designs of the rest of the dwarves.