Valkiers portraits: It's like I can touch you!

[ancestral]

I think the string looks fine, but one more option, as Lord Bob suggested, is to keep the bow but lose the string. (The idea being, when he's going to move out and go to battle he'll re-string his bow.)

[Daxion]

Since you want to break up the siluette, why not use a bow/arrow-quiver combination (much like Legolas had, but since Hidel is a anti-legolas, this would fit it seems.
In the LOTR movies it is seldom really shown, but here are some reverences:
http://www.theargonath.cc/characters/le ... olas27.jpg
http://perso.wanadoo.es/jesuszd1a/per/i ... face1_.jpg
http://www.shsforums.net/uploads/monthl ... 54474.jpeg
http://elflady.com/legolasgreenleaf/mis ... las020.jpg

May I also suggest using a bow with Siyahs, just to get a bit of variety into the wesnoth bows. Gives you also some more "bow" to put ornamentation and the like (he is after all a sharpshooter). And maybe a different feather design on the arrows.

Here's a very quick drawing (I know I suck at doing artwork):

[thespaceinvader]

Daxion's solution seems the most apt to me - the quiver does need a strap, though.

[Daxion]

Since I'm already Bikeshedding...

the quiver does need a strap, though.

The people using such a setup usually prefere a 3 or better 4-5 point fixation (shoulders and belt). Assuming 2 points (shoulder and belt) seems okay.

[Valkier]

So I didn't get around to making Camerin. Inspiration struck for Thera however, so here's the linework for that. The arm brushing her hair back still looks a little off to be. I'll tinker around with that while I color and see if I can get a fix.

edit: I lied. Here's Camerin. You have no idea how painful it is to hold your hand that way for so long. I suffer for my art.

[Valkier]

I need to fix up the hand on his side and do the outlines, but otherwise I think I'm ready to put this big guy to bed.

edit: Got some flat coloring on Camerin.

[thespaceinvader]

Camerin looks much better. Hidel looks pretty much there save for the bits you mentioned. Thera looks fine. Good work.

[LordBob]

There's something about Hidel's rear arm. I understand it is foreshortened by perspective and shrinked so as to fit in the background, but I think you might have overdone it.

Camerin has a very interesting face and posture, but it's not perfect yet :
- the forearm on the left is a lot larger than the one on the right. Once again, even if that's meant to introduce perspective, you overdid it.
- the choice of his hands is ambitious, but I think there are still inconsistencies in the respective scale of each finger that make it painful to read. It is unusual and I do like the idea, yet because it is such an uncommon gesture, my brain tries to analyse it thoroughly and says something's wrong. For this difficult a drawing, I'd recommend working with a picture of your hands : I think we tend to move slightly no matter the effort whenever we're modelling from our own body (at least, I do and yes, I can relate to how painful a drawing of your own hand can be ).
- after focusing so much on the hands and face, I daresay you somehow ended rushing the rest of his body. You might want to crosscheck body proportions & volumes (especially the hip region) with a nude before you get too far in the shading process.

[doofus-01]

The arm brushing her hair back still looks a little off to be. I'll tinker around with that while I color and see if I can get a fix.

I think her upper arm is too short. I tried doing that pose, and my arm was about parallel to the mirror (it looks like hers might be too), so I don't think there would be much foreshortening.

[beetlenaut]

Maybe you were planning to get to it, but if not, check the light outlines around the bowstring. They make it looked photoshopped in.

[Mountain_King]

I told myself I wasn't going to bikeshed, over and over and over again, and yet here I am, bikeshedding...
I'm going back to the Eryssa portrait. Something seems...wrong. Eryssa looks really, like, evil. Not in a "otherworldly faerie type being" kind of way, but (If you'll excuse the expression) demonic whore kind of way. It looks to me like you were trying to draw a girl off the cover of a trashy magazine. Something in the facial expression, the shape of the head, it doesn't seem very "elvish princess-ish".
Now, forgive me if I'm sounding nitpicky, but that is the way I see it. On a side note, I rather like how Sister Thera turned out. She doesn't have that weird evil aura about her. Maybe that's 'cause she's a white mage. Are you planning on making Father Morvin too?

[Valkier]

I told myself I wasn't going to bikeshed, over and over and over again, and yet here I am, bikeshedding...
I'm going back to the Eryssa portrait. Something seems...wrong. Eryssa looks really, like, evil. Not in a "otherworldly faerie type being" kind of way, but (If you'll excuse the expression) demonic whore kind of way. It looks to me like you were trying to draw a girl off the cover of a trashy magazine. Something in the facial expression, the shape of the head, it doesn't seem very "elvish princess-ish".
Now, forgive me if I'm sounding nitpicky, but that is the way I see it. On a side note, I rather like how Sister Thera turned out. She doesn't have that weird evil aura about her. Maybe that's 'cause she's a white mage. Are you planning on making Father Morvin too?

Eryssa is finished to both the satisfaction of the campaign maintainer, myself, and the majority of the art directors. The only thing I'll be changing is removing the pupils from her eyes. As I've told others, and I believe this is key, all of these characters are killing tens of hundreds of other people on a battle field. With the exception of Thera, who is in fact immortal, I refuse to have characters that look giggly and immature. Only in anime is there a teenaged girl who goes "teehee!" before making someones head explode. If anyone else did that you'd have to assume they are psychotic at that point. In any case, she's done.

The only reason Thera can get away with it is because she is immortal and therefore doesn't need to worry about such things to that extent. She can probably burn something alive, but she is predominantly a healer.

Thanks for the compliment about Thera by the way. And yes, the scope of this project is to redo every NR portrait, so Morvin will be done in time. Actually following the completion of the current portraits I have started, he'll most likely be next.

Doofus: I came to that conclusion last night as well. Thanks for confirming.

LordBob: Camerin's waist does look a little thin. Easy enough to change at this point. As for the hands, I'm fairly confident in them. I could maybe mess with the size of a couple of them, but I think the placement and position of them are accurate enough.

Hidel's arm got the length it needed, but not the size just yet I guess. I'll be fixing it and posting later tonight for final critique before outlining him tomorrow I believe.

Again, thank you everyone for the interest. Everyone has been very constructive in their comments and it's really helping make these look better. Cheers!

[Jetrel]

I told myself I wasn't going to bikeshed, over and over and over again, and yet here I am, bikeshedding...
I'm going back to the Eryssa portrait. Something seems...wrong. Eryssa looks really, like, evil. Not in a "otherworldly faerie type being" kind of way, but (If you'll excuse the expression) demonic whore kind of way. It looks to me like you were trying to draw a girl off the cover of a trashy magazine. Something in the facial expression, the shape of the head, it doesn't seem very "elvish princess-ish".

I dig what you're saying, but the fact of the matter is, some girls' (or indeed, guys') faces just fold that way when they smile. That is to say, a regular smile on some people's faces will just flat-out look coquettish, even if they're not trying to look like that.

Where it gets problematic is when one tries to decide... should an artist take "other people's impressions" into account, and draw characters such that their external appearance always matches their internal emotional composure, or should they draw things "realistically" and draw characters that appear to display one emotion, but might not necessarily be feeling that internally?

There are solid arguments in both directions, and honestly ... I don't know.

[Dixie]

While art as a whole is a totally different story, I think the current portraits are a little like actors at the theater: they get to exagerate everything big time so the message gets across. Unless the director explicitly wanted it's sad character to be ambiguous, an actor who's supposed to play a sad role and came out as not-really-that-sad would probably dubbed a not-that-good-actor. So I think it could be valuable to try to match appearance and internal emotionnal composure in our very context.

That said, I totally understand Valkier's argument about "killing tons of living beings takes its toll" and "I've worked so much on that portrait and evrybody is happy with it" so... well, let's say it wouldn't ruin my day if he wasn't going to redraw the face entirely because of that.

[Mountain_King]

Eryssa is finished to both the satisfaction of the campaign maintainer, myself, and the majority of the art directors. The only thing I'll be changing is removing the pupils from her eyes. As I've told others, and I believe this is key, all of these characters are killing tens of hundreds of other people on a battle field.

The pupils...that's the black part in the center right? (curse biology) Looking over the portrait again, I think that would do a lot in getting rid of "the look" I was referring to. That is a good point tho. They should look harsh to some extent because they got the guts to be out there killing hundreds upon thousands of orcs without getting queasy. I didn't think of it that way.

@Jetrel: That makes sense, I think. I don't really know either which way is "right" in that respect.