The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

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scavenger
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The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by scavenger »

I'm a big fan of this game, and since I am an artist, I thought I'd try making some art contributions for Wesnoth. Looking through the latest downloadable version, I noticed that my one of my favorite campaigns, "The South Guard" still has the old artwork in place. So I went ahead and re-did the story pics. I took some liberty here, instead of just a forest/landscape scene, I integrated (my vision of) the city of Westin in it (made sense to me since Westin is the center of Kerlath, where the campaign is set).

Note that here I made them the size of the original story pics, which is quite small, but I also have high-res versions of them, so they can be made bigger if necessary.

I also noticed that the portraits of Wesnoth characters are being redone in a new, more elaborate style (which I like, actually), but the ones for the South Guard have apparently not been changed yet. Of course I have no idea whether someone isn't redoing them right now. (is there a thread/section on here listing the stuff that's being currently worked on?) But I tried my hand at redoing Deoran and Mal-Mbrin anyway. Potentially I can do all of the portraits for the South Guard, if nobody else has "claimed" this task, that is.
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deoran_new.png (107.03 KiB) Viewed 6474 times
winter.jpg
fall.jpg
summer.jpg
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thespaceinvader
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Re: The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by thespaceinvader »

Very, VERY nice work. I'll leave it to Kitty, our portrait director, for final judgement on style (ideally, matching the lineart style from the mainline portraits would be appreciated, I think) but I have no doubt we will be able to use your work =D

The only suggestion I might have is that haldric could maybe stand to look a little older - he's canonically young, but he looks just a touch too young to me there - maybe just shrinking the head relative to the body would avert this impression.

It's always great to have someone new come on board with great quality work like this.

We'll get it in as soon as we can.

Great work =D =D
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Re: The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by StandYourGround »

I think you mean Deoran, not Haldric... :eng:

But wow! I really like the portraits! Can't wait to see what else you can do.

EDIT: Well, I just did notice that Mal'mbrin seems to be missing a finger on his left hand. Aside from that, I really like his portrait. He really looks like an elf-lich.
Last edited by StandYourGround on May 8th, 2010, 12:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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thespaceinvader
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Re: The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by thespaceinvader »

I do indeed >.< Yah, deoran etc.

But yeah, thanks very much. I'll drop you a PM to prepare for getting your work put in.

EDIT: and yes, it would be brilliant if you could do the rest of the characters.
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Re: The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by scavenger »

Thanks guys!

About Deoran, Isn't he supposed to look young and inexperienced? The story text mentions this at the start of the campaign:
"King Haldric summoned a young, undistinguished but promising cavalry officer named Deoran"

So I'm not sure... I based this one pretty closely on the original portrait, which I also found to have a boyish look... :hmm:

About the style...
I don't really have lineart for these, as I directly paint them freehand in Photoshop. I could accentuate some details to make them look more outlined, but it's never going to be exactly like the core portraits...

Missing finger on Mal-Mbrin: actually it's not really missing, his two curled fingers are a bit too close to eachother. But indeed it's a bit confusing, so I'll fix that. I'm a detail freak... :wink:
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Re: The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by freim »

Very nice, especially the scenery.
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Zerovirus
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Re: The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by Zerovirus »

Holy [censored] make this guy an art contributor. Now. The two units could also be used for portraits even if they're not used in TSG, I bet, and that castle panorama is just EPIC.
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Re: The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by doofus-01 »

Nice job, scavenger.
scavenger wrote:About the style...
I don't really have lineart for these, as I directly paint them freehand in Photoshop. I could accentuate some details to make them look more outlined, but it's never going to be exactly like the core portraits...
Isn't it OK if they look a bit different? As long as it isn't something like anime, it just gives the campaign a little more distinct flavour.
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Re: The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by zookeeper »

Really, really good job. :shock: All of those look excellent enough that as the campaign's current maintainer I really don't have anything to really critique. There's also no one else working on the campaign's art currently, so it's all yours if you want.

Oh, and a precautionary note: while there currently are custom old-style portraits for Tharzo Kalain and Urza Mathin, they really ought to just use the core outlaw portraits instead, so you can safely just ignore those two minor characters; there's no need to make new-style portraits for them. So there's only Gerrick, Hylas, Ethiliel and Urza Afalas left to do in order to rid the campaign of the old-style artwork.

The campaign's story images could eventually be more scenario-specific instead of being just seasonal variants of the same scene, but I don't really want to push anyone capable of doing both portraits and story art into working on it before the portraits are done.
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Re: The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by thespaceinvader »

Deoran is supposed to be young and inexperienced, yes - I just feel maybe he looks a touch too boyish (as in, about 14, which stretches my suspension of disbelief a little). I feel the same way about the current portraits. I don't mind if you don't feel like fixing that.

Style wise, I'm happy with them, but Kitty has control on portraits, so I don't want to speak for her. If you were doing core (as opposed to campaign) portraits, however, we'd probably ask/help you to match the style a little more closely if possible.
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Re: The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by artisticdude »

:shock: Awesome. Just awesome. When my brother saw these, he actually thought they were 3d models. :mrgreen:

The one thing that bothers me is that in the lich's portrait the fingers on his left hand seem rather awkward. But I'm not sure if skelton fingers would have the same movement restrictions as a living hand would... :hmm:
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Re: The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by azhag_pl »

Deoran looks a bit too dark to me.
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Re: The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by beetlenaut »

I hope you stick around for a while--we have several campaigns that could use an artist with your skill! I have to agree with TSI on Deoran though. He should be young, but not actually a child, and boys past puberty are not that skinny.
You don't have to base your work on earlier portraits either. They were made to be easy to replicate, not realistic.
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Updates!

Post by scavenger »

Hmm, I see what people mean saying my version of Deoran looks a bit too boyish. I went ahead and did some fixes on the portrait. Made him look a bit bulkier, added some shading too. This is about all I can do without extensively redrawing the whole thing, so I already based the "sad" version of Deoran on it. I tried a little fix on Mal-Mbrin's hand too.

@zookeeper: Thank you for the info (and the compliments! :) ). Good to know about those two bandit portraits that don't need redoing too. Portraits for TSG are definitely priority for me. But as I love doing story pics, I'm definitely considering doing some extra story pics for TSG (if time allows). I kind of liked the way the game cycled through the seasons during the first couple of text screens (fitted nicely with the music too) -but yeah, some additional pics would make it even better, I guess. Especially for the ending of the campaign. Is there a possibility to extract those story texts from the game (are they in a specific folder?) to read and to base such story pics on?

@beetlenaut: I'll definitely stick around for a while. Maybe I'll try to do some artwork for other campaigns later on, though right now I'll stick with TSG until that's finished. :) I understand I don't have to base my portraits on the old ones, but the character's looks have kind grown onto me...

@azhag_pl: Really? Deoran looks fine on all of the screens I tested it on... I do have a tendency to paint my art in a chiaroscuro style, though, so that's maybe what you perceive as "dark"?... :hmm:
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deoran_sad.png
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mal-mbrin_new2.png
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Re: The South Guard: Story pics and Portraits

Post by thespaceinvader »

I should have posted this for you, by the way. It's a little intro to the wesnoth art scene we give to promising up and coming artists:
Ok, obviously you know what your doing and your first try is close enough to mainline style to show that you'll be able to use that style with little practice. I'll give you a quick tour of our Art Community so you don't get lost.

Basically our forums are built around forum titles ( written under the people names, as you can see with my own)

* No title (or not art related title) => Did nothing with regard to art
* Art Contributors => Have contributed artwork to the mainline game
* Art Developers => The 'art staff', have the power to add artwork to the mainline game, and can generally be relied upon for good critique
* Portrait Director (kitty and LordBob) => Gives go/no-go to portrait contributions
* Art Director (jetryl) => Gives the go/no-go to contributions


It is important for you to understand that distinction, because people with no art knowledge may not give comment and critique as well as people with art knowledge. If you disagree with a comment from someone with no title, just don't follow the advice.

You should consider comments from art contributors and art developers as comments coming from knowledgeable people, and worth considering... Of course, your art is yours and you are free to not follow the advice, but you should consider them. One thing to be aware of is that this forum is dedicated to getting artwork ready for the mainline game. We treat your work realistically - we're not going to praise it just because you posted it here. Please don't take offence at suggestions to improve your work - if you're looking for blind praise, you're in the wrong place.

Jetryl, kitty, and the Art Developers usually have very clear comments which tell if a change is needed to get something into mainline or just a suggestion to improve. These people will have the final say on whether something goes into the mainline game or not.

If you try to do a portrait for a specific character (from a campaign for example) you should try to contact the campaign author first and try to post your linework as soon as possible (even if it's just a scanned sheet of paper) That's because the original author might have a particular "vision" on his character and having early feedback will usually be good for everybody

The part about submiting your work "early and often" is a good advice even if your not drawing a campaign character, by the way....

Now the forums...

We have three art related forums:
* "Art contributions" is for pieces of art intended for mainline
* "Art workshop" is for pieces for user made content, and for users who are posting for critique to help to develop their skills.
* "Art development" is limited to people with an art title. Some artists don't like having their work openly criticised, and post there instead of the open forums.



One last point...

All wesnoth contributions are made under the GPL. I am not good at explaining legalese, but you should read it since your work have high chances of being mainlined at some point...


Good luck with the portrait, it looks great.
That being said: Deoran looks much better, and sad looks good. M'brin is also looking good. Nice job.
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