Anything I can do to help?
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West
- Retired Lord of Music
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Anything I can do to help?
Hi all,
First of all I'd like to say thanks to everyone involved for creating a great game. I discovered BfW a little while ago and it's rapidly becoming a new favorite of mine. At first I thought the game was a bit too simplistic, being used to the (sometimes overly) intricate gameplay of Age of Wonders, but I'm beginning to realise that the straightforward style is a large part of BfW's charm.
Now, as I'm a supporter of open source software in general, I'm wondering if there is anything I can do to help. What can I do then? Well... first and foremost I'm an artist/graphic designer into interface design, character illustrations and the like, and I've also some experience with pixel art (I'm not much of an animator though). Some samples of my work can be found here.
I've read "Things we need help with" but as I'm not sure how up-to-date that topic is, considering when it was posted, I figured it was better to ask than simply starting to work on some random image that might be done already. Feel free to point me in the direction of other topics on this matter.
I'm also a musician and a writer, so in case there's no current need for graphics maybe I could provide some music or dialog/story stuff. There's a few music clips available here (third paragraph, under "The fact that I'm..."). Please note that the sound quality isn't great, as this was recorded on some pretty old equipment.
So... just let me know if there's anything I can do, and thanks again for a great game.
West
First of all I'd like to say thanks to everyone involved for creating a great game. I discovered BfW a little while ago and it's rapidly becoming a new favorite of mine. At first I thought the game was a bit too simplistic, being used to the (sometimes overly) intricate gameplay of Age of Wonders, but I'm beginning to realise that the straightforward style is a large part of BfW's charm.
Now, as I'm a supporter of open source software in general, I'm wondering if there is anything I can do to help. What can I do then? Well... first and foremost I'm an artist/graphic designer into interface design, character illustrations and the like, and I've also some experience with pixel art (I'm not much of an animator though). Some samples of my work can be found here.
I've read "Things we need help with" but as I'm not sure how up-to-date that topic is, considering when it was posted, I figured it was better to ask than simply starting to work on some random image that might be done already. Feel free to point me in the direction of other topics on this matter.
I'm also a musician and a writer, so in case there's no current need for graphics maybe I could provide some music or dialog/story stuff. There's a few music clips available here (third paragraph, under "The fact that I'm..."). Please note that the sound quality isn't great, as this was recorded on some pretty old equipment.
So... just let me know if there's anything I can do, and thanks again for a great game.
West
Heya there West. Welcome to the Battle for Wesnoth forums!
That's some seriously good stuff you got there, both graphics and music.
You should definitely have your hands on portraits and perhaps some unit art too. Music you can also handle very well and Wesnoth certainly needs more music.
And there's a whole bunch of people with their campaigns waiting for a helpful portrait artist... and perhaps dialogue help.
But alas, I'm just a small-time unit artist; You should wait for Jetryl for some answers for your art concerning questions.
And welcome to the forums again, new flesh is always needed.
That's some seriously good stuff you got there, both graphics and music.
You should definitely have your hands on portraits and perhaps some unit art too. Music you can also handle very well and Wesnoth certainly needs more music.
And there's a whole bunch of people with their campaigns waiting for a helpful portrait artist... and perhaps dialogue help.
But alas, I'm just a small-time unit artist; You should wait for Jetryl for some answers for your art concerning questions.
And welcome to the forums again, new flesh is always needed.
I wish I had more time in my hands.
I'll leave explaining of the actual unit graphics needs to someone else (Jetryl) ...
It looks like you could do portraits well. I don't see a dire need for more mainline campaign portraits right now, but there are a few user-made campaigns that could use some help with them. I'll just blatantly advertise my own as an example of one. If you want to work on portraits or other art for campaigns, I guess you should just play some and pick one that you like (then contact the author and discuss what you could do).
Your music samples are a bit different in style compared to where the mainline Wesnoth music is heading, so the music devs would require pretty drastic changes to your style, I'm sure. Again however, individual campaign authors might be interested. I must admit I listened only to two pieces (rather hastily), so I'll write more when I've had a closer look (mainly from the viewpoint of a campaign author, I'll leave the mainline music to the music devs).
In any case, welcome aboard.
It looks like you could do portraits well. I don't see a dire need for more mainline campaign portraits right now, but there are a few user-made campaigns that could use some help with them. I'll just blatantly advertise my own as an example of one.
If you want to work on portraits or other art for campaigns, I guess you should just play some and pick one that you like (then contact the author and discuss what you could do).Your music samples are a bit different in style compared to where the mainline Wesnoth music is heading, so the music devs would require pretty drastic changes to your style, I'm sure. Again however, individual campaign authors might be interested. I must admit I listened only to two pieces (rather hastily), so I'll write more when I've had a closer look (mainly from the viewpoint of a campaign author, I'll leave the mainline music to the music devs).
In any case, welcome aboard.
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West
- Retired Lord of Music
- Posts: 1173
- Joined: October 30th, 2006, 7:24 am
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Thanks guys.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing what Jetryl has to say about the graphics bit.
Yes, as a matter of fact I've installed a number of different campaigns, but it will of course take a while before I've familiarized myself with them. Quite a bit of material available for this game, eh?zookeeper wrote:I guess you should just play some and pick one that you like (then contact the author and discuss what you could do).
Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing what Jetryl has to say about the graphics bit.
Well, those clips (aside from "Heroes") were made with another and quite different project in mind, so I did not expect their style to work with BfW. I just wanted to give a few examples of music [in an orchestral vein] that I've made. I'm sure I can adapt to whatever requirements the Wesnoth music has, as long as we're not talking about entire symphonies and fully convincing orchestral arrangements...zookeeper wrote:Your music samples are a bit different in style compared to where the mainline Wesnoth music is heading, so the music devs would require pretty drastic changes to your style, I'm sure.
The run-down:
• You are a good portrait artist, and there's one campaign your style would fit perfectly. The campaign "Two Brothers" has two portraits which desperately need to be replaced. The character designs in them are good, but the technique used to draw them is ... lacking (though the guy who drew them did go through some amazing improvement while he was here).
If you can redo these two, and post them here, that would be wonderful - feel free to, in fact, please do post works-in-progress. You can look at the existing designs here:
Arne, the knight:
http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/wesnoth/trun ... iew=markup
Bjarn, the Red Mage:
http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/wesnoth/trun ... iew=markup
You're free to do what you want stylistically, just make it look good. The final pictures should be cropped to show roughly the torso on up, and should be matted onto a black background.
• You have the promise of being a very good pixel artist; the style of things you've made is slightly different from wesnoth, but things can be sorted out. This can be dealt with later.
• Your music is very decent for a videogame; Aleksi and TimP probably would want you to improve considerably (both in quality of digital instruments, and quality of composition) before you'd be allowed to make mainline stuff, however  we're desperate for campaign-specific music. We have a few amazing pieces of music for mainline, but that's all we have.
A shorter, simple campaign (Like ... two brothers?) doesn't need to have world-class movie-score music, it just needs decent music that is unique. You can provide this; it's great practice, and is great for the quality of that campaign.
• You are a good portrait artist, and there's one campaign your style would fit perfectly. The campaign "Two Brothers" has two portraits which desperately need to be replaced. The character designs in them are good, but the technique used to draw them is ... lacking (though the guy who drew them did go through some amazing improvement while he was here).
If you can redo these two, and post them here, that would be wonderful - feel free to, in fact, please do post works-in-progress. You can look at the existing designs here:
Arne, the knight:
http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/wesnoth/trun ... iew=markup
Bjarn, the Red Mage:
http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/wesnoth/trun ... iew=markup
You're free to do what you want stylistically, just make it look good. The final pictures should be cropped to show roughly the torso on up, and should be matted onto a black background.
• You have the promise of being a very good pixel artist; the style of things you've made is slightly different from wesnoth, but things can be sorted out. This can be dealt with later.
• Your music is very decent for a videogame; Aleksi and TimP probably would want you to improve considerably (both in quality of digital instruments, and quality of composition) before you'd be allowed to make mainline stuff, however  we're desperate for campaign-specific music. We have a few amazing pieces of music for mainline, but that's all we have.
A shorter, simple campaign (Like ... two brothers?) doesn't need to have world-class movie-score music, it just needs decent music that is unique. You can provide this; it's great practice, and is great for the quality of that campaign.
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West
- Retired Lord of Music
- Posts: 1173
- Joined: October 30th, 2006, 7:24 am
- Location: In the philotic connections between ansibles.
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Thanks for the feedback Jetryl. Those two portraits does indeed look like something good to start with. In fact, I'll get right on to making some sketches tomorrow, maybe I'll be able to upload some WIP images tomorrow night.Jetryl wrote:The run-down:
• You are a good portrait artist, and there's one campaign your style would fit perfectly. The campaign "Two Brothers" has two portraits which desperately need to be replaced. The character designs in them are good, but the technique used to draw them is ... lacking (though the guy who drew them did go through some amazing improvement while he was here).
If you can redo these two, and post them here, that would be wonderful - feel free to, in fact, please do post works-in-progress. You can look at the existing designs here:
Arne, the knight:
http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/wesnoth/trun ... iew=markup
Bjarn, the Red Mage:
http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/wesnoth/trun ... iew=markup
You're free to do what you want stylistically, just make it look good. The final pictures should be cropped to show roughly the torso on up, and should be matted onto a black background.
One question though: where can I get this campaign when it's not listed among the in-game addons? Forgive me if this is a tiresome noob question, I'm still very new to this and there's a lot of info to absorb.
From what I've seen there are a lot of much better pixel artists around here so I don't really know what I could bring to the table. I'll happily focus on stuff like portraits for the time being as I'm still honing my Photoshop painting/coloring skills.Jetryl wrote:• You have the promise of being a very good pixel artist; the style of things you've made is slightly different from wesnoth, but things can be sorted out. This can be dealt with later.
Jetryl wrote:
• Your music is very decent for a videogame; Aleksi and TimP probably would want you to improve considerably (both in quality of digital instruments, and quality of composition) before you'd be allowed to make mainline stuff, however  we're desperate for campaign-specific music. We have a few amazing pieces of music for mainline, but that's all we have.
A shorter, simple campaign (Like ... two brothers?) doesn't need to have world-class movie-score music, it just needs decent music that is unique. You can provide this; it's great practice, and is great for the quality of that campaign.
Sounds good to me. Is there someone I should get in touch with regarding musical ideas for this campaign?
It should come with the game, just like Heir to the Throne or any other official campaign. What version of the game do you have? (Oh - and if you use debian, you have to install all of the individual campaign packages. The relevant one here is wesnoth-ttb.)West wrote:One question though: where can I get this campaign when it's not listed among the in-game addons? Forgive me if this is a tiresome noob question, I'm still very new to this and there's a lot of info to absorb.
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West
- Retired Lord of Music
- Posts: 1173
- Joined: October 30th, 2006, 7:24 am
- Location: In the philotic connections between ansibles.
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D'oh! I never looked in the main campaign menu, I assumed it was something I had to download... ah well. Thanksturin wrote:It should come with the game, just like Heir to the Throne or any other official campaign. What version of the game do you have? (Oh - and if you use debian, you have to install all of the individual campaign packages. The relevant one here is wesnoth-ttb.)West wrote:One question though: where can I get this campaign when it's not listed among the in-game addons? Forgive me if this is a tiresome noob question, I'm still very new to this and there's a lot of info to absorb.
Yeah - it's because it's an included campaign that I want it to look good.West wrote:D'oh! I never looked in the main campaign menu, I assumed it was something I had to download... ah well. Thanksturin wrote: It should come with the game, just like Heir to the Throne or any other official campaign. What version of the game do you have? (Oh - and if you use debian, you have to install all of the individual campaign packages. The relevant one here is wesnoth-ttb.)