Insect Faction Art

[Skizzaltix]

If you want to know what's going on in this thread, please go here.

Here is the mantis image:

[Skizzaltix]

Sorry for the double post.
Here is the Mantis defend image, what do people think of it?

EDIT:
And also the attack image. Now, what shall I do next...

EDIT EDIT:

The Ant attack and defend images. I'm not sure how good the attack one is going to look in-game, but we can hope.

[irrevenant]

There needs to be more motion in the whole body.

As a (crap, hacked-together) example:

[ijuric]

Eyes are too big and legs too thick. For eyes check this photo. Eyes in most mantis species are same or simmilar color as the rest of body, but as picture shows it's not the case for all species. Also, when resizing eyes, be sure to keep triangular head shape.
I think that Irrelevant got pose of upper part of body right on mantis-base.png so if I were you, I'd start working from that one.
Concerning legs, you might want to check this photo to check thicknes relative to first leg pair (which has over evolutionary time transformed to claws, but still keeps walking function) and where they come out of body. They don't start from same point, middle leg pair grows from placed that is more towards head. That is also seen nicely on this picture.
I hope this helped, and I look forward to seeing next version

[torangan]

Oversized unit variations may diverge from reality in build I'd say. We're in a fantasy world, we can adapt physics to achieve a nice look.

[Skizzaltix]

Thanks for all the critiscism! My art is never any good until I've sent it through the mangle a few times

Okay, I'll get working on the mantis again.
For now, I did the Bombardier Beetle base frame. For this one I'm fairly sure I've got the anatomy right, I did it with reference (Thomas Eisner's For Love of Insects lying on the table next to my computer). I could be wrong, though.

EDIT:

Well, here's the mantis reworked. Does it look better?

[irrevenant]

Your mantis frames still look basically identical to me. There needs to be visible changes in the body positioning. eg. If the base frame has the whole body lengthened (like inIjuric's reference pic) you can sink down with the tail extended (like your frames) for defence. The torso should also presumably rock forward when he attacks. (It would probably help if you could find some footage of how they move in real life).

The Bombadier beetle looks very cool!

P.S. My "Mantis Base" picture was just Skizzaltix's base frame only with longer, heavier legs.

P.P.S. I think it's okay to make giant insects a bit more heavy-set than they would be at their 'natural' size.

[Skizzaltix]

Thanks!
I think I'm just going to redo the mantis frames, when I started then I was trying out a new method and I don't like the way it turned out, also I've only seen mantids once or twice in real life and only occaisanally in photos, so I'll work on something else for a little while and then do another mantis image.
Thanks for the critiscism anyway!

[christiano_l]

I like the ant frames verry much, the bombardier and mantis sprites look different, cant explain what i mean, i think its a different style, the ant doesn't look realistic but thats why i like it better, the mantis and bombardier look like much realer, so they are verry different from other wesnoth units , and verry different from the ant and larva sprites
but I'm not really the one to have comments im verry gratefull you'r doing the spriting anyway, so if you like the ùmantis and bombardier like this, you can keep it that way
grts

[Skizzaltix]

Sorry for the lack of art over the holidays. I was, er, "busy" with my new copy of Warcraft III.

So, anyway: Christiano, I'm gonna redo the Mantis, I'm glad you like the Ant! I might go over the frames again to give it more movement, and I like the Bombardier, but if it really looks strange next to other sprites, I can redo it.

Here's the Mosquito, but I think it looks a little blurry (I ended up scaling it down), so if it's not okay as-is I can redo it too:

[littlebeast]

The mosquito looks pretty good except it looks like the proboscis is curved. Which I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be.

Also that bombardier looks more like a fire ant to me. You could use it as that though.

[Skizzaltix]

IRL Mosquito's probusci aren't curved. I tried it straight, but I couldn't get it to fit in with the rest of the creature's body, so here we are

If you take a look at a bombardier, that's actually what they look like, more or less (If you take account for my lack of pixelating skills). I think Fire Ants have an entirely red body, but I don't know, not living any where near where they live. Really, it's Christiano's choice, this is just my two cents.

Thanks for your input anyway!

[christiano_l]

the mosquito is verry good and on second opinion the bombardier is also good, if you don't want to change the mantis that isn't so bad either, i'm verry glad so even if you want to make pink beetles i'll agree with that
( i tried to make some art my self but it was a bigger disaster then hiroshima )

[BloodIssyl]

I gave a shot at the Rhinocerous Beetle, what do you guys think?

Go ahead to criticise me and edit it to your liking. I didnt draw legs, for the simple reason that i suck at legs.
EDIT: tried my hand at legs, added anti aliasing.
Im pretty happy with it. Please consider it?

[Skizzaltix]

That's really good! Just one thing, it's a little too big. This is very easy to fix, just shrink the image to something that looks good (A little bigger than the Bombardier, let's say) and then go over it to make it look less blurry.

The legs are good! The more you draw them, the better they'll be.