New unit portraits and unit artwork

[Girgistian]

Since there seemed to be no general topic for unit portraits (rather dozens of topics for portraits of individual units) I'll take right to create one. So this one is for all sorts of new unit portraits/artwork that could be used as such (by cutting bits away, for example).

I'll start this thing myself by presenting a suggestion for the portrait of the Northerners' Wolf Rider.

[kitty]

hey - a nice wolf you have here!

i think there's good reason why there are all those seperate portrait threads: it would be totally chaotic to comment and criticize in one giant thread with everything in it. you will receive much more focused critiques in a single or at least theme orientated thread. what you are looking for is something like a gallery imho. have a look at the wesnoth journals: http://wesnoth.dbzer0.com/blog/wpg2



but back to your pic.

general technical comments (at least as far as i know):
- black background required, no landscape
- squarish format (in the end 205*205px)
- outlines

one can see that you are able to paint digitally -that's great!
- but the pic seems unfocused. where am i supposed to look? i believe at the character - but his face (the most important area) has no detail at all. give him a face! or at least eyes visible through the helmet and a mouth for some expression.
- the wolf has no shadow!
- wolfies eyes are asymmetrical
- i don't know much about wolf anatomy - but isn't the rider a tad high?
- the rider seems to have breasts, but i assume the unit is male by default
- the rider has very "human" proportions - but he should be a goblin! you need to show that (and a face would be a good start to do so)
- i love the way you do the fur!

(- no real critique, only personal taste: the helmet design is strange, i don't like it, why has it an arrow in the middle???)
(and for future portraits: don't show the characters straight from the front.)

[Girgistian]

one can see that you are able to paint digitally -that's great!
- but the pic seems unfocused. where am i supposed to look? i believe at the character - but his face (the most important area) has no detail at all. give him a face! or at least eyes visible through the helmet and a mouth for some expression.
- the wolf has no shadow!
- wolfies eyes are asymmetrical
- i don't know much about wolf anatomy - but isn't the rider a tad high?
- the rider seems to have breasts, but i assume the unit is male by default
- the rider has very "human" proportions - but he should be a goblin! you need to show that (and a face would be a good start to do so)
- i love the way you do the fur!

(- no real critique, only personal taste: the helmet design is strange, i don't like it, why has it an arrow in the middle???)
(and for future portraits: don't show the characters straight from the front.)

Ooh, I didn't even notice the galleries, thanks for the info. And the critic as well, but I have a few things to say for defense:

- This picture is mainly plain artwork, and it's in a form like this because I didn't want to go making all the outlines and cuttings before I knew if it was okay for it's style. The normal style of Wesnoth's portrait art differs a lot from this, and since this one isn't that cartoony, the goblin's face isn't visible
- The absense of the the wolf's shadow is because of the winter landscape. If there's a lot of snow outside then the light reflects from just about anywhere and shadows are very rare
- The asymmetry of the eyes isn't so clear when viewing the picture at it's normal size. There is slight difference, yes, but it's mostly because the image is zoomed out
- Actually the rider isn't that much too high, wolves have a notable curve on their backs (like dogs) and the back would most likely break if he sat too far in the middle. Just reasoning, I'm not saying it's better that way, it looks slightly odd to me as well
- And yes, it has very humane proportions because of the helmet, and I'm a little disappointed to myself because of that. The ears would most likely tell if it's a goblin or not, but they can't be seen because of the helmet. Also, the expression that it would have breasts is merely an illusion. The armor's just wrinkled, as can be more easily seen when the picture's zoomed to 100%
- As for the helmet, I just thought it would be sort of a goblin way to make the helmet look more fierce. Pointy bits

But thanks for the "critic" anyway, I'll try to make some improvements for the next work.

[Neoskel]

This would rock as story art for someone's campaign.

Some issues about it being a portrait were already brought u by kitty, but i have one twiddle of my own:

It doesn't match the unit.

But, as i said it would rock as story art.