Jake's Art Corner, More TWL stuff [Critique Encouraged]

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Jarkko
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Jake's Art Corner, More TWL stuff [Critique Encouraged]

Post by Jarkko »

Hello, everyone.

I've seen, that it's a somekind of custom for new players to at least try and design new characters, campaigns or other artwork. Well - it does seem, that I am not actually an exception to this (somewhat healthy) rule - thus I opened this little thread of mine to present my piece to the open public.

So as my debut presentation, I show you a character, that's most likely going to be a hero in my campaign - no idea about the name, but upon seeing this my mom instantly said: "Well his name is obviously Wilberforce!" - Not that I have anything against that name. :)

Oh and a note: There'll be no frankies here, so the works are all 100% mine - just to clear out any possible disputes before they start. :D

Here's the standing sprite of Wilberforce

Image

Now, I gotta mention, that this Wilberforce has a rather peculiar style of combat - he refuses to use swords, spears and all that. Instead he rages on with nothing, but his armor-plated fists - I think as an alternative he's going to use fire-based magic - campaign storyline basically insists that, but that ain't the issue right now.

Here's the attack sprites as a sprite sheet

Image

And here's the animated version as a separate link - to protect you from possible nausea ;)

Feedback and constructive critique is encouraged. I'll post more work, as I get them done ;)

- Jarkko P.
Last edited by Jarkko on November 22nd, 2011, 12:27 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Gambit
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by Gambit »

Remember that everything should move, not just the weapon (in this case his fist).
And in game he will be sliding towards the enemy so he needs to appear to take a step.

Really nice sprite though. Also I'm not suggesting that you need to do this, but if you wanted to animate both fists as two seperate animations, the game would make it random which one he punched with. It would look really cool when doing multiple strikes. Give em the old one two, as it were.
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by artisticdude »

This is pretty good if this is your first sprite, but he's a bit too large for wesnoth standards (unless he's supposed to be that way for campaign purposes). The shading looks a bit pillowed to me, though maybe that's just my perspective. As for animation purposes, remember that the entire body reacts to this kind of movement, not just the arm. Ideally his entire upper body should rotate with the punch. One of the most helpful things people have suggested to me is to practice the motion yourself several times to get a feel for the necessary movement. But for a 100% hand drawn sprite, this is awesome. :D I look forward to seeing more work from you. If you have the time/desire to, you could also get involved in several UMC projects whose authors would no doubt welcome your contributions.
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by Gambit »

Well he used to play basketball, but when the undead hordes started their invasion... ya know.
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by Telaron »

Nice unit! I agree with Gambit. A unit has got to move it's entire body. Not just the arm. Also, on that last attack animation his right arm seems a little long.
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Jarkko
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by Jarkko »

Gambit wrote:Remember that everything should move, not just the weapon (in this case his fist).
And in game he will be sliding towards the enemy so he needs to appear to take a step.
I get your point there. In fact I attempted them both already: If you check the first and second image from the sheet, you notice, that the right foot switches a bit, but maybe it moves just a bit too much. As for the full body rotation, it is there, but I think the rotation is just a bit too subtle. I could try spreading the legs a bit more and maybe add a bit more rotation to the body - I just gotta test the animation in-game.
artisticdude wrote:This is pretty good if this is your first sprite, but he's a bit too large for wesnoth standards (unless he's supposed to be that way for campaign purposes).
In fact he is tall, yes - and arrogant enough to stand up straight, too :p
However I ran the sprite through a testing scenario and there's no significant difference in unit sizes there.

This is exactly what I need critique for - I can't see my own errors (at least this subtle), while I'm drawing the actual image. Keep'em coming.

EDIT: Ran a test in-game and it's clearly flunked.
Last edited by Jarkko on January 13th, 2010, 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by Gambit »

Jarkko wrote: I get your point there. In fact I attempted them both already: If you check the first and second image from the sheet, you notice, that the right foot switches a bit, but maybe it moves just a bit too much. As for the full body rotation, it is there, but I think the rotation is just a bit too subtle. I could try spreading the legs a bit more and maybe add a bit more rotation to the body - I just gotta test the animation in-game.
I'm no artist, but others have said that exageration is your friend when animating these tiny sprites.
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by thespaceinvader »

... I swear i replied to this thread...

Yeah - if you're trying to copy the mainline style, it's too tall - at least the height of a troll, if not larger. Trolls are between 8 and 10 feet tall... The head's about the right size, though. The metals could do with more contrast - the brightest highlights should be pure white, and the darkest darks closer to black. For the animation, exaggeration will help a LOT. A big, lunging punch like this will look an awful lot better.

However, this looks good for a first try. Keep up the good work =)
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Jarkko
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by Jarkko »

Here's what I came up with so far - note, this is an unshaded rough version meant for the evaluation purposes of the animation, just so that I don't go through the shading problems only to note, that "Yeah, frame X is off place" or something equally constructive :P

The following changes were committed:
  • I gave the sprite a stance as a first attempt to decrease the size. It doesn't stand up that tall anymore
  • When the above function didn't work as expected, the scale was decreased by entire four pixels - that was about as far as I could go without pixels blowing up. :P - So the char is still somewhat tall, but I hope this time it's reasonably tall - like "I just have big bones" -tall :D
  • This time especially the upper body has significantly more rotation IMO - at least compared to the V1 and legs are spread a bit more during the punch.
So...
First the sheet:
Image

And the animation

Do comment :P
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by artisticdude »

Jarkko wrote:Here's what I came up with so far - note, this is an unshaded rough version meant for the evaluation purposes of the animation, just so that I don't go through the shading problems only to note, that "Yeah, frame X is off place" or something equally constructive
We call it 'blocking.' :)

Nice rotation, though I feel frames 1 & 2 are way too similar. And remember that the unit will be sliding towards his opponent when he attacks, so you really need to get much more leg movement in there. He should step forward with his right leg when he attacks, otherwise it'll look like he's throwing a haymaker on roller skates.
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by Gambit »

Have you tried these in game yet? You'll notice that the game actually moves your unit about a half a centimeter towards the enemy. That's why you've got to make him take a step in that direction. You'll get the "roller skates" effect otherwise.

If you upload the frames seperatly (in a zip), I can help you put them in game (if you don't know unit WML).
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Jarkko
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by Jarkko »

Okay, I'm sure you're quite fed up in seeing just that Wilberforce -guy. Well, I think I got the problem solved, but it takes a bit more time, than I thought... That, or I just re-draw it

In the meantime I present you another character designed for the campaign - A Battlemage. Though a quick search showed, that there are other "Battlemage" -units on UMC field, I don't see that as a restrictive factor... Well, unless I come up with an unique name ;)

Technically he is supposed to be somewhere between Heavy Infantryman and a Mage.
My version uses a heavy armor under a brown cloak, and wears a helmet, that covers half of it's face... In fact I designed Wilberforce to be a battlemage, except that he doesn't use the cloak... For some odd reason.

Anyways, here's the pic.

Image

Oh and in case you're wondering, what happened to his other hand, it's under the cloak... preparing for a haymaker :P
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Jarkko
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by Jarkko »

*bump*

So... I've been quite busy lately, but been working on the sprites, too.

Wilberforce:
I -THINK- I got the feet problem solved. At least in in-game tests they looked good to me, but I present the new version here, just to hear your opinions.

In order to not keep you waiting:
Image
The sprite sheet. This time I managed to bash the actual attack frames to three, instead of that previous six frames.

The animation, so that you can voluntarily destroy your eyes... j/k ;)

Battlemage:
I applied Wilberforce's foot fix to the Battlemage attack sprite, kept the frame count to a comfortable three as well - and I just shaded it to the end - due to procrastination. :P
There aren't much changes to the version above, except that I brought the other hand visible in the standing animation.

Image

Aaand the lamination :P

That'll be all for now.

Suggestions, critique, praises... javelins... Yeah, we accept it all here :D

- Jarkko P.
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by Peter the Great »

Maybe make the legs move a bit more gradually? It seems a bit jerky right now. Also, for the first one do something similar. Right now it looks like he's switching his leg positions very quickly, in the middle of a punch.

Other than that, a pretty good job.
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Jarkko
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Re: Jake's Art Corner [Critique Encouraged]

Post by Jarkko »

Peter the Great wrote:Maybe make the legs move a bit more gradually? It seems a bit jerky right now. Also, for the first one do something similar. Right now it looks like he's switching his leg positions very quickly, in the middle of a punch.

Other than that, a pretty good job.
I ran a test in game and it didn't look jerky at all... at least to me. In fact it seems, that many of the core figures use similar footwork - and I always have one or two sprites open for reference :wink:

Okay, so... I don't know, how much is this going to confuse people, but before I can set a myself a standard of somesort in Wesnoth-related artwork, I just like to try a bit this and a bit that and see what evolves.

So this time I set my foot on portrait ground and it was a sheer coincidence, that one english class of mine was particulary boring, during which I drew a scetch of Ice Spawn (yeah, sitting in the back row has it's advantages ;) )

I haven't got a sprite from this yet, but I just wanted to present this for critique.

-= Ice Spawn =-
Image

Do carry on with your frequent judgements about Wilberforce and Battlemage too, so that they don't feel left out. :P
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