How long would it take me to make the art for a faction ?

[LucidDreamer85]

I want to start making my own factions and eventually my own era, but i've never done it before...

I briefly read over some basics and what not and what to download..

I have pixel 3 & Seashore for my Mac.......

I have a good amount of time every day to dedicate to whatever I want and I want to put it to good use or at least learn something new that will keep my interest and serve a purpose...

So I would like to start making art for some units..

I downloaded a ton of franken-packs....Can I use parts of these to start and then alter it within the pixel programs ?

Back to the main question....How long should i expect to have to put into this to get a factions worth of units out of this?

couple weeks, month, 3-4 months? a year?

I'm a pretty creative person and if I really get into something i can spend hours plugin away at something......I make music so same thing applies...

I know it's going to take a lot of time and effort to even get started and get the basic understandings of the programs and how to incorporate my units into the game...

Is there a lot of code swapping from original files?

Also what do you suggest as the first tutorial i should check out or the first thing i should read ?


I would make a faction and ask somebody else to do the art but I really want to learn how to do this myself...i love to create and once i get the hang of this i know it's going to extend the replay value of this game for me at least....


Thanks in advance to anyone who responds or provides useful information...

[Major]

You micht want to look at the art tutorials in the "create" section in the link at the top of the page.
Good luck!

[StDrake]

frankensteining a bit and filling in the rest by hand you might make even about..6 units in a single day, then a few more days to correct if you get some meaningful critique. Probably it could take even shorter if you come up with good ideas fast. I can't handle making quality sprites from scratch so can't tell you much about that.
note - that's about baseframes, not talking about anims

[thespaceinvader]

Depends how fast you work, and the size of your faction and what you consider to be complete. for my purposes, I generally work at about one unit per day - but i work on RL things something approaching full time.

With complete animations, you're looking at months or years.

[fmunoz]

My timing is more or less 1 image per hour or two.
A unit has 1 stance, 1 defend and 3-4 attack images per attack minimum (it's really 2-3 hours per base image, less in the others).
You could need more images if you the unit has some extra facings or standing animations (bats).

[Jetrel]

Animating a unit typically takes me an entire evening; if I focus, I can do a whole unit's worth of animations in 4-8hrs time. And that's 'good' animation, which sometimes means a do-over or two of the blocking, and means a long primary melee animation of ~ 6 frames.

Doing the core design of a unit takes 1-6 hours for me; only drawn out because I tend to fuss over stuff in the hopes I won't have to redesign it later. There's the fear that with a permanent-upward-climb in skills, one could potentially keep redoing all the sprites forever, but in practice, once one is actually "very good", they're able to do something that stands the test of time. We've only been through multiple-revisions because we've all been incompetent; we hadn't done this before, we were all learning as we went. Very little is actually up for a redesign anymore.*

Another famous wesnoth spriter, neoriceisgood, takes a similar amount of time to do animations, but generally does basic wesnoth-sized sprite designs in 20-60 minutes. The absolute upper limit for someone wickedly good would probably be about 5-15 minutes.


* if you're wondering, just cavalry units, some minor tweaks to the elves, and a few tweaks to the outlaws.

[Zerovirus]

I can do Wesnoth unitsprites in like 1-2 hours, but that's just for the baseframe. Once that's done, though, an animation takes another 1-2 hours if it's really simple, like my Amniote spinny, or 5-6 hours if it's really complex, like.. I don't have an example on hand >.> Maybe an attack anim?

As for how long it takes to finish a faction... Very few factions have full custom art for all their units and enough animations to cover it. Let's put it this way, I'm still trying to run Steelhive. I think I've had it going now for almost a year, something like 8 months?

Takes a loooong time. Don't be discouraged though, the process is totally worth the time!

(And my parents don't get why I spend hours on the laptop for these bottlecap-size pictures when I can draw with pencil. They just don't get pixelling lol.)

[Vendanna]

How long it takes to finish a faction, I'll say that it will take a lot especially about graphics wise.

Most of them, in the case of User made Factions, will have only base frames to go with, as far as I remember, only the Ear of Magic of inferno has a ton of different units and animations, and that's after a ton of work from his part.

And note that its work could be called "exception" rather than the norm.

The only "measure" you could get for a "complete faction" would be asking jetryl how much it took him to complete the sprites of an entire faction (and that's with help from others art developers to make it go faster).

My suggestion is, take things one by one instead of thinking "how much its still needed" to complete it, collaborative work (if possible) will make you advance much faster (since they will cheer you when angry and could help you fix what it seems broken). and finally

you need to be a individual with perseverance. And knowing that you want to finish it.

Between, I need to say that I greatly enjoy your style, I mostly visit the site to see all the new sprites (and images) that the artists make in there.

[LucidDreamer85]

Thanks to everyone who replied.....these are good tips/ advice for me to use..

In general, how many frames are there per animation? on norm?

Another thing......do some of these custom factions i see from various eras just borrow the default animations?

Like if you have a swordsman type unit, could you just borrow the running animation from an elf fighter or something like that and tweak it a bit?

I was all set on " going to do it myself" but i know i will need advice and tips throughout the process..

I'm spending a few hours tonight to lay out my plan for a faction...I want it set for the most part before i start animating even one unit....

I'm guessing this is in a diff section, but is there tips for cutting the images from the frankenpacks and placing them in , say seashore or something to edit?

I'll probably start like that and do a mix of my own art and some edited pieces here and there for my first unit....just to get the hang of it...


o...almost forgot...to all those that posted, what program do you use to make your sprites ?

I have seashore and pixel 3 ....i've read these are ok to use....

Also pixel 3 has an animation feature built right in, do any of you use that?


What I probably will need help with when it comes to it is stuff like making my units be team color compatible and other little things like that that i may forget along the way...

But thanks again for all those who responded..

I'll post my first sprites on here as soon as i get them done...

I'll have my first faction posted on here by sunday ( unit layout) probably....have to work all day tomorrow so we will see what I accomplish after, but for tonight it's faction brainstorming time.....( might need help with stats; if you notice they are not balanced let me know....)

I'm more into the light/good/mystical type of factions.....I tend to think there are too many custom darker chaotic type factions.......

So i'm leaning to the light side.


Thanks again...talk to you soon.



also, anyone on here can add me as friend if they want to play some online ...... getting quality players who want to play the game right is kind of tough on some nights.....name is same as on here....

* I also have a few custom maps i made....1 for sure that i'm really excited to show and get balanced.....I have played 4 games on it so far against computer with the balanced for tourney era.......made for the most compelling matches against a computer yet....diff section? haha

[Zerovirus]

Most of us use GIMP. I'm still an oldfashioned ms painter though. Yeah, you can edit anima of other units to look like your unit. This is called anim cloning and is frequently done in mainline.

Also, elf fighters don't have running animations. I don't think wesnoth even uses run anims.

[Major]

I'm not sure there is a single product that is used. I use MSPaint mostly with GIMP for the shadows, blur and animation. I am quite new at GIMP and not very good. Macromedia Fireworks is also quite good at this sort of thing but is a comercial product and rather expensive. GIMP is free but quite hard to use and not very user friendly. Lots to choose from.

[LucidDreamer85]

is GIMP for the mac too or no ? have any of you used seashore or pixel 3 though, will they do what i need them to do ?

and also is there a Mac version of MSPaint?

[Major]

No there is no Mac version of MSPaint. I think the closest thing is Correl Draw but that is also something you would need to buy. I think your best bet would be to try and figure out GIMP I think there is a Mac version.

Look here http://www.gimp.org/

[LucidDreamer85]

k thanks....i'm going to give seashore and pixel at least a try through for right now.....i got the GIMP link ...it says i have to install an optional thing within OSX to use it......i probably will eventually then...

[Frogger5]

another option is pixen which is made just for pixel art. It's what I use, and it gets the job done.