Rebooting the Art Department

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Tom_Of_Wesnoth
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Rebooting the Art Department

Post by Tom_Of_Wesnoth »

doofus-01 wrote:I'm not sure if we even have an Art Department anymore
Sorry if this is off topic, but what happened? Are Wesnoth's glory days past, or is it just a quiet time for new art?
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Zerovirus
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Re: Zombies (Merry Christmas!)

Post by Zerovirus »

A significant number of the old guard have moved on from the project for various personal reasons, and the newer artists don't produce much mostly because there's comparatively less free space to develop. Back when all the units were rather low-quality sprites, there was plenty of room for everyone to pick a thing they liked and work on it. Now that the game's looking so pretty, it's much harder to find anything to improve on- except animations, and everybody's too lazy to do animations.

Regardless of the reasons, hardly any real Art Development has happened in... I'd say the last whole year, or so. Just look at the last posting dates in all of the threads here.
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LordBob
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Re: Zombies (Merry Christmas!)

Post by LordBob »

Sadly, I have to second that. I keep telling myself that I'm not done with Wesnoth and will return to it eventually, but work and other projects do get in the way. The last time I got any actual Wesnoth artwork done was well over a year ago, if not two.

Art-wise we've made a lot of progress over the past 7 years, but I'd say the game is still far from done. There's animations, of course. Then a number of our early "new generation" portraits that I'm itching to redo just because, plus some that were never taken care of. I would also point story art, of which we barely have any, which could add a nice flavour to the storytelling of single-player campaigns.

Maybe another part of the problem is that there isn't anymore an active art direction, and maybe not even a wider-scale endeavour for contributors to participate in. Back when I joined, the old units sprites/portraits were undergoing revision and there was a sticky thread of things to do for at the very top of this forum. We haven't had such a thing in recent years, and maybe now I'd be the person that should take care of it :(
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vultraz
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Re: Zombies (Merry Christmas!)

Post by vultraz »

I'll have to third that. Jetrel, our only still-active art director, is mostly dedicated to working on Frogatto right now. People who do new sprites might do a baseframe, and then we'll end up with no animations for them. Zero is right: the bar is just too high now for the average contributor, and we really aren't doing anything to further our outreach.

I agree with you, though, LordBob. You might be just the person to reboot our art department.
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Wussel
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Re: Zombies (Merry Christmas!)

Post by Wussel »

I just followed the link to Lord Bob's blog. There was a troll line published, which I have not seen here. They might be a bit sketch like? Here is a direct link for your convenince. I am talking about the upper left and middle one. Would be great to have them for Wesnoth.

http://1.1.1.2/bmi/cmmedia.a.ssl.fastly ... x1390.jpeg

Image
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Jetrel
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Re: Zombies (Merry Christmas!)

Post by Jetrel »

LordBob wrote:Back when I joined, the old units sprites/portraits were undergoing revision and there was a sticky thread of things to do for at the very top of this forum. We haven't had such a thing in recent years, and maybe now I'd be the person that should take care of it :(
It's still there, we just never had any fish biting.

I think the problem is simply that high-quality animations like we're currently doing aren't something an amateur can do without experience. Eventually I'm planning to personally get back to fairly significant effort here, once I'm done with the steam release of frogatto. It'll be a while, but it won't be forever.
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doofus-01
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Re: Zombies (Merry Christmas!)

Post by doofus-01 »

This thread has become an off-topic rotting corpse. I'm linking the last (recent) image I posted, that everyone seems to be intent on ignoring while we have this important discussion.
Image

I'll also post a smilie: :annoyed:
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Elvish_Hunter
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Re: Rebooting the Art Department

Post by Elvish_Hunter »

doofus-01 wrote:This thread has become an off-topic rotting corpse.
This is why I split it. Sorry for not having noticed earlier the off-topic :oops:
Now this important discussion has its own deserved thread :)
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thespaceinvader
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Re: Zombies (Merry Christmas!)

Post by thespaceinvader »

Jetrel wrote:
LordBob wrote:Back when I joined, the old units sprites/portraits were undergoing revision and there was a sticky thread of things to do for at the very top of this forum. We haven't had such a thing in recent years, and maybe now I'd be the person that should take care of it :(
It's still there, we just never had any fish biting.

I think the problem is simply that high-quality animations like we're currently doing aren't something an amateur can do without experience. Eventually I'm planning to personally get back to fairly significant effort here, once I'm done with the steam release of frogatto. It'll be a while, but it won't be forever.
I keep thinking the same, but life keeps getting in the way. And to be honest, I wound up feeling like I'd fallen down a fairly major skill gap in terms of actually contributing, around the time LordBob and Kitty and Sleepwalker were all turning out amazing work on a near-daily basis; whilst I could critique, I couldn't compete. Then I got a job, moved three times, got engaged, got married, and am currently zigzagging between miniature painting, woodwork and frantically trying to help my local hackspace move into a bigger building. Life's kinda busy.

But I do check in occasionally! And I'm usually happy to answer questions or whatever any time, but it will take a PM to get my attention, as I get an email then!
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artisticdude
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Re: Rebooting the Art Department

Post by artisticdude »

I'm still around too (on a regular basis, though mostly lurking), but like tsi, life has kept me pretty occupied for the last two years or so. I do plan on returning to active Wesnoth art development eventually (probably over the coming summer if possible), and I really want to animate the new rogue baseframes I pixelled a while back, at least the basic attack and defense animations. But in the meantime academics are preventing me from investing the time and energy needed for any serious Wesnoth art projects, particularly when the only tasks remaining that match my skillset are animations.
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tr0ll
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Re: Rebooting the Art Department

Post by tr0ll »

Is there something like Google Summer of Code for art? A small crowd funding could employ one or two serious game graphics students for awhile, if there was someone who could vet the projects and supervise them part time. Especially since a bunch of the art needed is production work rather than wild creative stuff.
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