vultraz's art (The dragons are coming!)

[vultraz]

Hey all.

I'm trying the edit the orcish warlord's sprite to give it a skull for a head (for an 'undead warlord' custom unit), but for some reason he looks more like he has an alien head than a skull (I'm really new to pixel art, so maybe that explains it). Any suggestions on how to make it look more skull-y?

[em3]

One tip: The eyes should be rounder. More like circles than thin slanted slots.

[vultraz]

Humm like this? (eyes rounder, mouth slightly flatter)

[Dixie]

Still doesn,t look like a skull. The shape is wrong, the colour seems somewhat off, and the facial features have nothing skully (in particular, there being no hole for the nose and the mouth which makes no sense to me). I suggest looking at this mainline sprite (which you surely know), and either just take its head or study it careful in order to discover why its head looks like a skull and your unit's doesn't.

[vultraz]

Is this better? I know the color a bit dark, but besides that. I tried to make it the proper skull shape and keep the eyes round but not O-ish.

[Shinobody]

Alright, best so far, for sure.
It looks like skull, yes. But the eyes are too... realistic
In Wesnoth, art is very "cartoon" and stylised, and eyes usually take up 1/3 or 1/4 of face. Look at skeleton sprite again, your eye sockets are still too small.
As for color, I'd think that orcs could have darker bones, why not? That color fits here.
(or you can say that they're rotten, or something. Bones are great to draw, because at different age, ground they were buried in and stage of decomposition they may take pretty much EVERY color, be it green, black, yellow, strong orange, or pale white. )
Don't I sound too much like some satanist or someth?...

[vultraz]

OK I've given the eyes a little size boost. Only problem is that now he seems to look a bit wide eyed and scared, and in the old way he looked a little menacing. I've included both here for comparisons, thought I think I like the old way better

[Shinobody]

Have you thought about making them even bigger, I mean adding one more row of black pixels on top of "OLD" eyes?
Or just only one more pixel on top of each one. EDIT: Just checked it out, looks bad. But this is case of single pixels.
I suggest further experimenting with shape of eyes...
(that's the charm of pix-art. You change one pixel and everything looks different... )

[Dixie]

I'm personnally not sure the eyes are to blame. The shape is much better this time around, but somehow the head doesn't blend into the sprite (imho). Also, the color gives more a WC vibe than a skeleton one to me. Maybe the colour is too geenish? Maybe you should change the pitch black outlines? Maybe the skull is slightly unaligned with the rest of the body (like it's looking bit more south than south-east)?

[Shinobody]

Or maybe its mainline Orc Warlord who is only pseudo-aligned in SE, (I mean, apart form head and collar) in reality he faces south, as we can see now...
Dixie, he already said color is bad.
(And maybe he'll look less scared when eyes will be placed lower on the skull?)

[battlestar]

Since the 90% of the sprite is completely unchanged from Orcish overlord, it's hard to see "undead overlord" instead of Orcish overlord. Undead are more withered instead of bulky like orcs. They are often more ragged looking. Try modifying other parts of the body, or draw from scratch. Not looking SE will make it look different from other units too. If you don't want to make big changes to base sprites, try using Draug or death knight as the base.

[SFault]

Since the 90% of the sprite is completely unchanged from Orcish overlord, it's hard to see "undead overlord" instead of Orcish overlord.

Indeed. If you just want to have an orcish overlord with skull, I suggest to copy-paste the skull from an existing unit. From revenant for example...

[Shinobody]

That's better for gameplay, yes...
But frankening is ALWAYS worser option. Since, youno, this sprite was beginning to get better, slowly, and that skull begun to look even good.
So franken, yes, if you are doing an era and desperatley in need of sprite.
But drawing (even only parts!) from scratch is better way.
(I'd like to point out, that apart from golden cap, there's nothing extremely better in that sprite anyway...)

[Dixie]

(I'd like to point out, that apart from golden cap, there's nothing extremely better in that sprite anyway...)

I beg to differ: imho, the skull is much, much better, in that it is instantly recognisable as a skull, whereas the previous one looked more like some kind of slightly twisted zombie face. I think drawing is always better if you're looking towards bettering your pixelart skills, but in the end, it's the result that counts. Look at most mainline skeletons: do you really think they redrew the head every time? From the looks of it, I'd say there are about 4 different heads for seven skeletons (not counting liches, death knight and chocobone, and also not taking into account the helmets). Also, one they had the basic skull, the artist could have used that skull as a base for all skellies and sometimes alter it a bit, for all I know.

[battlestar]

It makes good practice and learning to even trace over existing sprites than cut-paste, in the end you may end up with something slightly different and hopefully better looking.