HttT Story screens

Production of artwork for the game by regular contributors takes place here.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Post Reply
-AP-
Art Contributor
Posts: 3
Joined: November 24th, 2009, 4:41 am

HttT Story screens

Post by -AP- »

I am all new here, so hello all and nice to meet you =)

I have agreed to work on Heir To The Throne campaign story screens, so without further ado here is first sketch/draft of the first image. Critique and suggestions are very welcome.

Cheers :)
Attachments
1_orch_messenger62.png
User avatar
Jetrel
Posts: 7242
Joined: February 23rd, 2004, 3:36 am
Location: Midwest US

Re: HttT Story screens

Post by Jetrel »

I'm not sure what we'd decided WRT graphical style; hopefully we can discuss this on IRC. I'll be in #wesnoth-dev to discuss this.

The composition of the background is quite nice; the interaction between the figure in the foreground and the background doesn't work out so well - it appears like he's just a portrait superimposed over a landscape, rather than interacting with the landscape in any way.

I'm really unsure about the general composition idea of having the camera -so- close, and cropping the figure at the waist. It tends to leave someone poorly grounded in the environment they're in, especially when there's no foreground to speak of around him, just solid black.

On a very minor point, the orcish anatomy is a bit off; he looks just a little bit too simian/apelike in this picture. It's almost all the protruding jaw; toning that down would probably fix it - the teeth themselves are great, though, and the bald head works too. He also appears to have a wide-eyed look of terror or focus on a subject to the left side of the image, which doesn't really jive with the general theme of him being a messenger (he seems like he's in or about to be in a fight).
Play Frogatto & Friends - a finished, open-source adventure game!
User avatar
Turuk
Sithslayer
Posts: 5283
Joined: February 28th, 2007, 8:58 pm
Contact:

Re: HttT Story screens

Post by Turuk »

Always nice to have another art contributor, though I'm not familiar with what you put in the game AP, I've been gone for a bit. What did you do for the art contrib? Nice to see someone is willing to work on the story screens for that campaign, even if they have some adjustments to be made as Jetrel pointed out. :)
Mainline Maintainer: AOI, DM, NR, TB and THoT.
UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
User avatar
Valkier
Art Contributor
Posts: 509
Joined: May 25th, 2009, 5:43 pm

Re: HttT Story screens

Post by Valkier »

Well my main crits are there's no sign of where the sun is. You'd also have to have it right behind the trees in order to justify the silhouette of them, as anywhere else would be giving definition to the trunks and bushes and the like. Right now it just looks like place holders. If that's what they are, then so be it. Also, the orc is far too close to give a sense of what his reaction is. He currently appears to be yelling at the sky. Without further revelation as to his other arm and possibly legs, there's not really any narrative. Yes, there will probably be subtitles where this is shown, but images need to be able to convey meaning on their own as well.

Otherwise, I too would love to see what you've contributed.
Win if you can. Lose if you must. But always cheat.
-AP-
Art Contributor
Posts: 3
Joined: November 24th, 2009, 4:41 am

Re: HttT Story screens

Post by -AP- »

Turuk wrote:Always nice to have another art contributor, though I'm not familiar with what you put in the game AP, I've been gone for a bit. What did you do for the art contrib?
Thx, nice to be involved :)

Actually I haven't done anything yet, that image is only my very first draft (half of the background is missing / in progress, and lightning is off etc, and the things that Jetrel said).
User avatar
Valkier
Art Contributor
Posts: 509
Joined: May 25th, 2009, 5:43 pm

Re: HttT Story screens

Post by Valkier »

Huh. They made me wait till something was actually completed and submitted before I got my shiny blue name. Guess you found the golden ticket in your candy wrapper.

Further crits on the lighting is your ape has some strange things going on. The inside of the mouth would not be lit nearly as well with the lighting coming from behind it. Around the edges we'd see a little pink or orange perhaps, but not the entire way into the cheek in perfect gum color. I also think the fingers on his hand would be shaded since he has his hand upturned, and therefore blocking light from hitting that part. As for posture, why is his hand closed?
Win if you can. Lose if you must. But always cheat.
-AP-
Art Contributor
Posts: 3
Joined: November 24th, 2009, 4:41 am

Re: HttT Story screens

Post by -AP- »

Valkier wrote:Huh. They made me wait till something was actually completed and submitted before I got my shiny blue name. Guess you found the golden ticket in your candy wrapper.
Well can't really say anything about that, I was asked to join, so I guess I was just lucky :)
Valkier wrote:Further crits on the lighting is your ape has some strange things going on. The inside of the mouth would not be lit nearly as well with the lighting coming from behind it. Around the edges we'd see a little pink or orange perhaps, but not the entire way into the cheek in perfect gum color. I also think the fingers on his hand would be shaded since he has his hand upturned, and therefore blocking light from hitting that part. As for posture, why is his hand closed?
Nice pointers, thx =) I will use them when I get back to work, now I am just waiting for more instructions where to go with these images from Jetrel and Kitty, so I have clearer vision what to do. But please, give more critique and comments, it is always helpful :)
User avatar
Valkier
Art Contributor
Posts: 509
Joined: May 25th, 2009, 5:43 pm

Re: HttT Story screens

Post by Valkier »

You were ASKED to join? I'd love to hear the arrangements of this if you don't mind.

As for my crits. Do you find them less valid because I am not Kitty or Jetrel? I'm a little confused by this.
Win if you can. Lose if you must. But always cheat.
User avatar
Cloud
Art Contributor
Posts: 502
Joined: December 17th, 2008, 7:43 pm
Location: The land of pixels
Contact:

Re: HttT Story screens

Post by Cloud »

Valkier wrote:You were ASKED to join? I'd love to hear the arrangements of this if you don't mind.
Much as it would interest me too, it is perhaps better done over PM or IRC.
Valkier wrote:As for my crits. Do you find them less valid because I am not Kitty or Jetrel? I'm a little confused by this.
All crits should be valid, but as AP is new here I can see the (s)he might look to Jet and Kitty for instructions... AP feel free to act on any crit posted, if we all hung around for Jet or Kitty things would get done a thousand times slower (even though they are active, many artists will give great feedback much faster than they ever could).

Personally the skin tone is off, Wesnothian Orcs aren't green, see the portait images LordBob (and TSI for SotBE) have already completed for the skin tone we generally use. I could be reading it wrong though and it's just the way you've done the lighting (I don't pretend to know huge amounts about art on this scale).

I will, however, say that it's a nice piece so far, and also welcome to the forum :)
Softly/SoftlySplinter on IRC. Will be lurking around more these days
Mainline Animations|The Væringjar
Art for these mead-sodden, bearded mushroom-junkies by Girgistian!
User avatar
Jetrel
Posts: 7242
Joined: February 23rd, 2004, 3:36 am
Location: Midwest US

Re: HttT Story screens

Post by Jetrel »

Valkier wrote:You were ASKED to join? I'd love to hear the arrangements of this if you don't mind.

As for my crits. Do you find them less valid because I am not Kitty or Jetrel? I'm a little confused by this.
Lendrick (the guy from http://www.opengameart.org) is commissioning someone out of his own pocket to work on wesnoth's story art. This specific bit is an act of patronage on his part; we didn't ask, lendrick offered. I didn't suggest him, but both kitty and I noted he could probably do the job when confronted with samples of his stuff by lendrick.

You might be a valid candidate for some future patronage offer; lendrick was just searching some art hiring sites, and was specifically familiar with -AP- from having worked with him on OpenGameArt; no one from the current wesnoth community was considered (including myself), although in retrospect that might have been a nice idea, we are still going forward with this specific one.

-AP- was given the title in anticipation, because we needed to prevent his topic from getting swamped with noise from the forum at large. He will obviously be stripped of it if he fails to do the job. This is far from the first time we've done this; it usually matches reality very quickly, though, which is why you probably haven't noticed it.

This isn't exactly the kind of noise we were trying to avoid, but it's definitely OT. Any more discussion about him being hired in the thread about his portraits will get deleted.
Play Frogatto & Friends - a finished, open-source adventure game!
User avatar
Jetrel
Posts: 7242
Joined: February 23rd, 2004, 3:36 am
Location: Midwest US

Re: HttT Story screens

Post by Jetrel »

Valkier wrote:You were ASKED to join? I'd love to hear the arrangements of this if you don't mind.

As for my crits. Do you find them less valid because I am not Kitty or Jetrel? I'm a little confused by this.
-AP-: Valkier knows what he's doing with regards to lighting and rendering. Quite a few people don't, which is of course why we immediately gave you the art-contrib status and moved you into the private forum - we're trying to avoid a wall of noise from the peanut gallery. This threads already gotten a bit of it, which I'm certainly not helping by double-posting. :P
Valkier wrote:Huh. They made me wait till something was actually completed and submitted before I got my shiny blue name. Guess you found the golden ticket in your candy wrapper.
We're not comprehensive, and we're definitely unfair some of the time. At the least, we have no pretense of being fair. :| We try to do a good job, but that's the best we can offer - trying.
Play Frogatto & Friends - a finished, open-source adventure game!
User avatar
thespaceinvader
Retired Art Director
Posts: 8414
Joined: August 25th, 2007, 10:12 am
Location: Oxford, UK
Contact:

Re: HttT Story screens

Post by thespaceinvader »

I'm not sure what portion of the story this image is suppose to represent in HttT - its been a while admittedly, but I can't think where this would be used. It seems like the orc is addressing the player, which doesn't happen as far as I recall.

I'd also question putting a character so far into the foreground of the image - it looks more like a dialog scene than a background for a narration.
http://thespaceinvader.co.uk | http://thespaceinvader.deviantart.com
Back to work. Current projects: Catching up on commits. Picking Meridia back up. Sprite animations, many and varied.
User avatar
Thrawn
Moderator Emeritus
Posts: 2047
Joined: June 2nd, 2005, 11:37 am
Location: bridge of SSD Chimera

Re: HttT Story screens

Post by Thrawn »

It's the last surviving orc running to warn asheviere, if I remember the story correctly. If that's the case, perhaps making him look a bit more disheveled would be useful?
...please remember that "IT'S" ALWAYS MEANS "IT IS" and "ITS" IS WHAT YOU USE TO INDICATE POSSESSION BY "IT".--scott

this goes for they're/their/there as well
Boucman
Inactive Developer
Posts: 2119
Joined: March 31st, 2004, 1:04 pm

Re: HttT Story screens

Post by Boucman »

hello AP

since you're new around, let me give you the usual "new artist" speech..

Ok, obviously you know what your doing and your first try is close enough to mainline style to show that you'll be able to use that style with little practice. I'll give you a quick tour of our Art Community so you don't get lost.

Basically our forums are built around forum titles ( written under the people names, as you can see with my own)

* No title (or not art related title) => Did nothing with regard to art
* Art Contributors => Have contributed artwork to the mainline game
* Art Developers => The 'art staff', have the power to add artwork to the mainline game, and can generally be relied upon for good critique
* Portrait Director (kitty and LordBob) => Gives go/no-go to portrait contributions
* Art Director (jetryl) => Gives the go/no-go to contributions


It is important for you to understand that distinction, because people with no art knowledge may not give comment and critique as well as people with art knowledge. If you disagree with a comment from someone with no title, just don't follow the advice.

You should consider comments from art contributors and art developers as comments coming from knowledgeable people, and worth considering... Of course, your art is yours and you are free to not follow the advice, but you should consider them. One thing to be aware of is that this forum is dedicated to getting artwork ready for the mainline game. We treat your work realistically - we're not going to praise it just because you posted it here. Please don't take offence at suggestions to improve your work - if you're looking for blind praise, you're in the wrong place.

Jetryl, kitty, and the Art Developers usually have very clear comments which tell if a change is needed to get something into mainline or just a suggestion to improve. These people will have the final say on whether something goes into the mainline game or not.

If you try to do a portrait for a specific character (from a campaign for example) you should try to contact the campaign author first and try to post your linework as soon as possible (even if it's just a scanned sheet of paper) That's because the original author might have a particular "vision" on his character and having early feedback will usually be good for everybody

The part about submiting your work "early and often" is a good advice even if your not drawing a campaign character, by the way....

Now the forums...

We have three art related forums:
* "Art contributions" is for pieces of art intended for mainline
* "Art workshop" is for pieces for user made content, and for users who are posting for critique to help to develop their skills.
* "Art development" is limited to people with an art title. Some artists don't like having their work openly criticised, and post there instead of the open forums.



One last point...

All wesnoth contributions are made under the GPL. I am not good at explaining legalese, but you should read it since your work have high chances of being mainlined at some point...
Last edited by thespaceinvader on December 11th, 2009, 4:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Add LordBob's Portrait Developer status
Fight key loggers: write some perl using vim
Post Reply