Strategy Battlegame

[ndchristie]

Well, just for fun, ive started work on graphics for a strategy battlegame with a Low Fantasy setting, for when i get artists' block working on other projects...

so here are the sillohuettes for one race's basic units (no characters or monstrous creatures in this set yet)



rider - horse - page (noncombatant)  - swordsman - axeman - pikeman - halberdier - archer - cross-bowman - standard bearer
mounted page (noncombatant) - horseman - horse archer - mounted lord knight - lord knight - lord
lancer - lanzeritter - mounted standard bearer - falkeritter - mounted lord

crits on the shape would be much appreciated, especially on the shapes of the horses.  also, if you cant tell what a weapon is supposed to be, please tell me (lord knights and the lord himself carry greathammers)

if you are wondering, i do plan to have magicians, but they fall under the category of characters and are therefor not on this sheet, nor are rare mounts such as pegesi, griphons, etc)

[Sohashu]

Loooks good.  Can't wait for the coloured versions.  Not much to crit as of yet. 

Also, can I colour these as practice? 

OOT:  Is your sig from R.E.M.

[ndchristie]

thanks the colored ones are coming shortly, yes if you want to color them be my guest, and yes, my sig is from an REM song ^^

[Andy Tran]

 The poses look nice. Yep, can't wait until they are colored.

[Pawige]

The horse looks a little llama-like with the very thick neck and shoulders. Search for Belgian, Percheron or Shire horse for some good reference images. Love the look so far overall though!

[fil_razorback]

At first glance, I tought it was an army of Nazguls (LOTR guys, I mean the 9 dark silhouettes) but in fact it is much cooler

[ndchristie]

The horse looks a little llama-like with the very thick neck and shoulders. Search for Belgian, Percheron or Shire horse for some good reference images. Love the look so far overall though!

thanks for the tip, but im excessively bad at drawing horses, and despite the fact that i work on a farm with 3 belgians i cant seem to get the form down.  would you mind doing a quick edit?

[Ryumaru]

very cool, cant wait to see them colored.
i suck at drawing horses too so im no help there 

[Pawige]

Okay, here's an edit, tried to get the relative size and proportions correct, it's definitely not totally correct, but should help you get going in the right direction. The trickiest part for me is the backside, as horses have a butt that curves outwards like we do, I docked his tail to be sure the outline of the back leg was correct.

[ndchristie]

thanks, i tried to take some of your adjustments into account when i made the colored versions, though perhaps it needs more changes made still:



and some alternative colors:



any crits now that they are colored? the horses face is being a real pain

at the moment, all the horses are white, but if i ever make this game, i plan to have simple palette switches to make the horses several different colors to add variation, as well as random + or - hue variation of a few points when each soldier is drawn to help with that as well

[Pawige]

The colors are excellent as usual, you've got a good eye for color use, but the units seem a little too busy. It was very difficult for me to make out the forms at a glance, I had to zoom in and study it to start seeing them right. The mounted units are even harder to make sense of. I think it's the darkest blue pixels here and there that are causing the most problems.

Edit: To clairify, it's not the blueness of the pixels that's causing the problem, it's the places they're put. Too dark to be used on the bright helmets without breaking them up a lot visually.

[Rerg1]

I am sooo playing this game XD.

[fil_razorback]

Sorry for being OT but please Adarias, check your PMs

Pawige => I think it's not a problem of colors, it's just that there are (too ?) MANY details in these TINY sprites.

[Ryumaru]

also the details are easier to see when on a darker background.

[ndchristie]

The colors are excellent as usual, you've got a good eye for color use, but the units seem a little too busy. It was very difficult for me to make out the forms at a glance, I had to zoom in and study it to start seeing them right. The mounted units are even harder to make sense of. I think it's the darkest blue pixels here and there that are causing the most problems.

these are intended to be complicated and harder to read at a distance (the way real people are) because i dont want them made as cartoony game-art, partly because, since i have no coder interested yet, this isnt *really* a game, but also because i wanted them to be more interesting to me personally.  i could make them less busy pretty easily, but i dont really want to. in rome total war http://rometotalrealism.org/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=27&g2_serialNumber=3 its nearly impossible to read individuals, but i like the look of it.  i am comtemplating doing these over in say, an advance-wars style, but i dont think it will be nearly as interesting.  personal taste.

by the way, these also should ideally be viewed on a much darker background since thats how they will normally appear, running across fields etc, kinda like this:

[junkboy]

No crits, I just think it's very inspiring to see how you've been able to squeeze so much detail into these sprites.

[Tremulant]

Beautiful stuff as always, Adarias. Your colour choice is always an inspiration. that said, while I respect your vision, I have to agree with Pawige. The first thing that struck me when I saw the coloured ones was how busy/confusing they look (at first accentuated by the light BG, but nonetheless...) I think, maybe through a bit of palette tweaking, you could soften these a bit, make them less confusing, without losing to much by way of detail/style.

Then again, this is probably a personal taste thing on my side, and as you're the artist, the importance of your personal taste far outweighs my own as far as your own work is concerned. They're lovely regardless.

[fil_razorback]

It looks completely different on the grassy background. Much better IMHO ^^

[Rox]

That is amazing. The insane amount of detail and the colors make me think of some DOS game from the 90's. The time when pixel art could be obscenely detailed because each pixel was half an inch big. I really hope you can make this game come real.

Nice field you found for them, too. The football goal made me giggle.

[ndchristie]

heh, yeah i hadnt noticed the goal there untill id already resized and started pasting in horses

on a note unrelated to the discussion of readability, ive begun animation test of the horse, beginning with the simplest part of the charge, the charge itself.  ive decided that each horse will have animation independant of it's rider to add more variation and to make my animating job easier.  this is mostly for death animations; if they are separate, the horse can roll or crumple or fall sideways or even just stop, turn and bolt, or keep running forwards, and the rider can be unseated in a number of equally satisfying ways (the only thing he cant do is remain on the horse)

but thats getting ahead of myself.  i have never done a very good human run animation, and never even tried a horse before, let alone my semi-deformed little mount ive got here here.  visually based on http://www.chemeketa.edu/programs/ITCD/horse.html , i personally like it, but i know nothing of horses (im not even sure if i have the legs on the right sides of the horse >.<) and i would love to get some crits on it



and a few of them together, so you can see as a group (though if this ever becomes a game i hope they wont be synchronized)

        

[Andy Tran]

 Now I comment on what they look like when shaded. They look pro, Adrias. GJ.

[Conzeit]

just a more indepth description of galloping

Animal Locomotion index

Looking at the sprite, I still cant quite pinpoint it yet, but I think there's something wrong with frame4, may edit with more info later.

EDIT: nevermind, where the hell are all the frames when the Horse is suspended on the air? they are supposed to be 3 out of 15, but you have none out of 8.

I understand you are simplyfing the sequence becaues you have less frames than the stages of horse galloping, and the frames where he has cntact with the floor seem more complex, but you just cant cut the suspended phase, that's what makes it a gallop!!, just like with humans there must be frames where he isnt touching the ground at all, otherwise it's like an exageratedly energetic walk.

Anyway, you're doing great, the model sillouethes are great and I've done worse animal galloping than that, I just want to make harsh critique because this looks like one of those indy project where there's more to it than the deadline to be met.

In general, I think you are focusing too much on making the correct poses for the legs, and too little on the balance of the horse and where the force should be more visible...

[ndchristie]

thanks for all the help, ive done some tweeking (including reversing a mistake i made when i put in the ground, it wasnt supposed to obscure the last row of pixelsthe way it did)....

could you elaborate on that last bit about balance though?  animation is my weakest point and i really jsut dont understand how to improve it.  sorry if it feel like im asking you to hold my hand

[ptoing]

Looking good so far. If you wanna learn about animation, go buy this book, it will teach you more about it than anyone here on this board can.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0571202284/sr=8-1/qid=1154475215/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-9864617-7150365?ie=UTF8

[Conzeit]

well, that wasnt a crit per se...it was more of something to keep in mind, I meant that when you edit the sprite the focus should be on where the weight should be or how the impulses should flow trough the horse.

I guess I was just trying to say that you shouldnt focus so much on what should be where by which frame, rather on what's being pulled down, what's being pulled up...what forces are working on the Horse's body. thinking of what should be where is more of sequential image, comic thinking, but if you think of forces that is more adequate to animation.

I think it is completly usable the way it is now, what you do with it now just depends on what you want to emphasize on this horse's run.

here, I made a GIF of the gallop with correct axis


compared to yours, I think you still need to show more force on the pre-suspension/suspension part of the gallop, try to make the head counter the height shifts of the shoulders (whatever they're called), if the shoulders are down, put the head up and vice versa, same for the butt.

....all that's really left in the anim is fixing balance details like those, analyze the gif on your own and compare it to yours, maybe you can even try to chop frames until you have an 8 frame muybridge gallop so you can compare it with your own.

[Gil]

You missed the most important muscle of a horse, the neck. Look at the head jerk. The trapezoid (or deltoid, dunno) muscles of a horse and the back muscles pull up the entire back body during the leap. It's not a push from the legs, but rather a pull from the neck. Compare your curved spine to the straight one in the muybridge picture...

[Conzeit]

there's something else I'm not sure you have considered yet, as a run anim it should have a constant number of pixels the anim is supposed to be moving every frame, unless of course you plan to have the programmer move the horse by a specific amount of pixels every frame

[ndchristie]

there's something else I'm not sure you have considered yet, as a run anim it should have a constant number of pixels the anim is supposed to be moving every frame, unless of course you plan to have the programmer move the horse by a specific amount of pixels every frame

knew i forgot something....




....shit

[miascugh]

there's something else I'm not sure you have considered yet, as a run anim it should have a constant number of pixels the anim is supposed to be moving every frame, unless of course you plan to have the programmer move the horse by a specific amount of pixels every frame

knew i forgot something....




....shit

you know, the mere thought of the horse floating in with this animation at a constant pace makes me become all nostalgic about an early 90ies game that never existed (though i was immediately reminded of civilizations town-view screen for some reason). i wouldn't write that off as bad at all.. well yeah, imo

[ndchristie]

actually, i got the civilzation vibe too after i posted it.  not sure why since theres really no resemblence

it looks ok at 4pxper frame, (32 px in the whole cycle) which i can live with.  this whole animation feels a bit beyond my ability so i think im just going to move along with the rest of things