New Portraits/Small Pics!

[Uatu]

List of small pics to do (someday; * are finished, + are some % done, # for rejected images ):

Forests (only):
*Sprite

Aquatic (only):
*Aquatic Elf

Level I:
Bandit
*Mountain Dwarf/Shield Dwarf
*Goblin
*Orc
*Giant Rat
Shrieker
Bat, Giant
#Kobold
*Xvart
*Badger
*Carbuncle
+Skeleton
Zombie
*Al-mi'raj
Demon, Manes
*Devil, Nupperibo
Halfling
Gnome
Larva
Squirrel, Giant Black

Level II:
*Centipede, Giant
Gnoll
*Stirge
*Gorbel
*Lizard Man
*Myconid
Ice Troll
Azer
Duergar
Fire Bat
Frog, Killer
Kuo-toa
*Modron, Monodrone

Level III:
Ghoul (Ghast)
#Spider, Huge
*Gelatinous Cube
Mobat
*Ochre Jelly
*Ogre
Devil, Lemure
Centipede, Megalo-
Wolf, Dire
Wolf, Worg
Wolf, Winter
Zombie, Juju

Level VI:
+Devil, Erinyes

Level VII:
*Devil, Horned
*Will-o-Wisp

Level X:
*Devil, Glasya (Princess of Hell)
+Dragon, Gold

********

A separate thread for portraits/small pics, which I seem to be doing more of lately (My quality seems to be going up a bit as well... yay! That also means that the older ones will have to go to "hidden" mode soon...)

Today I have:

Redhead lady (portrait) - PC/NPC wizard of some sort?
Horned devil (small pic) - to go along with the icon (henchmen for Glasya!).

[manikus]

Very nice work here. The redhead is exquisite and the horned devil is pretty wicked looking.

If you are benching some of your images, does that mean we can expect an updated version some time in the future? Or, are they to make way for new and exciting pictures? (We win either way. )

[Uatu]

Uh... Actually, I still have lots of server space, so that just means that I will hide them (i.e. unlink them) although they will still sit on the server

I am experimenting with various new ways of doing pixel art these days (for example, the redhead was an experiment in skin shading with less contrast and less work while the horned devil was an experiment in use of deep shades... and thus less work). In general, I want to get images done with less work (note that I haven't been doing too much of the veeeerrry detailed shading I did more before lately). If I can get things done faster, hopefully you will see more stuff soon here... but it all depends on mood and such

My-future-module (when?!?!):

Sub-boss: horned devil
Final boss: Glasya

[manikus]

Well, I think your expirements are proving fruitful. I like the look of both of these images, and if they were done with less work...fantastic.

[Uatu]

Well, those were the successful experiments I have another one that, em, I don't think I'll be posting up...

(The forest picture was another experiment (in shadows and using less colors), which turned out okay.)

[manikus]

I know how that goes. I've got about 5 different tree wallsets in various formats. And not-a-one of them is going to see the light of day around here.

Thinking about using less colors, an artist in the FRUA community (hans a.k.a DHanson11 in case you want to check out his stuff) gave me the advice of never using the same color for two or more horizontally or vertically connected pixels in icons, combat walls/wildernesses spell graphics. The reason being that you can fake the eye into thinking there are more colors being used in very small pictures that have a limited palette. (For example, the base icon frame in FRUA is 24x24 with 80-some colors or less available.) I, of course break that rule all the time with DC b/c I've got millions of colors at my disposal, but when I'm hand-doing an icon, I still try to follow it, but modified for 4 or more pixels (b/c DCs icon base is bigger) and if I'm outlining a shape.

I would offer this as my two cents, but its probably not worth that much, so we'll call it my half-a-penny wisdom.

[Uatu]

Ha ha... Yeah, I gotta find some of my old "rejects" and try to fix them up...

But yeah, actually, the idea of alternating colors was one of the ideas I was playing with for the forest... The trees look pretty good (especially the leaves) as a result, although I guess I could do more for the ground (but I am lazy, as I mentioned)...

It is nice not having to fix really large palettes (in terms of colors)...

I don't like using the common "dithering" technique for pixel art where people hatch/hex pixels around, though - we had to do things like that in the old 16 color or even 256 color days, but for smooth surfaces, smooth colors is better now...

[Uatu]

Anyway... lowered the redhead's collar bone a little (My images have random "fixes" done to them intermittently...)

[SilentThief]

Those portraits are schweet!!! I've been messing around with FRUA a little bit lately, and the main thing that FRUA has in artwork that DC does not is the smallpics. Frua has a bunch of monster smallpics (some animated like the weaving heads of the hydra or the sea dragon breaking thru the coral wall and IIRC we can do animations as smallpics), as well as PC/NPC smallpics which we have in development (and they look AWESOME), and we recently had a bunch of item pictures like FRUA has; there are no generic town/tower/castle pics like FRUA has.

(begin rant)
I know that if I can manage to find some of that elusive free time to make art I'll get better at making art, but working 2nd shift, from 11:30am to 8:00pm makes it REALLY difficult to do anything other than sleep, eat, and work. I feel like such a robot . The alternative to working is not possible, unless my wife gets a dramatically higher income than me (but with her doing CNA classes, she just might have it). Anyhow, for now I try to sneak in some DC related activity at night on the weekends.
(end rant)

ST

[manikus]

I'll eventually get around to doing some buildings, but from my polling, they didn't seem to be a priority. I'm not trying to duplicate the pictures from FRUA, I'm trying to get a good base.
It is a bit of a priority to get at least a few monster pics for the next release, of which there already several (which I'm choosing to not make public at this point...you'll just have to wait). We are actually surprisingly close to having all of the small pics we will need for a default art release. Then, we just need another wall or two, a couple of more sprites, a few more spell effects, a few big pics and a map or two. That's it really, then the official art base will be complete.