Solunar

[wciow]

-Working on the humanoid form, your guys seem like teenagers to me, just too skinny and lacking in true muscle.

I disagree, I like the lithe nature of john's humaniod. It makes a refreshing change from the short stocky units in almost all other mods.

-For humanoid movement animations, look at how you run...

Good advice Archmage. I thought the running animation of your spearman was excellent 

-Take notice of speed. Some animations like dying animations, lack that UMPH that looks devastating.

Exactly right, most death animations in Glest mods (including my own) look more like the victim is relaxing into an easy chair than being killed. It can be difficult to find that sweet spot between too slow, which looks like the unit is floating down, and too fast, which looks like they've been splatted to the ground by a bullet train!

-For textures, try some of GIMP's nice tiled patterns...

Gimp is certainly the best program to use. It has many plugins that can effortlessly create good quality textures.
My own advice would be:

1) always use shadowing/highlights. Adding drop shadows and highlights is the main way to give depth to a 2d texture. Relief/emboss are good tools to use for this.

2) Use noise on empty areas of the texture. You'll be amazed at how this works. Flat colours in textures usually look wrong since not much that we see is really totally flat in colour. Adding noise to the texture just makes it look right to the eye.

[-Archmage-]

-Working on the humanoid form, your guys seem like teenagers to me, just too skinny and lacking in true muscle.

I disagree, I like the lithe nature of john's humaniod. It makes a refreshing change from the short stocky units in almost all other mods.

It is definitely different that what we've been seeing, but I think boosting the muscles so they actually look like warriors would be good.

Quote from: -Archmage-

    -For humanoid movement animations, look at how you run...

Good advice Archmage. I thought the running animation of your spearman was excellent 

Thanks man, I still have some improvements in mind for it...

Quote from: -Archmage-

    -Take notice of speed. Some animations like dying animations, lack that UMPH that looks devastating.

Exactly right, most death animations in Glest mods (including my own) look more like the victim is relaxing into an easy chair than being killed. It can be difficult to find that sweet spot between too slow, which looks like the unit is floating down, and too fast, which looks like they've been splatted to the ground by a bullet train!

Honestly I think reality is a lot faster than we think. Magitech is a good standard for animation, all of their animations are well done.

@GIMP: Don't forget the Free Select Tool! 

[Omega]

Concerning the humanoid style, I'm all for a ninja-like litheness, but agree they could use just a little bit more muscles on the arms and legs.

As for death animations, balance is really hard to find because there's so many ways for a unit to die. For the most part, however, with a unit simply falling to die, a human body really should fall quite fast.

[Psychedelic_hands]

Concerning the humanoid style, I'm all for a ninja-like litheness, but agree they could use just a little bit more muscles on the arms and legs.

It's not just the muscles that are the issue IMO, I think its more the lack of clothing and armour definition. I mean, you csn't see your muscles much if you're wearing armour? A simple loop cut or two close together, scaled a bit can made things look so much better. I know it might seem a bit pointless for an RTS, but it totally helps. Though I always try to exaggerate a bit just to make it more visible.

Edit: Unless it's one of the shirtless units,  in that case I'm all for some more muscles.

[John.d.h]

Awesome critiques, guys!  So what's I've gathered so far is that the models need more definition (clothing or muscles, where applicable), the textures likely need to be redone altogether (I figure it's easier to redo them than fix them at this point), the speed of the death animations needs to be modified, the walking animations look jerky and weird, and there needs to be something to fill the silence in the background.   Did I miss anything?

I think what I might do is make a few different but interchangeable base models (the Kern should be fairly slim, while the Savage should be burly), with a few modifications here and there.  I think the Gallowglass definitely needs his own model so he looks as armored as his XML says he is, and I'm actually thinking of completely scrapping the Therian's current model for something more "low fantasy" (like a dude wearing bear skins, rather than an actual werebear).  As for the textures, I can hopefully make some high-detail (multi-res) versions of those base models, so the textures will practically make themselves at that point.  Anyway, thanks for all the advice!  I will definitely be taking it into consideration.

I'm kinda split between two different development philosophies -- "done is better than perfect" (i.e. finish making everything first, then go back and perfect it later), and "it's easier to fix it while you're still working on it" (i.e. fix it as you go along, or else be overwhelmed by having to fix everything at the end).  I'm trying to find a good balance between the two.

[-Archmage-]

I think you should prioritize the gameplay and XML parts first. Then after you've gained more experience (after you've constructed all the factions basically), you should go back and redo/touch-up the artwork. It's alot easier to go back over it and play with old art(more fun too), than to try to do it really good in the beginning. If you push really hard and do it mostly all at once you'll get progressively better, and one faction will look nicer than the other.

[John.d.h]

The gameplay and XML is basically done for this faction, pending more play-testing.  In fact, the alpha left out a few units that already "work" (Fay, Hag, Savage) but just don't have any art.  The only units that aren't working are the Basilisk, which I think I'm dropping entirely, and the heroes, which I think I might postpone until after Sun is released (and knowing me, that could be decades ).