The Battle for Wesnoth Wiki - User contributions [en]

Basic Animation Tutorial

2012-09-06T06:18:53Z

Jetryl:

by Jetrel

== Introduction ==

Animation works by fooling the mind into thinking that a series of still images are one continuously moving object. This works based on the neurochemical principles of the human eye - specifically a phenomenon called "persistence of vision". Human retina cells do not immediately turn off after being activated by light; instead they gradually "cool down" and they keep sending the signal that they see light, in gradually decreasing amounts, during this period. The cooldown is measured in seconds, and for at least 1/30 of a second, the cells have cooled down so little that the change in what you see is imperceptible.

'''The trick to making a convincing animation is to swap still images faster than a retinal cell's cooldown, which tends to be about 10-30fps.''' Anything less than 10fps does not register in the mind as an animation, and looks more like a rapid slideshow. Anything more than 30fps tends to rapidly diminishing returns on "smoothness". This is precisely why videogamers tend to demand at least 30fps of rendering in their games (by buying strong enough machines to achieve that) - anything less feels very jerky and frustrating to watch.

One computer-specific factor is that game animations tend to not merely be played in a fixed spot on the screen, but tend to slide around as the character is moving - for example, if a character is running or jumping. Persistence of vision applies not just to frame-count of a given animation, but also to distance travelled per frame - if it moves too quickly relative to the framerate, it will look like it is disappearing from one location, and suddenly appearing in another. The general solution to this is motion blur, which mimics the real-life blurring of objects (think of fan blades) as they move quickly. The best way to do this, especially in a 3d engine, is just having the code blur anything which moves over a certain speed, but this is not supported by wesnoth's engine - instead, we hand-animate motion blurs of anything which moves at a sufficiently high speed - for us, this is exclusive to weapons being swung.

Wesnoth is able to get away with a low FPS on its animations because we can programmatically create motion, some of the time. When a unit attacks, the code slides the attack image around. This allows us to use single images where we would be better served by multiple images. We can only get away with this in certain situations, however, and part of this is because the code-driven movement is both done at the maximum framerate of the running copy of wesnoth (often in the ballpark of a 3d game; some 30-60 fps), and the code-driven movement is out-of-sync with the hand-drawn animation, seemingly giving us additional frames of animation (even if we don't have a new hand-drawn frame to display, the game will slide the current one around for the fraction of a second until we get to the next frame). A similar principle is used in a lot of cheap animated television shows, where a low frame-count animation of a character will be panned across an animated background to create the illusion of motion. Bad shows will use this to fill multiple seconds of animation. More enlightened shows will actually spend the effort to bring an animation up to a good 15-30 fps rate, and then will use the above trick to make an animation even smoother by providing additional "fake" inbetween frames.

== General Technique ==
=== Visualization ===
Animation is difficult to do from scratch, without prior experience, because it's actually very hard for us to visualize how something is supposed to move. This is a common problem in art; the over-estimation of our ability to visualize things. It's deceptively hard - if I were to ask anyone if they can picture a simple action like "swinging a baseball bat" in their head, it'd be borderline insulting. Of course we can - anyone can! But when you get into the specifics of how each body part moves during part of the animation, our imagination gets surprisingly fuzzy. It glosses over the details. When you suddenly have to provide concrete depictions of something in an animation, you're quite likely to come to the surprising conclusion you don't ''really'' know what it looks like.

So how do you find out? The best way has always been to study the real thing.

In order to get a feel for how the body reacts to doing certain movements, you may need to watch yourself in the mirror, or look at a movie. For subjects relevant to wesnoth, there are many examples of good, medieval action films which portray common actions like swinging swords, or riding a horse. YouTube is also an excellent source of footage of people performing common actions.

One of the primary assets to an animator available today is the fact that video can be downloaded and viewed in a video program like MPlayer, VLC, or Quicktime - all of which have options for slow-motion replay. Real-life motion can be difficult to study because it moves faster than your eye and mind can track and comprehend. A digital video file can be slowed down to the point where every subtlety of motion can be seen, and understood. Likewise, points-of-interest can be played over and over again. This is priceless learning material many animators of yore (from the era before personal video equipment) would have given anything to have, and it's also dramatically more convenient than the VHS era, since they often didn't have footage of stuff on-hand - whereas you have a global video database that can be thoroughly searched, available at the touch of a button. Don't waste this resource; it's invaluable.

=== Exaggeration and Wind-Up/Anticipation ===

Traditional animation studios discovered several rules of thumb to liven up a strict representation of movement - that is, techniques that are probably correct to use even if you're not "drawing from life" and witnessing them firsthand. These were especially powerful in the first days of animation, because the drawings made were so simple, and left out a lot of the detail of the natural world - these are some of the first details to put back in. All of these are based vaguely on movement in the real world. If you exaggerate these too much, which you can certainly get away with, it will result in the animation looking cartoony, which is not necessarily a bad thing. These were developed in the first days of animation - in fact, fellows like Walt Disney pioneered them.

When human beings prepare for a big move, such as swinging a baseball bat, or sword, they tend to give themselves some space to gain momentum. When a pitcher winds up for a throw, he curls back so that the ball will spend more time in his hand, thus spending more time accelerating, and thus have a higher speed. For Wesnoth images, this is a great technique to use on big swords and clubs. If a man is going to throw a punch, he reels back with the arm that is preparing to deliver it. If a cobra is going to strike, it first rears back its head. Think of what "Popeye the Sailor Man" does when he's about to clobber someone, and you have a perfect (albeit slightly exaggerated) example of this. Keep in mind though that you don't need to be afraid of over-exaggeration; we are hurt much more by under-exaggerating a motion, than we are by over-exaggeration, so always err on the side of over-exaggerating things like windups.

=== Inertia and Air Resistance ===

Different things are affected by physics in different ways. When a person makes a motion, certain muscles drive the motion, and the rest of the body is pulled by this force acting on it. The most important thing is that different parts of the body will move at different speeds - this is related to my mantra of ''"move the whole body"'' - if you do it, things will look a ''lot'' more realistic.

=== Non-rigid Objects ===

Most objects in the real world flex in extraordinary ways when they move. You don't consciously notice these, and you'd normally never guess that they took place, but they look right when animated because you do subconsciously see them in the real world. For a dramatic example, if you look at a slow-motion recording of baseball being hit by a bat, the baseball gets flattened like a pancake! This happens only for the tiniest moment, after which it oscillates back and forth (like a spring) returning to it's normal shape. In Wesnoth animation, using such a thing only for a single frame can make for a much livelier animation. Consider our thief's idle animation, and how the tossed money bag deforms as it lands in the hand.

=== Follow Through ===

Often taught to beginning boxers, a strike given with enough force to damage will often be targeted not at the surface of the opponent, but deep inside and even behind him. This is also related to many situations in which the person performing an action doesn't care where the moving object stops - a baseball player is not concerned with where the bat stops in his swing, rather he just wants to hit the ball as hard as he can, which is why the bat will often swing a full half-circle beyond home plate. In animating Wesnoth images, this is why it looks better if really strong sword strokes go ''clean through'' the point where the opponent is standing. As an example, this is why the Elvish Hero's attack looks stronger than that of the Elvish Fighter.

=== Cycling/Looping ===

In the real world, points of view do not remain fixed like they do in animations or videogames, but certain motions often get repeated, sometimes almost identically. One of the first tricks that animators used was to make animations of people doing something like walking. Instead of imitating the real world, wherein each step taken is subtly different from the next, as the mind carefully coordinates changing balance and the uneven conditions of the ground "plane", the animators simply drew a single step of the person walking, and lined up the images so that the final frame lined up with the first frame. Though one could not change the point of view on the subject, the animation could be looped indefinitely, and would look convincingly like viewing a person walking from a specific angle. For our purposes, this can be used to link together any repeating animations (such as walking animations).

== Common mistakes ==

All of these mistakes are ''absolutely unacceptable'' in an official in-game image. Some are very easy to correct, such as alignment, others, such as redrawing hidden surfaces, can make an animation much harder to do, but this is the price you ''must'' pay to make something look right. They're the laws of the real world, and fortunately, no one can use "style" as a cop-out for not following them - if you ignore these, your animation will look terrible, and we won't accept it into the game.

As a general principle, '''whenever you are tempted to use a shortcut to finish something, don't.''' It will look bad, and in the long run, it won't save any time, because if we end up using the animation, someone will have to pay the time to correct it. We will not use broken, half-hearted attempts at animations.

=== Moving only the active element ===
One trap is to think: "Hey, I'm animating a man swinging a sword. That means all I have to do is move the sword arm up and down." It seems logical, but if you try it, as you can see in an example below, it will look very strange - possibly "robotic". The reason is that human bodies ''can't'' move like this - it breaks several natural laws that result from how we're built.

Even the most subtle human motions will result in adjustments of the entire body, both for balance, and simply because the moving parts are pulling on the rest of the body. Every part of the human body is connected to the rest of the body, and a motion in any part of the body will affect the entire body (just like a soccer ball caught in a net deforms the entire net). When you animate, you need to imitate this; each part of the body moves proportionally to its weight; moving fingers around won't cause a torso to shift, but swinging an entire arm, and a weapon in it, will pull on the entire body, and this needs to be drawn if an animation is to look natural.

Balance needs to be taken into account when animating. If you know what you're doing, you can deliberately make a unit look like they're off balance in the specific frames when they should be. For example, a fencer might look like he's falling forwards during the "lunge" of his attack, and falling backwards during the recovery. This will look right because it's exactly what a real person does; a real fencer would use "being off balance" to accelerate their movements. Running, too, is always off-balance; when anyone runs, they're always leaning way forward (the only thing pulling them forward is their feet, and if their feet were ever in front of them, they'd fall over backwards; thus they always lean forwards far enough to keep their body from doing so).

Failing to move anything but the 'active element' breaks balance, and breaks kinematics. This first image is how bad things look if you just move the arm around, the second image is how good it looks if you make the entire body shift in reaction to the arm swinging a weapon:

* '''Wrong:''' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/basic-animation/asheviere-no-kinematics.gif

* '''Right:''' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/basic-animation/myrmidon-good-kinematics.gif

=== Hidden surfaces must be redrawn ===

When an object turns, in an animation, and shows a side that wasn't visible before, it ''must'' be drawn from scratch. If a man has his back to you, and turns around, his now-visible face will look a whole heck of a lot different from the back of his head, which was visible before. It's obvious that things look different when they're turned around, but this is a really common mistake, because people are afraid of having to draw parts from scratch. It's really hard, and people like to think that there's some shortcut they can use to get away with not actually having to draw something from scratch. (For a lot of beginners, including myself back in the early days when most of my work involved editing existing material, the idea of having to redraw things from scratch seemed impossible.) However, this is something you'll have to get used to and overcome. The bright side of this, though, is that redrawing the few newly visible parts is a great source of practice, and is much easier than drawing a whole sprite from scratch; it's a good way to build up to being able to create entirely new sprites from scratch.

A common shortcut, which is selecting body parts in your graphics program, and sliding/moving them around (referred to as "Select and Slide") can only be used for the tiniest motions, or motions in which there is NO rotation. As soon as you're rotating a sprite around the y-axis, things need to be redrawn.

=== Turned surfaces must be redrawn ===

After about a 30-45 degree turn of any part of a sprite, the surface of that part has to be redrawn to account for the rotation. If a man is facing you, and turns sideways, his appearance will change considerably - for one thing, there will only be one eye visible where there were two visible before. When this happens, you have to draw it all from scratch. Yes, it's difficult, but it's par for the course. Like I said above, "select and slide" will fail you, here.

You can see this applied to the following bad example. A horse is supposed to be falling down, but because the animator was so terrified of having to actually draw the turned-body of the horse from scratch, the horses body never falls over, and instead deflates like a balloon in the same pose it started out in.

* '''Wrong:''' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/basic-animation/elvish-rider-deflate.gif

=== Misaligned Frames ===
Each image in a series must line up correctly with the image before it. If they don't, the image shakes around inside the animation, which looks really bad:

* '''Wrong:''' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/basic-animation/shaman-uncentered.gif

== See Also ==

* [[From Base Frame To Full Animation]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]
* [[Create Art]]
* [[Create]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

CastleTutorial

2012-08-13T04:35:13Z

Jetryl: Changed the images on the castle tutorial to wesnoth-based hosting

== Building tileable castles - A tutorial ==

== Introduction To Castles ==

===Overview===

Wesnoth terrain graphics system allows the WML designer to create various
terrain graphics "models": rules that allow to determine how the different
terrain tiles will be displayed by the game. Those allow the terrain designer
to specify renderings that go beyond the simple "one terrain type = one image"
representation.

One of those terrain models is the Castle (it will be called like that,
"Castle", all along this document, although this model can be used for many
other terrain types, like, for example, caves.) Castles are created from two
type of elements: a castle floor, and a castle wall. Castle floors are normal,
basic tiles that are placed on each corresponding tile. As those really have
nothing special, they will not be detailed in this document. What we will
detail is how to build castle _walls_.

===The Simple Castle Model===

The Simple Castle Model is used to build castle walls, without keeps. Castle
walls are special transitions, that are drawn between Castle tiles, and
Non-Castle tiles. For example, imagine some castle tiles are disposed as shown
in figure (1); castle walls will then be drawn as shown in figure (2)

''(figure 1)'' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/castle-tutorial/images/figure1.png

''(figure 2)'' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/castle-tutorial/images/figure2.png

Castle Walls are composed of 12 different images (as show in figure 3), that
tile together. Those are positioned at the corners of the castle border, as
shown in figure 4.
"convex" images are positioned at convex borders, "concave" images are
positioned at concave borders (as it hopefully might be expected.) When we talk
about "concave", or "convex" borders, we always take the castle's interior
point of view.

''(figure 3)'' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/castle-tutorial/images/figure3.png

''(figure 4)'' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/castle-tutorial/images/figure4.png

===The Keep Model===

The Keep Model is created to build the special transitions that are used to
build a wall around the Keep of a Castle. Keeps are assumed to be always
composed of one tile (isolated from any other keep tile.)
Keeps are a little more complex than castles walls: they are built from 24
different images (see figure 5,) thus setting to 36 the number of images
required for a complete castle.

''(figure 5)'' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/castle-tutorial/images/figure5.png

There are 4 kinds of keep images: those representing keeps corners that are
outside of a castle, those representing keep corners that are inside of a
castle, and thos representing keep corners which are in the border; the last
one being divided in 2 categories, depending on the castle-keep tiles going
clockwise, or counter-clockwise (see figures 5 and 6.) Interior keep tiles are
supposed to tile with other interior keep tiles, and with corresponding
transition tiles; same for exterior keep tiles. Figure 6 illustrates the
different types of transitions for keep tiles.

''(figure 6)''

== The Wall ==

===Tile drawing problematics===

To draw tileable castles, one should start with drawing the wall. Some tileable
castles may only consist on a wall, without a keep (Think here that what we
call "Castles" in this document may apply to a lot of other terrains, built
with the same rules. Also think that some castle may have keeps that are normal
tiles.)
The 12 tiles that compose a wall are made from 2 groups of tiles, as stated
above: convex wall tiles, and concave wall tiles. Tiles for each one of those 2
groups are drawn together, then automatically cut out using a specialized
software. That way, only 2 graphics are necessary to generate those 2 tiles.

The main problem, as that should be inferred from reading the tile model
description, is making convex graphics tiling with concave graphics: as concave
graphics are drawn together, there is no problem making them tile together;
same with convex graphics. See figure 7 for an illustration of this problem: ||A and
B are drawn together, so they tile perfectly. However, we must make sure A will
correctly tile with C!||

''(figure 7)'' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/castle-tutorial/images/figure7.png

Geometry, and a good methodology, may be used to make those tile correctly.
This is possible, but, trust me, this is tedious. And hard to maintain. And
even harder to explain. And, the more complex the graphics are, the harder it
is. That is why ia helper tool was developed, to help in the process.
The helper tool we are talking about is called the Castle Exploder. We will
describe how to used it to build a complete castle.

===Preparing the work environment===

Before using the Exploder, you must prepare a work environment. The Exploder,
must be provided with files named according to a correct pattern in order to be
able to work.
Exploder files are named according to the type of image they represent. The
"type" of the image corresponds to the position of the different tiles that
compose the image. For example, the exploder recognizes any image that is
called foobar-convex.png as containing the 6 convex castle walls, disposed
around an hex.

There currently are 7 different image types; all of which are used to build a
complete castle with keep. Those are named:

* convex
* concave
* exploded-convex
* exploded-concave
* keep (not yet available)
* keep-walls (not yet available)
* keep-flower (not yet available)

''(figure 8)''

Forget about the last 3 ones for now; the 4 first ones are used to build
castles.

Download the castle project here:

http://www.anathas.org/ayin/wesnoth/castle-tutorial/files/castle_project.zip

To prepare your work environment, unpack the castle_project.zip file in a
directory of your choice.

===Drawing The Convex Wall===

Open, using your favourite bitmap editor the file "castle-convex.png" (if your
favourite bitmap editor cannot open png files, I can't help you.) You will see
the following:

''(figure 10)'' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/castle-tutorial/images/figure10.png

Do not be afraid with all those coloured polygons! Those just are guides, that
will help you to position your image. If your bitmap editor handles layers, I
suggest you make the actual drawing on another layer, keeping this one to
provide guidelines. If it does not, you should just delete all this coloured
stuff.
The different hexes, corresponding to the position of the actual terrain hexes
in the game, are represented with a value change. The 6 different corners, that
will be cut into tileable pictures, are represented with a hue change.

This image is supposed to represent a convex castle tile: that is, a single
castle hex, followed by non-castle hexes all around. Draw the corresponding
graphics on it. You do not have to bother about them tiling together: they
will, as they were drawn together.

Some guidelines on drawing the wall: when drawing a wall, the TOP of the wall
(not the bottom) should be around the hex border (TODO: confirm this: this is
good for the positioning of units, but not so for villages near castles)
Ideally, a wall should not be higher than 1/4 of a tile (that is: 18 pixels).
Try to make the castle appear to be viewed under the same angle as other
castles, and villages.

Let's draw the wall (figure 11).

''(figure 11)'' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/castle-tutorial/images/figure11.png

===Exploding The Wall=== http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/castle-tutorial/images/castle-exploder.png

Now, we must draw the concave version of the wall. To make sure it will
correctly tile with the convex version, we will not directly draw it in the
castle_concave.png image: we will draw it in an exploded version of the
castle_convex.png image. That is where the Exploder Tool comes into play.

Just open a terminal window, and type the following command:

exploder castle-convex.png castle-exploded-convex.png

The exploder will open the first file, extract from it the tiles it
recognizes, then put those on the second file, if there is a place to put
them (For example, exploding castle_concave.png to castle_convex.png is a
no-op, as those two pictures do not have any tile in common.)

''After the program finishing merging the tiles'', the castle-exploded-convex.png
file will then look like figure 12

''(figure 12)'' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/castle-tutorial/images/figure12.png

===Drawing The Concave Wall===

Draw the castle graphics on the 6 concave tiles, so that they tile correctly
with the convex tiles. It is useless to modify the concave tiles; if you have
inadvertently done so, you may explode back the castle_convex.png file on the
file you are working on. Do not worry: your work will not be lost; as the
exploder tool does only overwrite the portions of the image it actually
replaces.

''After you have drawn the missing castle corners'', the castle-exploded-convex.png
file should look like figure 13

''(figure 13)'' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/castle-tutorial/images/figure13.png

===Imploding Back the Concave Wall===

The concave tiles you drew should, magically, tile together. However, you may
want to ensure they actually do, and, if they don't, to correct them so they
do. Just implode back the castle_exploded-convex.png file into the
castle_concave.png file, using the command

exploder castle-exploded-convex.png castle-concave.png

It should look like as in figure 14.

''(figure 14)'' http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/castle-tutorial/images/figure14.png

===Further manipulations===

===Cutting The Tiles For Use In The Game===

Once you have up-to-date castle_convex.png and castle_concave.png files, you
must cut them, so they are usable by Wesnoth. To do this, create a directory
where you want the cut tiles to be output (or you may just use the "output"
directory which already was created), and use the commands:

cutter castle-concave.png output
cutter castle-convex.png output

== Keeps ==

As it was said above, keeps are a little bit more complicated than castles.
Keep always being composed of one isolated tile, keep tiles always are convex,
however, they may have several different relationships with nerby castle tiles:
they may be inside of a castle, outside from a castle, or in a border.

===The keep views===

===Drawing interior and exterior keeps===

Keeps inside of a castle, and keeps outside of a castle, may be strictly
identical. However, for your graphics to be more "realistic," you may decide they
are different. For example, keep tiles located outside of a castle may have no
doors, less windows, they even may have a stronger wall, etc. Interior keep and
Exterior keep tiles do not need to tile together, as there always will be an
intermediate Border tile to make transition. They may be made separately;
however, keep in mind that you will have to make each transition between those.
If they are too different, transitions may be clunky.

===Making keep transitions===

===Flower Power===

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

User:Jetryl

2010-06-20T12:07:17Z

Jetryl:

==Jetrel==
Real name: Richard Kettering. I joined Wesnoth back around version 0.5 (or was it 0.6?), attempting to replace the portrait art that had been added to HttT with something better. I was not an artist, in the traditional sense of someone who shows early promise at the subject; I had decided to dabble in it at a rather late point in my life, after having written myself off as being untalented. I dabbled in it because I felt, as someone aspiring to commercial game development, that I needed to have some understanding of the next most important aspect of games besides code - even if I didn't become good at art, I believed dabbling would teach me enough about the field to less incompetently manage any artists I hired. Wesnoth acted as an excellent means to motivate and hone my skills.

Currently, I am Wesnoth's informal "Art Director". Although I am responsible for shepherding/directing contributions from other people, I also do a great deal of 'grunt work' on my own. My focal area has been unit sprites.

In real life, I am a recent math/physics graduate, who has worked professionally as a web/database programmer.

Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship Policy

2009-06-13T05:57:19Z

Jetryl: New page: {| style="display:none;" |__TOC__ |} ==Wesnoth Summer of Art Scholarship== ===Aim:=== ====The overall aim of this scholarship is two fold;==== # To assist in the development of stude...

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==Wesnoth Summer of Art Scholarship==

===Aim:===

====The overall aim of this scholarship is two fold;====
# To assist in the development of student artists over the summer.
# Provide the Wesnoth Project with usable art for its own purposes.

====Secondary aims include:====

# testing out a usable structure for future projects of this type.
# establishing a system by which the project can build up its artistic talent base.

===Considerations:===

====Financial (project)====
* Wesnoth is a relatively small project with a limited financial base.
** The scholarship must be sustainable given our financial situation.

====Financial (individual)====
* Payment to students should be large enough that they are free to work on wesnoth as a summer job. It should be comparable to part-time summer jobs, and/or work study programs through colleges.

====Quality of Candidates====
* While the scholarship is open to students, a basic level of quality must be maintained in their work.

====Oversight====
* Adequate oversight is required to ensure the program operates within its stated parameters.

====Cultural====
* The program must not be simply an excuse to pay 'bounties' to people to create art. It exists to give a chance to work on wesnoth, to students who otherwise couldn't - as an alternative to being forced to take a less educational summer job.

==WSAS Parameters==

# '''Payments'''
## Structure. The applicant stage will run from June 13th to June 22th
## The mentorship program will run from June 26th until September 13th
## The Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship (WSAS) will be structured in a similar fashion to Wesnoth’s Google Summer of Code program.
## Richard Kettering (Jetrel/Jetryl) will serve as a mentor for students and oversee their selection, in conjunction with other developers/mentors.
## The wesnoth forums, the IRC channel #Wesnoth-mentor, and the mailing list will serve as the primary communication forums.
# '''Selection'''
## The individuals selected for the WSAS must be able to contribute art that can be added to the program with a reasonable amount of correction. A good rule of thumb is that the corrections that would need to be applied to their work should not take as long or longer than it would take for an experienced artist to just create the art from scratch, themselves.
## The individual may be from outside the immediate project.
## The program will not be actively advertised at this time.
## Proposals will be judged by:
### The usefulness of the student's proposal in improving the core content of the game
### The perceived ability of the applicant to achieve the milestones
# '''Applicants’ requirements:'''
## Applicants must submit their proposals to the project by June 15th 2009.
## The proposals require a proposal for their personal objectives, as well as a structure several milestones
### Each milestone must have a definable goal for which pieces of art will be finished.
### The entire proposal must have a definable goal for the advancement of the student's artistic skill.
### Students are encouraged to discuss potential proposals with Jetrel or other artists before they submit their final copy.
## The proposal should be done on a wiki page at Wesnoth.org
## If the applicant is not an active Wesnoth art contributor at present, a portfolio is required demonstrating adequate skills.
### They will also required to fill out a questionnaire about their interests and experience.
## Jetrel and other developers will discuss the proposals from June 22nd and notify successful parties before June 26th.
# '''Mentoring'''
## Milestones will occur every three weeks, with four in total.
## Students will have the whole body of work produced for each milestone, reviewed at the culmination of that milestone.
## Students may be asked to provide one to three exemplary works of each milestone's progress for archival/publicity purposes.

Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship

2009-06-13T05:30:44Z

Jetryl:

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|}

Applications for the scholarship are open until June 22nd, after which date we will discuss the proposals, and notify the successful parties before June 26th. The mentorship program will run from June 26th until September 13th.

The general process of the scholarship will be that a student artist will propose a summer-long project to improve Wesnoth's art resources. This will be structured with several identifiable milestones which the student is expected to finish over the course of the program. If deemed adequate, the student will be awarded a proportion of the total fund at each milestone, and if the student fails in two successive milestones, he or she will be removed from the project.

The specific outlay of our policy can be found here:
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Wesnoth_Summer_Art_Scholarship_Policy

== I want to be one of your Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship students, what should I do? ==

* Create an account on the wesnoth forum, and tell an admin to mark it as a WSAS Student account (Admins are boucman, Ivanovic, mordante, Shadow_Master, Sirp and Turuk). The forum is our everyday form of communication for collaborating on artwork, and registering an account is mandatory. Post all of your work in the Art Development subforum.

* Join the irc channel (#wesnoth-dev on irc.freenode.net) and introduce yourself. For the unaware, IRC is a program that creates online chat rooms; we use it to do back-and-forth discussions in realtime, which can be much more helpful for solving certain problems than the time-delayed communication of the forum. You are expected to be in this channel whenever possible. We will not give formal interviews, but it really helps to be able to directly communicate with people. You will need an IRC program to get on IRC, and here are some decent suggestions:
** [http://www.colloquy.info/ Colloquy] on Mac
** [http://www.silverex.org/ XChat] or [http://www.mirc.com/ mIRC] on windows
** linux users will likely either have an established preference, or should use the client that came with their distro.
** If you'd really like to shop around, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_Relay_Chat_clients this rather long list] should help:

* If you're having trouble, here are a few primers on using IRC:
** In one sentence, all you do is: Go to the options dialog, type in a server, such as irc.freenode.net, give yourself a nickname, then leave the options dialog and /join a channel, such as #wesnoth-dev
** http://www.xchat.org/docs/start/
** http://www.mirc.com/install.html
** http://www.offscale.org/forums/index.php?autocom=pages&do=show&id=17

* Start a wiki page about your idea, add a link on the bottom of this page and add this information on it:
** '''hint:''' you can start a new wiki page by just typing in a new url, and editing the page; e.g. going to www.wesnoth.org/wiki/John_Doe's_WSAS_project
** List your account names (forum, irc nick) so that we can recognize you.
** Fill the questionnaire on this page: [[WSAS List of questions to answer]]
** Detail your idea as much as possible, look at other students pages, and please update the page as you complete milestones.
** Add a link to your page at the bottom of this page

* Though not mandatory, it is highly advisable to attempt one sample piece of art related to your idea, so we have an idea how you work. Be sure to post this in the Art Development forum. You can also finish any of the items on our todo-lists; if you do, also list it on your own page with a reference to it.
** [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2014 A General Wesnoth Art Readmefirst]
** [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21512 Animation upgrade project]
** [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=292889#p292889 List of desired Portraits] (note; refer to kitty's post)

==Payment==

We are expecting that the stipends for this scholarship will individually be US $1500, though this depends on the number of final candidates.

Our preferred method of disbursing the scholarship payments is Paypal; if candidates are concerned about this or wish to discuss an alternative, they can contact us about the matter.

'''Please note that scholarships received may be taxable, but we are not able to give tax advice.''' Participants should check with a tax advisor if they are concerned.

==List of Ideas for the Project==
These are suggestions from our current team members. You're free to suggest your own ideas, if you think you have something better:

====Help bring our death-animation project to completion====
Wesnoth has the ability to show death animations, but our usage of it thus far is both minimal, and very different between units. We'd like to standardize it (like has been done with defense animations), so that most death animations use similar, easily macroed schemes.

====Help bring our animation upgrade project to completion====
We're in the process of upgrading our old set of 1-2 frame animations (if you can call them that) to decent, fluid, 5-7 frame animations for melee combat.

====Help complete our set of generic unit portraits====
We have portraits for some units, but we would like a full set (at least for the roots of most of our unit-class trees), and we'd like it all to be in a consistent, high-quality style.

====Help finish the team-coloration project====
The last race remaining in the project is our drakes, and we could really use some help porting them over to the new scheme.

====Animate the mermen====
The mermen have received their TC redesigns, but have not been animated. We need an entire set of high-quality animations for the race.

====Provide custom campaign portraits for a few of our campaigns====
Individual campaigns have unique speaking characters that deserve portraits. We're trying to standardize the art across our campaigns to a relatively consistent, high-quality look (despite being worked on by multiple artists).

====Provide story art for a few campaigns====
Individual campaigns have fullscreen paintings that get shown to depict major story events (including background exposition, significant moments during the story, and epilogues). We currently have very few campaigns with a decent collection of these.

[[Category:Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship|*]]

Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship

2009-06-13T05:14:09Z

Jetryl: Added payment section.

{| style="display:none;"
|__TOC__
|}

== I want to be one of your Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship students, what should I do? ==

* Create an account on the wesnoth forum, and tell an admin to mark it as a WSAS Student account (Admins are boucman, Ivanovic, mordante, Shadow_Master, Sirp and Turuk). The forum is our everyday form of communication for collaborating on artwork, and registering an account is mandatory. Post all of your work in the Art Development subforum.

* Join the irc channel (#wesnoth-dev on irc.freenode.net) and introduce yourself. For the unaware, IRC is a program that creates online chat rooms; we use it to do back-and-forth discussions in realtime, which can be much more helpful for solving certain problems than the time-delayed communication of the forum. You are expected to be in this channel whenever possible. We will not give formal interviews, but it really helps to be able to directly communicate with people. You will need an IRC program to get on IRC, and here are some decent suggestions:
** [http://www.colloquy.info/ Colloquy] on Mac
** [http://www.silverex.org/ XChat] or [http://www.mirc.com/ mIRC] on windows
** linux users will likely either have an established preference, or should use the client that came with their distro.
** If you'd really like to shop around, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_Relay_Chat_clients this rather long list] should help:

* If you're having trouble, here are a few primers on using IRC:
** In one sentence, all you do is: Go to the options dialog, type in a server, such as irc.freenode.net, give yourself a nickname, then leave the options dialog and /join a channel, such as #wesnoth-dev
** http://www.xchat.org/docs/start/
** http://www.mirc.com/install.html
** http://www.offscale.org/forums/index.php?autocom=pages&do=show&id=17

* Start a wiki page about your idea, add a link on the bottom of this page and add this information on it:
** '''hint:''' you can start a new wiki page by just typing in a new url, and editing the page; e.g. going to www.wesnoth.org/wiki/John_Doe's_WSAS_project
** List your account names (forum, irc nick) so that we can recognize you.
** Fill the questionnaire on this page: [[WSAS List of questions to answer]]
** Detail your idea as much as possible, look at other students pages, and please update the page as you complete milestones.
** Add a link to your page at the bottom of this page

* Though not mandatory, it is highly advisable to attempt one sample piece of art related to your idea, so we have an idea how you work. Be sure to post this in the Art Development forum. You can also finish any of the items on our todo-lists; if you do, also list it on your own page with a reference to it.
** [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2014 A General Wesnoth Art Readmefirst]
** [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21512 Animation upgrade project]
** [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=292889#p292889 List of desired Portraits] (note; refer to kitty's post)

==Payment==

We are expecting that the stipends for this scholarship will individually be US $1500, though this depends on the number of final candidates.

Our preferred method of disbursing the scholarship payments is Paypal; if candidates are concerned about this or wish to discuss an alternative, they can contact us about the matter.

'''Please note that scholarships received may be taxable, but we are not able to give tax advice.''' Participants should check with a tax advisor if they are concerned.

==List of Ideas for the Project==
These are suggestions from our current team members. You're free to suggest your own ideas, if you think you have something better:

====Help bring our death-animation project to completion====
Wesnoth has the ability to show death animations, but our usage of it thus far is both minimal, and very different between units. We'd like to standardize it (like has been done with defense animations), so that most death animations use similar, easily macroed schemes.

====Help bring our animation upgrade project to completion====
We're in the process of upgrading our old set of 1-2 frame animations (if you can call them that) to decent, fluid, 5-7 frame animations for melee combat.

====Help complete our set of generic unit portraits====
We have portraits for some units, but we would like a full set (at least for the roots of most of our unit-class trees), and we'd like it all to be in a consistent, high-quality style.

====Help finish the team-coloration project====
The last race remaining in the project is our drakes, and we could really use some help porting them over to the new scheme.

====Animate the mermen====
The mermen have received their TC redesigns, but have not been animated. We need an entire set of high-quality animations for the race.

====Provide custom campaign portraits for a few of our campaigns====
Individual campaigns have unique speaking characters that deserve portraits. We're trying to standardize the art across our campaigns to a relatively consistent, high-quality look (despite being worked on by multiple artists).

====Provide story art for a few campaigns====
Individual campaigns have fullscreen paintings that get shown to depict major story events (including background exposition, significant moments during the story, and epilogues). We currently have very few campaigns with a decent collection of these.

[[Category:Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship|*]]

Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship

2009-06-11T10:02:29Z

Jetryl: hide TOC, added list of todo items

{| style="display:none;"
|__TOC__
|}

== I want to be one of your Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship students, what should I do? ==

* Create an account on the wesnoth forum, and tell an admin to mark it as a WSAS Student account (Admins are boucman, Ivanovic, mordante, Shadow_Master, Sirp and Turuk). The forum is our everyday form of communication for collaborating on artwork, and registering an account is mandatory. Post all of your work in the Art Development subforum.

* Join the irc channel (#wesnoth-dev on irc.freenode.net) and introduce yourself. For the unaware, IRC is a program that creates online chat rooms; we use it to do back-and-forth discussions in realtime, which can be much more helpful for solving certain problems than the time-delayed communication of the forum. You are expected to be in this channel whenever possible. We will not give formal interviews, but it really helps to be able to directly communicate with people. You will need an IRC program to get on IRC, and here are some decent suggestions:
** [http://www.colloquy.info/ Colloquy] on Mac
** [http://www.xchat.org/ XChat] or [http://www.mirc.com/ mIRC] on windows
** linux users will likely either have an established preference, or should use the client that came with their distro.
** If you'd really like to shop around, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_Relay_Chat_clients this rather long list] should help:

* If you're having trouble, here are a few primers on using IRC:
** In one sentence, all you do is: Go to the options dialog, type in a server, such as irc.freenode.net, give yourself a nickname, then leave the options dialog and /join a channel, such as #wesnoth-dev
** http://www.xchat.org/docs/start/
** http://www.mirc.com/install.html
** http://www.offscale.org/forums/index.php?autocom=pages&do=show&id=17

* Start a wiki page about your idea, add a link on the bottom of this page and add this information on it:
** '''hint:''' you can start a new wiki page by just typing in a new url, and editing the page; e.g. going to www.wesnoth.org/wiki/John_Doe's_WSAS_project
** List your account names (forum, irc nick) so that we can recognize you.
** Fill the questionnaire on this page: [[WSAS List of questions to answer]]
** Detail your idea as much as possible, look at other students pages, and please update the page as you complete milestones.
** Add a link to your page at the bottom of this page

* Though not mandatory, it is highly advisable to attempt one sample piece of art related to your idea, so we have an idea how you work. Be sure to post this in the Art Development forum. You can also finish any of the items on our todo-lists; if you do, also list it on your own page with a reference to it.
** [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2014 A General Wesnoth Art Readmefirst]
** [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21512 Animation upgrade project]
** [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=292889#p292889 List of desired Portraits] (note; refer to kitty's post)

==List of Ideas for the Project==
These are suggestions from our current team members. You're free to suggest your own ideas, if you think you have something better:

====Help bring our death-animation project to completion====
Wesnoth has the ability to show death animations, but our usage of it thus far is both minimal, and very different between units. We'd like to standardize it (like has been done with defense animations), so that most death animations use similar, easily macroed schemes.

====Help bring our animation upgrade project to completion====
We're in the process of upgrading our old set of 1-2 frame animations (if you can call them that) to decent, fluid, 5-7 frame animations for melee combat.

====Help complete our set of generic unit portraits====
We have portraits for some units, but we would like a full set (at least for the roots of most of our unit-class trees), and we'd like it all to be in a consistent, high-quality style.

====Help finish the team-coloration project====
The last race remaining in the project is our drakes, and we could really use some help porting them over to the new scheme.

====Animate the mermen====
The mermen have received their TC redesigns, but have not been animated. We need an entire set of high-quality animations for the race.

====Provide custom campaign portraits for a few of our campaigns====
Individual campaigns have unique speaking characters that deserve portraits. We're trying to standardize the art across our campaigns to a relatively consistent, high-quality look (despite being worked on by multiple artists).

====Provide story art for a few campaigns====
Individual campaigns have fullscreen paintings that get shown to depict major story events (including background exposition, significant moments during the story, and epilogues). We currently have very few campaigns with a decent collection of these.

[[Category:Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship|*]]

Create Art

2009-06-11T09:54:30Z

Jetryl: updated todolist link

{| style="float:right; margin-left:1em;"
|__TOC__
|}

== Getting Started ==

=== General Information ===

Graphic artists usually meet on the [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=9 artwork development forum] or on the [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=18 restricted art development forum]. The former is a great place to post and discuss new and current Wesnoth art and graphics, and the latter to see what the art development team is working on.

Unit and terrain art is stored in the portable network graphics (PNG) format. Each frame of a unit animation, and each variation of a terrain is stored as a separate .png file in the "images" subdirectory of wesnoth, and generally these files will be 72 x 72 pixels (the size of Wesnoth's basic hexagonal tile) with an alpha channel (a part of the file that indicates how transparent each pixel is). When creating your own images, you can test them without overwriting any game data by putting them in your userdata directory (see [[EditingWesnoth]] for details on Wesnoth's directory structure). The game also supports JPEG images, though these are better suited for story art.

To edit these graphics, you'll need some program capable of creating PNGs - some of the programs in the following list are free, open-source software, and will do the job nicely: [[Art Programs]]

If you need some inspiration, we have a [[GraphicLibrary|Graphics Library]] which collects art posted on the forum. You can use this for ideas, and as a scrap heap for different parts of unit images (a technique described [[Give Your Hero A Personality|here]]).

=== Roadmap ===
A list of what's being done and what needs doing:
* '''[[Tiles Status]]''' - a roadmap/plan of sorts for future work on terrain tiles
* [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2014 A list] of current work that needs to be done with sprites.

== Art Tutorials ==

These are a work-in-progress, and describe both how to make art fit into wesnoth's style, as well as giving some considerable tips on drawing in general. Especially useful is the [[External Tutorials]] page which lists a large number of art tutorials available on the web.

=== General Art and Computer Graphics ===
* [[Using the Levels Adjustment]] - making scanned pencil drawings ''not'' look washed out.
* [[Extending dynamic range]] - The Grooviest (so far) tutorial about extending the dynamic range of images and how this technique can be used to make better scans of pencil drawings.
* [[Scanning with camera]] - How to transfer real-life art to computer using a digital camera instead of a scanner.
* [[How to Anti-Alias Sprite Art]] - A means of removing the jagged edges on pixel lines
* [[Art Supplies]] - What physical items you need to do larger cell-shaded art like that of Jetryl/Jormungadr/et al
* [[Inking With Pencils|Computer Inking a Sketch]] - Info from Jason Lutes on his portrait workflow
* [[Scaling Digital Images]] - how to properly resize an image on a computer
* [[How to Shade]] - at attempt at tackling a very complicated topic
* [[Cartography for Wesnoth|How to make Wesnoth-style Maps ]] - Kestenvarn's tricks of the trade
* [[Designing weapons and armour]] - Advice from zookeeper on designing realistic weapons for your characters
* [[Portrait Tutorial]] - a guide on how to draw unit/character portraits by Kitty.
* Sgt. Groovy's vector workshop - tips and tricks for drawing with Inkscape
** [[Z-order tricks]] - few methods for faking overlapping shapes
** [[Variable-width strokes]] - how to make the strokes vary in width, like being drawn with a flat-tipped pen — no tablet needed!
** [[Shaped gradients with Gaussian blur]] - how to make gradients in other shapes than linear or radial
** [[Smooth shading in vector]] - the basic vector techniques for smooth shading, employing Gaussian blur and clipping/masking
** [[Vector Inking]] - vector techniques, including mouse-only, for inking your sketches
** [[Making portrait art in vector]] - a complete tutorial for making Wesnoth unit portraits in vector graphics.

=== [[Terrain|Terrain Graphics]] ===

The following is information specific to drawing terrain for Wesnoth. Read Frame's "Tiles Tutorial" for a good overview of how terrain graphics work.

* [[Tiles Tutorial]] - Frame's tutorial describing the process of making terrain tiles in wesnoth, and how they interact with adjacent tiles.
* [[How To Make Seamless Tiles]] - The tutorial is aimed at Photoshop users, but the technique is similar with The GIMP.
* [[Seamless Tiles Using Inkscape]] - This tutorial teaches a method for making seamless hex tiles in vector craphics (to be rendered in raster).
* [[Turning Square Tiles into Hex]] - Nifty tricks for transforming square (or any rectangle) shaped seamless tiles into hexagon seamless tiles.
* [[CastleTutorial|Castle Tutorial]] - A description of how Wesnoth's castle tiles work (needs updating, but useful nonetheless)
* [[MultiHexTutorial|Multi-Hex Tiling Tutorial]] - A description of how multi-hex tiles work.
* [[Editing Castles]] - Instructions for how to make/edit castles (and other corner-based terrains) using yobbo's GIMP script.

These describe the system used to specify how terrains behave in game:
* [[TerrainCodesWML]] - A list of the letters used to represent terrain types.
* [[TerrainGraphicsWML]] - If you really need to get technical, start here.
* [http://www.anathas.org/ayin/wesnoth/doc/terrain_graphics_wml Ayin's Terrain Graphics document] - If you really, ''really'' need to get technical, this describes the terrain graphics WML system in depth.

=== Sprite Art ===
The following are different tutorials about sprite work compiled by various wesnoth sprite artists. These will give you the most specific-to-wesnoth information about making sprites, and are well worth a read.

* [[Creating Unit Art]] - a list of specifications you will need to match.
* [[Give Your Hero A Personality]] - tricks for editing existing images, including some clip art.
* [[Basic Animation Tutorial]] - or "How to Animate Sprites for Dummies," covering the basic theory, and all of the mistakes to avoid.
* [[Team Color Shifting]] - how to use our new team color system.
* [[Creating Shadows Under Units]] - how we create the shadows for the units in-game
* [[Making Bow Animations]] - the current standard for how we want bow animations to work
* [[Rotate Pixel Art Without Blurring]]
* [[Creating a scratch built sprite]] - an attempt to show some ways creating a sprite from scratch
* [[How to create motion blurs]] - a simple explanation on how to create attack animation weapon blurs
* [[FrankenPacks]] - a quick and dirty way to create sprites for [[WesnothAcronyms|UMC]]

=== External Tutorials ===
The following page contains dozens of links to tutorials covering all manner of artwork, including sprite art. These were not made by wesnoth artists, but should prove very useful for general instruction.

* [[External Tutorials]]

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[EditingWesnoth]]
* [[GraphicLibrary]] - Lots of usercontributed graphics (most should be GPL'ed)
* [[Project]]
* [http://wesnoth.dbzer0.com/blog/wpg2 External Graphic Library] - A project to better organize the art of Wesnoth.

[[Category:Art Tutorials]]

Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship

2009-06-11T09:34:45Z

Jetryl: Added list of ideas

== I want to be one of your Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship students, what should I do? ==

* Create an account on the wesnoth forum, and tell an admin to mark it as a WSAS Student account (Admins are boucman, Ivanovic, mordante, Shadow_Master, Sirp and Turuk). The forum is our everyday form of communication for collaborating on artwork, and registering an account is mandatory. Post all of your work in the Art Development subforum.

* Join the irc channel (#wesnoth-dev on irc.freenode.net) and introduce yourself. For the unaware, IRC is a program that creates online chat rooms; we use it to do back-and-forth discussions in realtime, which can be much more helpful for solving certain problems than the time-delayed communication of the forum. You are expected to be in this channel whenever possible. We will not give formal interviews, but it really helps to be able to directly communicate with people. You will need an IRC program to get on IRC, and here are some decent suggestions:
** [http://www.colloquy.info/ Colloquy] on Mac
** [http://www.xchat.org/ XChat] or [http://www.mirc.com/ mIRC] on windows
** linux users will likely either have an established preference, or should use the client that came with their distro.
** If you'd really like to shop around, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_Relay_Chat_clients this rather long list] should help:

* If you're having trouble, here are a few primers on using IRC:
** In one sentence, all you do is: Go to the options dialog, type in a server, such as irc.freenode.net, give yourself a nickname, then leave the options dialog and /join a channel, such as #wesnoth-dev
** http://www.xchat.org/docs/start/
** http://www.mirc.com/install.html
** http://www.offscale.org/forums/index.php?autocom=pages&do=show&id=17

* Start a wiki page about your idea, add a link on the bottom of this page and add this information on it:
** '''hint:''' you can start a new wiki page by just typing in a new url, and editing the page; e.g. going to www.wesnoth.org/wiki/John_Doe's_WSAS_project
** List your account names (forum, irc nick) so that we can recognize you.
** Fill the questionnaire on this page: [[WSAS List of questions to answer]]
** Detail your idea as much as possible, look at other students pages, and please update the page as you complete milestones.
** Add a link to your page at the bottom of this page

* Though not mandatory, it is highly advisable to attempt one sample piece of art related to your idea, so we have an idea how you work. Be sure to post this in the Art Development forum. You can also finish any of the items on our todo-lists; if you do, also list it on your own page with a reference to it.

==List of Ideas for the Project==
These are suggestions from our current team members. You're free to suggest your own ideas, if you think you have something better:

====Help bring our death-animation project to completion====
Wesnoth has the ability to show death animations, but our usage of it thus far is both minimal, and very different between units. We'd like to standardize it (like has been done with defense animations), so that most death animations use similar, easily macroed schemes.

====Help bring our animation upgrade project to completion====
We're in the process of upgrading our old set of 1-2 frame animations (if you can call them that) to decent, fluid, 5-7 frame animations for melee combat.

====Help complete our set of generic unit portraits====
We have portraits for some units, but we would like a full set (at least for the roots of most of our unit-class trees), and we'd like it all to be in a consistent, high-quality style.

====Help finish the team-coloration project====
The last race remaining in the project is our drakes, and we could really use some help porting them over to the new scheme.

====Animate the mermen====
The mermen have received their TC redesigns, but have not been animated. We need an entire set of high-quality animations for the race.

====Provide custom campaign portraits for a few of our campaigns====
Individual campaigns have unique speaking characters that deserve portraits. We're trying to standardize the art across our campaigns to a relatively consistent, high-quality look (despite being worked on by multiple artists).

====Provide story art for a few campaigns====
Individual campaigns have fullscreen paintings that get shown to depict major story events (including background exposition, significant moments during the story, and epilogues). We currently have very few campaigns with a decent collection of these.

[[Category:Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship|*]]

WSAS List of questions to answer

2009-06-11T09:12:20Z

Jetryl: Added category

===1) Basics===
1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.

1.2) State your preferred email address.

1.3) If you have chosen a nick/screenname for the Wesnoth forums, what is it?

1.4) Why do you want to participate in the Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship?

1.5) What are you studying; i.e. subject, level and school?

1.6) If you have contributed any art to Wesnoth, please list what you have worked on below:

===2) Experience===
2.1) Are they any art projects you have worked on before, if so, what are they?

2.2) Have you created art in a team environment before?

====2.3) Open Source====

2.3.1) Are you already involved with any open source development projects? If yes, please describe the project and the scope of your involvement.

====2.4) Gaming experience====

2.4.1) Are you interested in playing videogames, and if so, what genres are you interested in?

2.4.2) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

2.4.3) Have you played Wesnoth? If so, tell us roughly for how long.
We do not plan to favor Wesnoth players as such, but some particular projects require a good feeling for the game which is hard to get without having played intensively.

===3) Communication skills===
3.1) Though most of our developers are not native English speakers, English is the project's working language. Describe your fluency level in written English.

3.2) Are you comfortable with giving and receiving very technically-oriented criticism of your work, or do you feel that art should be exempt from criticism?

3.3) Are you patient enough to simultaneously give attention to good, productive criticism, whilst not being inflamed by incorrect or offensive criticisms?

===4) Project===
4.1) Did you select a project from our list, if so, which one? Otherwise, if you have invented your own project, please describe the project and the scope.

4.2) Why did you choose this project, and what do you expect to gain from doing it?

4.3) Include an estimated timeline for your work on the project. Don't forget to mention other obligations like "I've booked a holiday between A and B" and "I have an exam at ABC and will be occupied, at that time".

4.4) What would make you stay in the Wesnoth community after the conclusion of this scholarship?

===5) Practical considerations===
5.1) What computer platform do you use? (e.g. Windows/Mac/Linux) Please note which version. (e.g. XP, Vista, Tiger, Leopard, etc)

5.2) Do you consider yourself to be good with computers? If you've done easier things like making a website, you've probably got the skills necessary to write up the scripts to see your work in game. Over half of our artists do, and being able to immediately see your art in-game is a great way to 'proof' it.

5.3) Have you ever used IRC? IRC is an online chat program, and we use it to form chat rooms where our team members discuss and plan.

5.4) At what hours are you awake and available to communicate? (Please specify them in the UTC time zone, rather than your local time zone. There are numerous websites which can convert this, this is one: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html )

[[Category:Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship|*]]

Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship

2009-06-11T09:12:01Z

Jetryl: added category

WSAS List of questions to answer

2009-06-11T09:08:46Z

Jetryl: New page: ===1) Basics=== 1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself. 1.2) State your preferred email address. 1.3) If you have chosen a nick/screenname for the Wesnoth forums, what is it? 1.4) ...

Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship

2009-06-11T09:02:31Z

Jetryl: New page: == I want to be one of your Wesnoth Summer Art Scholarship students, what should I do? == * Create an account on the wesnoth forum, and tell an admin to mark it as a WSAS Student account ...

External Tutorials

2009-05-22T09:14:11Z

Jetryl: /* General Art Instruction */ added link to handprint - color theory

{| style="float:right; margin-left:1em;"
|__TOC__
|}

On this page, there are links to several tutorials covering all manner of artwork, including sprite art. No guarantees on how long the links will last, but then, the beauty of using a wiki is that anyone can submit corrections to them. Hopefully, this should provide a very good base of knowledge to work from. None of these can substitute for practice, rather these exist to guide your practice, and help it to improve your skill rapidly, rather than having you flog away at simple cartoon forms for years and not learn anything.

As stated in some of Jetryl's other tutorials here, ''do not'' jump into the sprite tutorials and ignore the works on general or figure drawing. If you intend to draw sprites well, the ability to draw and visualize the subject in a general sense is an absolute prerequisite. Without exception, the best sprite artists are such because they have good basic art skills; understanding of shading, light, proportion, edging, foreshortening, etc.

You can't fake those - even if you never practice anything but spritework, the tutorials for "higher art" are very applicable, and will improve your spriting skill considerably.

== General Art Instruction ==

Andrew Loomis is a master of his field. ''READ HIS BOOKS.'' They are classics, and are of pristine educational calibre, but unfortunately have been out of print for a long time now and will not enter the public domain any time soon. If you have any interest in drawing human beings though, they will help you more than the rest of the tutorials on this page, combined.

Copies are highly priced and hard to find in most cases, how ever due to demand pirated copies are widely available online. While we don't endorse piracy his books are a great resource and should not be missed.

I personally recommend starting with "Fun with a Pencil" and "Figure Drawing for all it's Worth".

http://acid.noobgrinder.com/Loomis/

For anatomy George B. Bridgman actually taught Andrew Loomis and is was well regarded for his contributions to art education, his books are still in print and pretty cheap, if you can pick up the smaller individual books I highly recommend doing so, "Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life" is a large collection comprising of most of the same drawings and text but due to the changed order and layout is not nearly as good as the originals, luckily some of them have recently entered the public domain and are available from the Internet Archive.

"Constructive Anatomy" seems a good place to start, "The Human Machine" is much more useful as a reference.

http://www.archive.org/details/constructiveanat00briduoft

http://www.archive.org/details/humanmachinethea009564mbp

The Kodak company made the following, very comprehensive introduction to composition. These rules apply to pictures as well, and will help you when laying out the subjects in a picture.

http://asp.photo.free.fr/Composition/photoProgramCompMainClass.shtml

The following site has a very high-level and overbearing tutorial on color theory. It's quite useful to experts, but will probably confuse a beginner.
http://handprint.com/HP/WCL/wcolor.html

Itchy Animation has, amongst other things, a tutorial on the rarely-covered subject of the behaviour of light and its effects on color (rarely covered from an artists' perspective, that is).

http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/

http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/tutorials/light01.htm

Carin Perron has posted an excellent tutorial on the basic principles of animation.

http://www.writer2001.com/animprin.htm

GFXartist.com has several tutorials from different artists, including the painter Craig Mullins, who has, for nearly a decade, been the favorite artist of wesnoth's art slave "Jetryl," and has a good chance of keeping that position for the rest of either fellow's time on this earth. (J- I can't say enough good things about that guy; I would honestly rank him among the greats, like Rembrandt, or Picasso - he's *that* good. The tutorials posted on that site do him little justice - for a better sample, his personal site is http://www.goodbrush.com/ , which has over a thousand of his works.)

http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials

Itch Studios - no relation to the above link, has a good general tutorial on methods in art, including choices of color and lighting.

http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

Digital Painter Henning Ludvigsen has posted several tutorials on his portfolio site.

http://www.henningludvigsen.com/wordpress/?page_id=22

The excellent pencil artist Mike Sibley has a series of tutorials on techniques he uses on his site. Though some are a bit specific to drawing with graphite, his discussion of negative drawing is very useful to any artist.

http://www.sibleyfineart.com/index.htm?tipsndx.htm

The following website, titled "portrait-artist.org", offers quite a few good tutorials on portrait drawing. Though it might not live up to the 'tall order' implied by its name, it's fairly comprehensive:

http://www.portrait-artist.org/

This website already features a couple of great painting tutorials and has potential to grow.

http://www.outofpaint.com

The following (informal) class on the forums of the Megatokyo webcomic steps through various steps of character design with numerous examples:

http://forums.megatokyo.com/index.php?showtopic=1715168

(this is the final post in the series with links to all the steps)

== Tutorials on using Computer Graphics Software ==

Good-tutorials.com has over 8000 various tutorials covering different aspects of the popular program, "Adobe® Photoshop®."

http://www.good-tutorials.com/

== Cell-shading/Comic Art Styles ==

Farlow studios has a number of excellent tutorials on pencilling, inking, and coloring. So long as one can draw, this covers all the computer techniques used to turn a pencil drawing on paper into a colored digital image (including ways to make said pencil drawing that ease the coloration process). A good introduction for people unfamiliar with the computer aspect.

http://www.farlowstudios.com/tutorials.html

DeviantArt member Naysha has posted (in her gallery, amongst other images) the following tutorial on painting flesh tones. It has some decent tips for beginners.

http://www.deviantart.com/view/35619683/

DeviantArt member Chrysa has posted (in her gallery, amongst other images) several tutorials for drawing in the anime style. Some of them, such as the hair tutorial, may be helpful in shaping line art for strands of hair.

http://crysa.deviantart.com/gallery/

DeviantArt member pokefreak has posted a tutorial on how he cell-shades premade black and white images for Shannaro's translations of the Naruto Manga series.

http://www.deviantart.com/view/36191388/

Kazu Kibuishi draws a webcomic called "Copper". He has an extensive tutorial on the process of how he creates his comic, from initial sketches, to inking, to coloring on the computer.

http://www.boltcity.com/workshop/copper_tutorial/index.html

The Polycarbon site has been around for a number of years. Patrick Shettlesworth has posted up several basic drawing tutorials, along with tips on computer techniques which can be used to really spice up art in a photoshop-like program.

http://www.polykarbon.com/tutorials/index.htm

Pens and Pixels has several very good tutorials on advanced cell-shading and coloring techniques.

http://www.pensnpixels.com/instructional.html

Though focused in parts on the mechanics of running a webcomic, and the rather contrived "art lifestyle" that such people try to act out, this site does contain a number of good, basic tutorials on cell-shading.

http://www.onezumi.com/oni/html/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=10

Joe Brudlos has put up a few tutorials for the process he uses in creating pages in his webcomic, "Alpha Shade". There's are two tutorials for Photoshop, covering the creation of clouds and explosions, respectively, and two tutorials on creating cell-shaded imagery in Macromedia Flash.

http://www.alpha-shade.com/www/Tut/Tutorials.htm

Julie Dillon has a few of her tutorials up on the "How to draw Manga" site. Though obviously focused on the style favored by Japanese comic artists and animators, it does cover all the basics of cell-shading rather well, and also covers basic figure drawing in the style.

http://www.howtodrawmanga.com/tutorial.html

Dan Kim's website Clone Manga has at least four comics in the works, currently, most in rather atypical (and thus, refreshing) styles. He has posted two drawing and coloring tutorials, for use in a photoshop-like program.

http://manga.clone-army.org/tutorials.html

Though not so terribly informative, this tutorial is being linked based on the vast amount of time which the game "Oni" stole from Jetryl's teenage years.

http://oni.bungie.org/features/drawing_konoko/drawingkonoko.htm

A bunch of general manga comic, cellshading and misc computer art related tutorial.

http://www.mangarevolution.com/tutorials.php

== Sprite Art ==

With a name like SpriteArt.com, this site actually manages not to disappoint. Tutorials from several artists are present, as well as a good deal of gorgeous pixel art, but is currently down.

http://www.spriteart.com/

http://www.spriteart.com/pixeltutorial.html

Zoggles has a wealth of tutorials made by many different people, some good, some bad.

http://www.zoggles.co.uk/asp/tutorials.asp?show=index

A russian site featuring several tutorials - you may need to click on the "English" link to view the site in a language you can understand, unless you have the privilege of knowing Russian.

http://www.gas13.ru/tutorials/

A fellow named mark posted several tutorials at the following site. Most of them are fairly decent:

http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/

The following is a forum post on some spriting forum containing a list of links to different pixel tutorials. Some are of banal quality, your mileage may vary.

http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=706&PN=1

A rather large Japanese tutorial on spritework. Note that the tutorial is only in Japanese, and that the html does not automatically set the page to the Shift-JIS text encoding, which is necessary in order to view the page. Even if you don't understand the text, following along with the pictures may be more than enough to teach you something. There are several pages to the tutorial, the arrow links to switch between are at the bottom and top.

http://www.enterbrain.co.jp/digifami/digiweb/dot_teck/3nen/3_09.html

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Basic Animation Tutorial

2009-05-09T20:10:30Z

Jetryl: Reworded some stuff for clarity.

by Jetryl

''' Introduction '''

Animation works by fooling the mind into thinking that a series of still images are one continuously moving object. Certain things have to happen for the illusion to work. The basic principles are as follows, though keep in mind that these are interrelated:

* A moving object can only travel below a certain ratio of "screen space travelled" to "number of frames". If an object travels too far in too few frames, it will not look like it is moving, rather, it will look like it is disappearing from one location, and suddenly appearing in another.

* If the frames iterate too slowly - eg, less that 5 frames per second, the illusion of motion fails, and the whole thing looks more like a slideshow than an animation. Many 3d videogamers demand a framerate of 30fps from their hardware, or else they find the game to be too "jerky" and frustrating to play - some, even, demand 60fps. As a priciple, though, animation tends to fall apart somewhere between 5-10 fps.

Wesnoth is able to get away with a lot because we can programmatically create motion, some of the time. When a unit attacks, the code slides the attack image around. This allows us to use single images where we would be better served by multiple images. We can only get away with this in certain situations, however, and part of this is because the code-driven movement is both done at the maximum framerate of the running copy of wesnoth (often in the ballpark of a 3d game; some 30-60fps), and the code-driven movement is out-of-synch with the hand-drawn animation, seemingly giving us additional frames of animation (even if we don't have a new hand-drawn frame to display, the game will slide the current one around for the fraction of a second until we get to the next frame). A similar principle is used in a lot of cheap animated television shows, where a still-frame of a character will be panned across an animated background to create the illusion of motion. Bad shows will use this to fill multiple seconds of animation. More enlightened shows will actually spend the effort to bring an animation up to a good 15-30fps rate, and then will use the above trick to make an animation even smoother by providing additional "fake" inbetween frames.

''' Common mistakes: '''

All of these mistakes are ''absolutely unacceptable'' in an official in-game image. Some are very easy to correct, such as alignment, others, such as redrawing hidden surfaces, can make an animation much harder to do, but this is the price you ''must'' pay to make something look right. They're the laws of the real world, and fortunately, no one can use "style" as a cop-out for not following them - if you ignore these, your animation will look terrible, and we won't accept it into the game.

As a general principle, '''whenever you are tempted to use a shortcut to finish something, don't.''' It will look bad, and in the long run, it won't save any time, because if we end up using the animation, someone will have to pay the time to correct it. We will not use broken, half-hearted attempts at animations.

* '''Moving only the active element'''
An animator thinks, "Hey, I'm animating a man swinging a sword. That means all I have to do is move the sword arm up and down." The animator then wonders why on earth his animation looks so poorly done.

Even the most subtle human motions will result in adjustments of the entire body, both for balance, and simply because the moving parts are pulling on the rest of the body. Every part of the human body is connected to the rest of the body, and a motion in any part of the body will affect the entire body (just like a soccer ball caught in a net deforms the entire net). When you animate, you need to imitate this; each part of the body moves proportionally to its weight; moving fingers around won't cause a torso to shift, but swinging an entire arm, and a weapon in it, will pull on the entire body, and this needs to be drawn if an animation is to look natural.

Balance needs to be taken into account when animating. If you know what you're doing, you can deliberately make a unit look like they're off balance in the specific frames when they should be. For example, a fencer might look like he's falling forwards during the "lunge" of his attack, and falling backwards during the recovery. This will look right because it's exactly what a real person does; a real fencer would use "being off balance" to accelerate their movements.

It's difficult to visualize how something is supposed to move. In order to get a feel for how the body reacts to doing certain movements, you may need to watch yourself in the mirror, or look at a movie. There are many examples of good, medieval action films which portray common actions in wesnoth (like swinging swords) - titles such as Braveheart, or Lord of the Rings come to mind. Watch one of those movies, find a point where a character swings a sword, and watch what happens to the rest of the body. It's not subtle at all; you'll see in any motion that the entire body goes into doing any decent-looking movement with a sword.

This first image is how bad things look if you just move the arm around, the second image is how good it looks if you make the entire body shift in reaction to the arm swinging a weapon:

** Wrong: http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/basic-animation/asheviere-no-kinematics.gif

** Right: http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/basic-animation/myrmidon-good-kinematics.gif

* '''Hidden surfaces must be redrawn'''
When an object turns, in an animation, and shows a side that wasn't visble before, it ''must'' be drawn from scratch. If a man has his back to you, and turns around, his now-visible face will look a whole heck of a lot different from the back of his head, which was visible before. It's obvious that things look different when they're turned around, but this is a really common mistake, because people are afraid of having to draw parts from scratch. It's really hard, and people like to think that there's some shortcut they can use to get away with not actually having to draw something from scratch. (For a lot of beginners, including myself back in the day, the idea of having to redraw things from scratch seemed impossible.) However, this is something you'll have to get used to and overcome. The bright side of this, though, is that redrawing the few newly visible parts is a great source of practice, and is much easier than drawing a whole sprite from scratch; it's a good way to build up to being able to create entirely new sprites from scratch.

A common shortcut, which is selecting body parts in your graphics program, and sliding/moving them around (referred to as "Select and Slide") can only be used for the tiniest motions, or motions in which there is NO rotation. As soon as you're rotating a sprite around the y-axis, things need to be redrawn.

* '''Turned surfaces must be redrawn'''
After about a 30-45 degree turn of any part of a sprite, the surface of that part has to be redrawn to account for the rotation. If a man is facing you, and turns sideways, his appearance will change considerably - for one thing, there will only be one eye visible where there were two visible before. When this happens, you have to draw it all from scratch. Yes, it's difficult, but it's par for the course. Like I said above, "select and slide" will fail you, here.

You can see this applied to the following bad example. A horse is supposed to be falling down, but because the animator was so terrified of having to actually draw the turned-body of the horse from scratch, the horses body never falls over, and instead deflates like a balloon in the same pose it started out in.

** Wrong: http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/basic-animation/elvish-rider-deflate.gif

* '''Misaligned Frames'''
Each image in a series must line up correctly with the image before it. If they don't, the image shakes around inside the animation, which looks really bad:

** Wrong: http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/basic-animation/shaman-uncentered.gif

''' Exaggeration techniques: '''

Traditional animation studios discovered several rules of thumb to liven up a strict representation of movement - that is, techniques that are probably correct to use even if you're not "drawing from life" and witnessing them firsthand. These were especially powerful in the first days of animation, because the drawings made were so simple, and left out a lot of the detail of the natural world - these are some of the first details to put back in. All of these are based vaguely on movement in the real world. If you exaggerate these too much, which you can certainly get away with, it will result in the animation looking cartoony, which is not necessarily a bad thing. These were developed in the first days of animation - in fact, fellows like Walt Disney pioneered them.

* '''Wind-Up/Anticipation''' - When human beings prepare for a big move, such as swinging a baseball bat, or sword, they tend to give themselves some space to gain momentum. When a pitcher winds up for a throw, he curls back so that the ball will spend more time in his hand, thus spending more time accelerating, and thus have a higher speed. For wesnoth images, this is a great technique to use on big swords and clubs. If a man is going to throw a punch, he reels back with the arm that is preparing to deliver it. If a cobra is going to strike, it first rears back its head. Think of what "Popeye the Sailor Man" does when he's about to clobber someone, and you have a perfect (albeit slightly exaggerated) example of this. Keep in mind though that you don't need to be afraid of over-exaggeration; we are hurt much more by under-exaggerating a motion, than we are by over-exaggeration, so always err on the side of over-exaggerating things like windups.

* '''Inertia and Air Resistance''' - Different things are affected by physics in different ways. When a person makes a motion, certain muscles drive the motion, and the rest of the body is pulled by this force acting on it. The most important thing is that different parts of the body will move at different speeds - this is related to my mantra of ''"move the whole body"'' - if you do it, things will look a ''lot'' more realistic.

* '''Non-rigid Objects''' - Most objects in the real world flex in extraordinary ways when they move. You don't consciously notice these, and you'd normally never guess that they took place, but they look right when animated because you do subconsciously see them in the real world. For a dramatic example, if you look at a slow-motion recording of baseball being hit by a bat, the baseball gets flattened like a pancake! This happens only for the tiniest moment, after which it oscillates back and forth (like a spring) returning to it's normal shape. In wesnoth animation, using such a thing only for a single frame can make for a much livelier animation. Consider our thief's idle animation, and how the tossed money bag deforms as it lands in the hand.

* '''Follow Through''' - often taught to beginning boxers, a strike given with enough force to damage will often be targeted not at the surface of the opponent, but deep inside and even behind him. This is also related to many situations in which the person performing an action doesn't care where the moving object stops - a baseball player is not concerned with where the bat stops in his swing, rather he just wants to hit the ball as hard as he can, which is why the bat will often swing a full half-circle beyond home plate. In animating wesnoth images, this is why it looks better if really strong sword strokes go ''clean through'' the point where the opponent is standing. As an example, this is why the Elvish Hero's attack looks stronger than that of the Elvish Fighter.

* '''Cycling/Looping''' - In the real world, points of view do not remain fixed like they do in animations or videogames, but certain motions often get repeated, sometimes almost identically. One of the first tricks that animators used was to make animations of people doing something like walking. Instead of imitating the real world, wherein each step taken is subtly different from the next, as the mind carefully coordinates changing balance and the uneven conditions of the ground "plane", the animators simply drew a single step of the person walking, and lined up the images so that the final frame lined up with the first frame. Though one could not change the point of view on the subject, the animation could be looped indefinitely, and would look convincingly like viewing a person walking from a specific angle. For our purposes, this can be used to link together any repeating animations (such as walking animations).

== See Also ==

* [[Art Tutorials]]
* [[Create Art]]
* [[Create]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

How to create motion blurs

2009-05-06T19:24:11Z

Jetryl:

How to create motion blurs - aka the "swooshes" that trail after a fast-moving weapon

'''Theory:'''

All animation works by showing a series of still images, and fooling the human brain into thinking they're a moving object. This mostly works because our eyes don't see changes immediately; it actually takes a fraction of a second for the chemicals in them to 'react' to being exposed to light (which works a lot like developing film, except on a scale of milliseconds, rather than minutes). If the images are changed more quickly than the eyes can react, the changes look like a single object moving, instead of multiple pictures being flashed before the eyes.

One pitfall in animation is that if an object moves too much between frames, this illusion breaks down. The fast-moving element suddenly 'teleports' to it's new position, rather than feeling like it actually moved through the intervening space. The reason for this, and the solution to this is because our eyes work like photo cameras capturing an object. An object which moves more quickly than we can resolve a clear image will result in a blurred smear of motion in our field of vision.

And that's exactly the solution. When a part of an object would move a large distance in the time taken by one animation frame, you should stretch the object out to fill that entire space. '''Yes, this means that when animating objects in motion, you should bend the rules of size and proportion you strictly apply to still objects.''' For a single frame, a swinging sword can take the shape of a wide, flat 'fan'. A lunging body can be twice its regular thickness. A body landing after a jump can squash to half its height. Embrace the idea of deforming things in the direction that they're moving, and your animation will look very fluid. If you don't embrace this, and keep all proportions in exactly the same strict form they're in when the object is at rest, you will at best end up with an animation that resembles old "stop motion" animation. It's not a terrible fate, your animation will look perfectly 'respectable', but it'll also look very stiff and stilted.

'''Practice:'''

In wesnoth, we most commonly use this trick on weapons being swung through the air.

The first step to drawing this is correctly visualizing the path that the weapon will take through the air. Remember, although you're looking at a 3d object, you're drawing a 2d shape. You mind will probably "feel" like the path is a circle, but when you're drawing it on a 2d canvas, only a tiny fraction of the time, from a very unusual viewpoint, will the path actually be a circle; the vast majority of the time, you'll be looking at an ellipse. You need to pick this correctly, because nothing will goof up a motion blur more than having an incorrect path. Unfortunately, this has mostly to do with intuition; although you could get really creative with some fancy math to model the swing of a weapon, the best bet is to draw from life. One really helpful trick, though, is to take some video footage of a model performing the action (this could be either an actual art model, or an actor in a movie - all that matters is that the camera doesn't move), and carefully step through each frame of the animation and watch how the weapon moves through the air. Stepping slowly through video footage is actually a great way to see a lot of subtle and/or unintuitive things which are worth animating, but which generally escape the eyes when viewed at normal speed.

To draw that path of the weapon in wesnoth, you fill that arc which the weapon would swing in with the color of the swinging weapon (generally the brighter colors of it). We usually make it slightly transparent (around 30% transparent or 70% opaque), but in practice it tends not to make much difference if the swing is slightly transparent or not.

Here's an in-game example; this is the middle of the naga warrior's sword attack. Note how the blade immediately snaps to the end of its swing-arc in just one frame; this rapid movement gives the animation a feeling of power. Notice also the subtle trick of having a collapsing remnant of the motion blur on one frame after the initial swing; this helps portray the deceleration of the weapon (and also conveys the direction that the motion-blur was collapsing towards), and makes the animation much smoother:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/motion-blur/naga-motion-blur.png

==See Also==
*[[Basic Animation Tutorial]]
*[[Art Tutorials]]
*[[Create Art]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

How to create motion blurs

2009-05-06T19:22:23Z

Jetryl: Major Rewrite

How to create motion blurs - aka the "swooshes" that trail after a fast-moving weapon

'''Theory:'''

All animation works by showing a series of still images, and fooling the human brain into thinking they're a moving object. This mostly works because our eyes don't see changes immediately; it actually takes a fraction of a second for the chemicals in them to 'react' to being exposed to light (which works a lot like developing film, except on a scale of milliseconds, rather than minutes). If the images are changed more quickly than the eyes can react, the changes look like a single object moving, instead of multiple pictures being flashed before the eyes.

One pitfall in animation is that if an object moves too much between frames, this illusion breaks down. The fast-moving element suddenly 'teleports' to it's new position, rather than feeling like it actually moved through the intervening space. The reason for this, and the solution to this is because our eyes work like photo cameras capturing an object. An object which moves more quickly than we can resolve a clear image will result in a blurred smear of motion in our field of vision.

And that's exactly the solution. When a part of an object would move a large distance in the time taken by one animation frame, you should stretch the object out to fill that entire space. '''Yes, this means that when animating objects in motion, you should bend the rules of size and proportion you strictly apply to still objects.''' For a single frame, a swinging sword can take the shape of a wide, flat 'fan'. A lunging body can be twice its regular thickness. A body landing after a jump can squash to half its height. Embrace the idea of deforming things in the direction that they're moving, and your animation will look very fluid. If you don't embrace this, and keep all proportions in exactly the same strict form they're in when the object is at rest, you will at best end up with an animation that resembles old "stop motion" animation. It's not a terrible fate, your animation will look perfectly 'respectable', but it'll also look very stiff and stilted.

'''Practice:'''

In wesnoth, we most commonly use this trick on weapons being swung through the air.

The first step to drawing this is correctly visualizing the path that the weapon will take through the air. Remember, although you're looking at a 3d object, you're drawing a 2d shape. You mind will probably "feel" like the path is a circle, but when you're drawing it on a 2d canvas, only a tiny fraction of the time, from a very unusual viewpoint, will the path actually be a circle; the vast majority of the time, you'll be looking at an ellipse. You need to pick this correctly, because nothing will goof up a motion blur more than having an incorrect path. Unfortunately, this has mostly to do with intuition; although you could get really creative with some fancy math to model the swing of a weapon, the best bet is to draw from life. One really helpful trick, though, is to take some video footage of a model performing the action (this could be either an actual art model, or an actor in a movie - all that matters is that the camera doesn't move), and carefully step through each frame of the animation and watch how the weapon moves through the air. Stepping slowly through video footage is actually a great way to see a lot of subtle and/or unintuitive things which are worth animating, but which generally escape the eyes when viewed at normal speed.

To draw that path of the weapon in wesnoth, you fill that arc which the weapon would swing in with the color of the swinging weapon (generally the brighter colors of it). We usually make it slightly transparent (around 30% transparent or 70% opaque), but in practice it tends not to make much difference if the swing is slightly transparent or not.

Here's an in-game example; this is the middle of the naga warrior's sword attack. Note how the blade immediately snaps to the end of its swing-arc in just one frame; this rapid movement gives the animation a feeling of power. Notice also the subtle trick of extending the motion blur to one frame after the initial swing; this helps portray the deceleration of the weapon, and makes the animation much smoother:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/motion-blur/naga-motion-blur.png

==See Also==
*[[Basic Animation Tutorial]]
*[[Art Tutorials]]
*[[Create Art]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Creating Unit Art

2009-05-06T11:12:44Z

Jetryl:

Here's the information needed to start doing units art for Wesnoth. Please update the wiki with links to examples and other tips and tricks realted to unit art. This page started from [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=104809#104809 this forum thread].

''' Basic unit image specifications '''

Wesnoth can only use two kinds of graphic files: PNGs, or JPEGs. JPEGs aren't suitable for unit images, because they're can't store transparency data (and are lossy). Because of this, we always use PNGs.
*Final format: transparent PNG
** color depth should be 24-bit (8 bits per RGB channel). This may be listed as "PNG-24" or "8-bit RGBA".
** be aware that "Indexed color", "color map", or "PNG-8" is a different format. Although it might work in a buggy way, we strongly recommend you not use these.
* size is 72 x 72 pixels (it can actually be slightly wider, and can fit in the area of a hex and it's immediately surrounding tiles, but try not to do this if at all possible, because it has performance and graphical glitch issues).
*All but exceptionally large units should be contained in the hex (the white in the attached template)
*Compare the size of your unit to the size of similar existing core units
*Light comes from a specific direction (for shadings and highlights)
*Unit must look in the lower right direction
*Units are centered horizontally
*Unit's feet are positioned around 55 pixel from the top, lower for taller units if necessary
*Shadows at 60 opacity, dark blue color (see [[Creating_Shadows_Under_Units|Creating Shadows Under Units]]).
*Outlines should be used, made with a darker, but similar colour to what they're surrounding, this makes the unit feel bigger then the amount of pixels you'd use for the same with a black outline. (Black outlines not welcome anymore)
*Use consistent names for your files, beginning with the unit name, so that they are kept together when browsing the files. Try to imitate the naming scheme used for mainline units.

''' Unit animation specifications '''

You can have as many frames for animations as you like, and in fact, for any given cue, you can have more than one animation, which will be randomly chosen by the game. Images and animations must be done for:
*normal image (1 frame)
*attack for each type (at least one frame, about 6 frames is optimal)
*directional attacks (generally are desired for any attack that's a straight motion, rather than a slash. I.e. spears and thundersticks)
*defense (can be split into ranged and melee animations)
*magical attacks should have 'special effects'

It is important that the unit moves its feet when doing a melee attack. During the attack the unit will move from its own hex to the hex it is attacking. If you don't have foot movement in your animation, the unit will be "sliding" toward its target, which looks bad.

''' Additional Notes and examples '''

*Test early with different backgrounds. Go to your game terrain files, pick, say, 3 terrains, preferably with different colours, and have a look what they look like against the background, because that way if you have used alpha channels, it may look better in game than as the average standard sprite.

*Test your unit early in the game. Replacing an existing unit graphic with yours is the fastest way (be sure to make a copy of the originals so you don't lose them.)

*If you are animating a horse, you should base it on this [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7592&sid=eb882602a04b48cf8fcce9ca77fbeae0 example of an horse animation]

== See Also ==
* [[BuildingUnits]]
* [[Create]]
* [[Create Art and Music]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Making Bow Animations

2009-05-06T10:52:14Z

Jetryl:

As of this writing, a canonical example for the correct way to animate a bow animation, is the human bowman. I suggest you imitate by example, but there are a few subtle points I should note:

* the extreme cant (aka tilt) of the bow is intentional. It allows the bow attack to look equally good to both the SE/SW, and the south. Having the bow directly vertical makes it really obvious which direction the unit is drawn to be shooting in, and because of that, it looks bad when the animation is used for something contradictory to that. The trick to the tilt is precisely that it's vague, and it makes it unclear exactly which direction the unit is aiming at.

* bows in wesnoth don't show any animation of the archer drawing an arrow, or in fact have the arrow in-hand whilst drawing the bow. It's not worth the effort, and we won't accept submissions to 'correct' this.

* Look very closely at how the bow moves up and down in the frames. Notice that in the final 3 frames of the bow animation, the bow becomes a diagonal line, and also notice how the bow and drawing arm separate further in the later frames. Make a point of very closely imitating the specific patterns of movement for both arms, relative to each other, and relative to their positions in the previous frame. It really makes a difference, even on a precision level of individual pixels.

==See Also==
*[[Basic Animation Tutorial]]
*[[Art Tutorials]]
*[[Create Art]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Making Bow Animations

2009-05-06T10:49:40Z

Jetryl:

As of this writing, a canonical example for the correct way to animate a bow animation, is the human bowman. I suggest you imitate by example, but there are a few subtle points I should note:

* the extreme cant (aka tilt) of the bow is intentional. It allows the bow attack to look equally good to both the SE/SW, and the south.

* bows in wesnoth don't show any animation of the archer drawing an arrow, or in fact have the arrow in-hand whilst drawing the bow. It's not worth the effort, and we won't accept submissions to 'correct' this.

* Look very closely at how the bow moves up and down in the frames. Notice that in the final 3 frames of the bow animation, the bow becomes a diagonal line, and also notice how the bow and drawing arm separate further in the later frames. Make a point of very closely imitating the specific patterns of movement for both arms, relative to each other, and relative to their positions in the previous frame. It really makes a difference, even on a precision level of individual pixels.

==See Also==
*[[Basic Animation Tutorial]]
*[[Art Tutorials]]
*[[Create Art]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Basic Animation Tutorial

2009-05-06T10:33:58Z

Jetryl: New image references, and edits to the tutorial.

by Jetryl

''' Introduction '''

Animation works by fooling the mind into thinking that a series of still images are one continuously moving object. Certain things have to happen for the illusion to work. The basic principles are as follows, though keep in mind that these are interrelated:

* A moving object can only travel below a certain ratio of "screen space travelled" to "number of frames". If an object travels too far in too few frames, it will not look like it is moving, rather, it will look like it is disappearing from one location, and suddenly appearing in another.

* If the frames iterate too slowly - eg, less that 5 frames per second, the illusion of motion fails, and the whole thing looks more like a slideshow than an animation. Many 3d videogamers demand a framerate of 30fps from their hardware, or else they find the game to be too "jerky" and frustrating to play - some, even, demand 60fps. As a priciple, though, animation tends to fall apart somewhere between 5-10 fps.

Wesnoth is able to get away with a lot because we can programmatically create motion, some of the time. When a unit attacks, the code slides the attack image around. This allows us to use single images where we would be better served by multiple images. We can only get away with this in certain situations, however, and part of this is because the code-driven movement is both done at the maximum framerate of the running copy of wesnoth (often in the ballpark of a 3d game; some 30-60fps), and the code-driven movement is out-of-synch with the hand-drawn animation, seemingly giving us additional frames of animation (even if we don't have a new hand-drawn frame to display, the game will slide the current one around for the fraction of a second until we get to the next frame). A similar principle is used in a lot of cheap animated television shows, where a still-frame of a character will be panned across an animated background to create the illusion of motion. Bad shows will use this to fill multiple seconds of animation. More enlightened shows will actually spend the effort to bring an animation up to a good 15-30fps rate, and then will use the above trick to make an animation even smoother by providing additional "fake" inbetween frames.

''' Common mistakes: '''

All of these mistakes are ''absolutely unacceptable'' in an official in-game image. Some are very easy to correct, such as alignment, others, such as redrawing hidden surfaces, can make an animation much harder to do, but this is the price you ''must'' pay to make something look right. They're the laws of the real world, and fortunately, no one can use "style" as a cop-out for not following them - if you ignore these, your animation will look terrible, and we won't accept it into the game.

As a general principle, '''whenever you are tempted to use a shortcut to finish something, don't.''' It will look bad, and in the long run, it won't save any time, because if we end up using the animation, someone will have to pay the time to correct it. We will not use broken, half-hearted attempts at animations.

* '''Moving only the active element'''
An animator thinks, "Hey, I'm animating a man swinging a sword. That means all I have to do is move the sword arm up and down." The animator then wonders why on earth his animation looks so poorly done.

Even the most subtle human motions will result in adjustments of the entire body, both for balance, and simply because the moving parts are pulling on the rest of the body. Every part of the human body is connected to the rest of the body, and a motion in any part of the body will affect the entire body (just like a soccer ball caught in a net deforms the entire net). When you animate, you need to imitate this; each part of the body moves proportionally to its weight; moving fingers around won't cause a torso to shift, but swinging an entire arm, and a weapon in it, will pull on the entire body, and this needs to be drawn if an animation is to look natural.

Balance needs to be taken into account when animating. If you know what you're doing, you can deliberately make a unit look like they're off balance in the specific frames when they should be. For example, a fencer might look like he's falling forwards during the "lunge" of his attack, and falling backwards during the recovery. This will look right because it's exactly what a real person does; a real fencer would use "being off balance" to accelerate their movements.

It's difficult to visualize how something is supposed to move. In order to get a feel for how the body reacts to doing certain movements, you may need to watch yourself in the mirror, or look at a movie. There are many examples of good, medieval action films which portray common actions in wesnoth (like swinging swords) - titles such as Braveheart, or Lord of the Rings come to mind. Watch one of those movies, find a point where a character swings a sword, and watch what happens to the rest of the body. It's not subtle at all; you'll see in any motion that the entire body goes into doing any decent-looking movement with a sword.

This first image is how bad things look if you just move the arm around, the second image is how good it looks if you make the entire body shift in reaction to the arm swinging a weapon:

** Wrong: http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/basic-animation/asheviere-no-kinematics.gif

** Right: http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/basic-animation/myrmidon-good-kinematics.gif

* '''Hidden surfaces must be redrawn'''
When an object turns, in an animation, and shows a side that wasn't visble before, it ''must'' be drawn from scratch. If a man has his back to you, and turns around, his now-visible face will look a whole heck of a lot different from the back of his head, which was visible before. It's obvious that things look different when they're turned around, but, this is a really common mistake, because people are afraid of having to draw parts from scratch. It's really hard, and people like to think that there's some shortcut they can use to get away with not actually having to draw something from scratch. (For a lot of beginners, including myself back in the day, the idea of having to redraw things from scratch seemed impossible.) However, this is something you'll have to get used to and overcome. The bright side of this, though, is that redrawing the few newly visible parts is a great source of practice, and is much easier than drawing a whole sprite from scratch; it's a good way to build up to being able to create entirely new sprites from scratch.

A common shortcut, which is selecting body parts in your graphics program, and sliding/moving them around (referred to as "Select and Slide") can only be used for the tiniest motions, or motions in which there is NO rotation. As soon as you're rotating a sprite around the y-axis, things need to be redrawn.

* '''Turned surfaces must be redrawn'''
After about a 30-45 degree turn of any part of a sprite, the surface of that part has to be redrawn to account for the rotation. If a man is facing you, and turns sideways, his appearance will change considerably - for one thing, there will only be one eye visible where there were two visible before. When this happens, you have to draw it all from scratch. Yes, it's difficult, but it's par for the course. Like I said above, "select and slide" will fail you, here.

You can see this applied to the following bad example. A horse is supposed to be falling down, but because the animator was so terrified of having to actually draw the turned-body of the horse from scratch, the horses body never falls over, and instead deflates like a balloon in the same pose it started out in.

** Wrong: http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/basic-animation/elvish-rider-deflate.gif

* '''Misaligned Frames'''
Each image in a series must line up correctly with the image before it. If they don't, the image shakes around inside the animation, which looks really bad:

** Wrong: http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/basic-animation/shaman-uncentered.gif

''' Exaggeration techniques: '''

Traditional animation studios discovered several rules of thumb to liven up a strict representation of movement - that is, techniques that are probably correct to use even if you're not "drawing from life" and witnessing them firsthand. These were especially powerful in the first days of animation, because the drawings made were so simple, and left out a lot of the detail of the natural world - these are some of the first details to put back in. All of these are based vaguely on movement in the real world. If you exaggerate these too much, which you can certainly get away with, it will result in the animation looking cartoony, which is not necessarily a bad thing. These were developed in the first days of animation - in fact, fellows like Walt Disney pioneered them.

* '''Wind-Up/Anticipation''' - When human beings prepare for a big move, such as swinging a baseball bat, or sword, they tend to give themselves some space to gain momentum. When a pitcher winds up for a throw, he curls back so that the ball will spend more time in his hand, thus spending more time accelerating, and thus have a higher speed. For wesnoth images, this is a great technique to use on big swords and clubs. If a man is going to throw a punch, he reels back with the arm that is preparing to deliver it. If a cobra is going to strike, it first rears back its head. Think of what "Popeye the Sailor Man" does when he's about to clobber someone, and you'll have good example of the "cartoony" range of things.

* '''Inertia and Air Resistance''' - Different things are affected by physics in different ways. When a person makes a motion, certain muscles drive the motion, and the rest of the body is pulled by this force acting on it. The most important thing is that different parts of the body will move at different speeds - this is related to my mantra of ''"move the whole body"'' - if you do it, things will look a ''lot'' more realistic.

* '''Non-rigid Objects''' - Most objects in the real world flex in extraordinary ways when they move, ways that you would never guess, but which are clearly percieved by the "subconcious," and thus look right when animated. For a stunning example, if you look at a slow-motion recording of baseball being hit by a bat, the baseball gets flattened like a pancake! This happens only for the tiniest moment, after which it oscillates back and forth (like a spring) returning to it's normal shape. In wesnoth animation, using such a thing only for a single frame can make for a much livelier animation.

* '''Follow Through''' - often taught to beginning boxers, a strike given with enough force to damage will often be targeted not at the surface of the opponent, but deep inside and even behind him. This is also related to many situations in which the person performing an action doesn't care where the moving object stops - a baseball player is not concerned with where the bat stops in his swing, rather he just wants to hit the ball as hard as he can, which is why the bat will often swing a full half-circle beyond home plate. In animating wesnoth images, this is why it looks better if really strong sword strokes go ''clean through'' the point where the opponent is standing. As an example, this is why the Elvish Hero's attack looks stronger than that of the Elvish Fighter.

* '''Cycling/Looping''' - In the real world, points of view do not remain fixed like they do in animations or videogames, but certain motions often get repeated, sometimes almost identically. One of the first tricks that animators used was to make animations of people doing something like walking. Instead of imitating the real world, wherein each step taken is subtly different from the next, as the mind carefully coordinates changing balance and the uneven conditions of the ground "plane", the animators simply drew a single step of the person walking, and lined up the images so that the final frame lined up with the first frame. Though one could not change the point of view on the subject, the animation could be looped indefinitely, and would look convincingly like viewing a person walking from a specific angle. For our purposes, this can be used to link together any repeating animations (such as walking animations).

== See Also ==

* [[Art Tutorials]]
* [[Create Art]]
* [[Create]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Creating Shadows Under Units

2009-05-06T09:40:41Z

Jetryl: fixed links

by Richard Kettering (Jetryl)

Wesnoth has been through several iterations of how shadows are drawn, our most recent being a slightly blurred version.

Our current standard for drawing shadows is fairly simple. All of the shadow pixels are given an opacity of 60% (or in other words, a transparency of 40%). The preferred shadow color is RGB: 22,0,52 (on a scale from 0->255; in hex it would be 160034). This has minor cosmetic advantages over pitch black (rgb: 0,0,0), because most shadowed surfaces in the real world have a large amount of blue-ish ambient light reflected into them, rather than being just a darker version of their source color. It also makes shadows easier to work with in mixed-down PNG files, because you can select just the shadow by clicking on it with the magic wand tool (since it's a different color than black, which invariably ends up getting used on the bodies of most units).

To create a shadow, take a unit you wish to apply shadows to.
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/sprite-shadows/shadow-tutorial-1.png

Create a new layer (we're assuming here that you're using Gimp/Photoshop or some layer-supporting graphics program), and draw in it, with the pencil tool set to RGB: 22,0,52 the desired shape of the shadow you would like. Note for most units, that our perspective will make the shadow of most creatures somewhat wider than it is tall.
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/sprite-shadows/shadow-tutorial-2.png

Finally, move this layer underneath all your other layers, and set its opacity to 60%.
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/sprite-shadows/shadow-tutorial-3.png

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Team Color Shifting

2009-05-06T09:38:44Z

Jetryl: More readability

by Richard Kettering (Jetryl)

Wesnoth's sprites are only drawn in one color, but in an actual game, all of our unit's clothing will change color to the color of whatever team they're on. We call this "team color" shifting. Any team color shifting system needs a way of indicating which areas of the graphic are to be changed in color. Ours solves this by selecting a certain, specific range of colors, and shifting the pixels whenever they are that source color in the unit image. In our system, this can be done with any set of colors that you choose, on a per-unit basis. However, we've got a shortcut for one set of colors, magenta. We picked a color that because it would stick out like a sore thumb; it's not an 'earthtone', and isn't commonly seen in nature.

It's not just any magenta; it has to be from the following, very specific set:
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/colorswatch.png

Also, it won't show up on a unit unless they have this line in their unitname.cfg file:
{MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}

You'll need to have some costume element on the unit which can be designated as the team-colored piece of their outfit; It's best to design units around having this. The easiest way to designate this, is to define a new layer in a capable program (photoshop, gimp, etc), overlaid on the rest of the image, in which you draw with our special values of magenta.

'''Time-Saving Tips:'''

If units are drawn with a small color set, as used in traditional sprite art, you can use a properly-set paint-bucket tool to replace all instances of a given color. You'll want to set it to be non-contiguous, non-antialiased and to have a tolerance of 0 (presumably, you also want it to fill based on "all layers" - these settings are based on Photoshop, and the Gimp is likely similar).

If you're working on a sprite which isn't strictly pixel art (e.g. which doesn't have a tiny set of unique RGB values), you're not out of luck at all. Simply take the same paint-bucket tool with the same settings, and crank the tolerance up to about 20-30. The paint-bucket will then affect all of those similar, subtle gradations in shade which were achieved with the paintbrush tool, replacing them all with a single color. Use this with progressively lighter shades, and you'll fill in 90% of the target area, after which it is trivial to fill the holes left behind with a pencil tool.

Also, if you'd like a sane representation of what the final colors will look like, you can shift this separate team-color layer in your graphics application by using a '''temporary''' hue/saturation filter on that layer (I use +40 to the hue on the magenta colors to give a red hue similar but '''not''' identical to the one which the game uses).

It is often easiest to simply sample the colors from a unit to which already has team colors on it.

'''Screenshots:'''

This is a screenshot of what a unit would look like if it were drawn directly, without the special pixels:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_off.png

This is a screenshot of the team-colored pixels in a separate photoshop layer:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_alone.png

And this is what the combined image looks like, which will get mixed-down into a single PNG file:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_on.png

'''WML How To: '''

We've defined a WML macro to specify a set of magenta colors, as seen in the previous palette. To use this, you simply sample the color with your graphics program's eyedropper tool, and then draw with it. The macro is used just like the flag_rgb business - you simply insert the following in your unit .cfg file (for reference, the macro itself is defined in utils.cfg):
{MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}

Note that these shift ONLY the precise RGB values given - do not confuse color with hue, because every specific shade - every specific instance with a different luminosity and saturation value - must be specified separately.

The game will shift the color set to one of the team colors; in doing so it will completely overrun the saturation of the original color. It will change the hue to that of the team, and shift the luminosity as well. The coloration you give is set in terms of relative luminosity - the entire patch may be bright or dark depending on which team the unit is on. Also note that the first color specified is special, because it is treated as the median value, and will be assigned the precise luminosity value of the team color. Anything brighter than it will be brighter than the team color, anything darker will be darker.

''' design errata for nerds/game-designers: '''
E.g. "Why we did it the way we did." There are a number of other ways to do this, but this was what we settled on. A different option might have been to use special grayscale image maps to indicate what to change, they would have basically doubled the number of images used by the game. Alternately, we could have done some bizarre wizardry with graphics files, and included something like an alpha-channel to indicate which pixels to change; we decided against this because that would break the huge advantage of using a very standard format like PNG, which is that everyone can easily grab a program to edit it. Design nitpickers will notice one minor disadvantage in how we did it. The colors which get shifted away are inaccessible for direct use; but because they're such a small set of colors, and because they were chosen to be "unusual" colors (rather than common ones like earthtones), it's unlikely that not being able to use these specific RGB values would ever be a problem.

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Give Your Hero A Personality

2009-05-06T09:36:09Z

Jetryl:

by Francisco Muñoz (fmunoz)

This tutorial details techniques for modifying existing wesnoth sprites in order to generate new, more unique images. This is especially useful when creating a "hero" character for a campaign, who behaves similarly to an existing unit type, such as the swordsman, thus needing to suggest the unit it is derived from, and yet look unique at the same time. Several of the techniques described herein, such as color transformations, are very useful for general work.

All instructions are given according to how one would use them in The Gimp, I'm sure that Photoshop users can easily translate them to equivalent commands. Attached to this message is a zip archive with the gimp file described in the tutorial.

'''1st Image, Edgar, the mercenary sword: Swapping heads'''

We want a variation of the swordman as our hero, thus we are going to use the easiest method, giving him a new head. We save the image file with a new name (to avoid accidentally overwriting the original one, one good way is to change the file format to the .xcf gimp original file format, rather than saving as a png). We open the swordsman image and change its mode to use more colours (Image->Mode->RGB). We delete the original head of the image by either selecting it and deleting the pixels in the selection (R and later Ctrl+K), or by using the eraser (Shift+E, but make sure to change the size to 1 pixel). We select the head from the head template, copy, and paste it over the body image, move (M) it to pick a place where it looks right. Then, we can just click again to merge it with the body layer or create a new layer for it (which is a better option) by clicking in the menu option under layer or in the layer palette. Now we have the 1st image of our new hero ready.

'''2nd Image, Harold of the horned helm : Layers'''

Lets do another one, this time we select the horned helmet head, and repeat the same steps again. If we used the multilayer approach we can reuse the body layer, after hiding the first face (click on the eye icon in the layer palette, if you don't have that palette, you can open it from the Dialogues mmenu). Looking at the image, we notice the horn is overlapping the sword. That doesn't look good. This time we are going to use another layer to fix it. We select the sword, copy, and paste it. This time we need to put it in another layer (not absolutely necessary, but a very helpful technique). We may need to change the ordering of the layers, to make sure that the new sword layer is placed over the head layer.

'''3rd Image, Victor, the Pirate Marine : Adding bits'''

This time we want more. We are going to use all the steps from the previous edit (and the same file too), but we are going to add minor extra bits here and there, a new sword point, a red gem in the shield, and extra shoulder padding.
After adding the new head and our new sword copy (to lay over the red bandanna end), we change its point a bit to make it into a kind of boarding sabre. We create another layer, where we draw a bigger set of shoulder pads using the armour colours. You can copy a few bits of armour into this new layer to get the colours more easily later; just paste them at one side and delete them when you are done. Using the pencil (N) with a size of 1 pixel, we draw the new shoulder armour. Remember that you can use the CONTROL key to pick colours fast from the samples we pasted before. We paste a red bit over the centre of the shield too (again in another layer).

'''4th Image, Rufus, the Breathdrainer: Colourize and change hue.'''

We want an evil swordsman variation, and we have an evil looking hooded head (kudos to artist Neoriceisgood) but the armour and weapon don't look evil enough.

We create a copy of the body, hide all the unused layers, and add the head using the same method as before. We go to the new body layer, which we want to look like a dark metal, so we start selecting the blue bits using either the Rectangle selection (R, later we can use CONTROL to remove parts and SHIFT to add them), or the Select by Colour tool (SHIFT+O, later we can use CONTROL to remove colours and SHIFT to add them). We can mix the two methods of selection; the end result of our "target" being selected is the same. We remove the pixels of the sword, because we are going to change them later.

From the menu Layer->Colours->Hue-Saturation, we change the saturation (to something less) and brightness (also less), until we have a darker, more sinister armour. We deselect the pixels (SHIFT+CTRL+A), and try to select the yellowish bits of the armour. As the pixels have a really soft colour, the former method doesn't work really well now, so we have to use Layer->Colours->Colourize to add more Saturation. We change mostly the hue until we have a dark purple. Now we repeat these things with the sword blade and the its handle to make it look like a wraith's sword (We can also easily do things by hand with the pencil tool).

Take note of the colour settings used if you plan to edit all the other unit frames. An easy way to do this is to use special layers that store and perform those color changes (which photoshop calls "adjustment layers"), rather than applying the changes directly to the picture data. Another way is simply to scribble down the few settings (hue, saturation, brightness) which were changed for each part of the unit, onto a piece of paper.

'''5th image, Karina, the Firemaiden: All at the same time'''

In this last image we add a new head, edit the sword to look like it is on fire, and change the armour colour until it looks like it is made of brass. The sword has been done using 3 layers, the original one, a flames one done using the fire colours from the Wesnoth item-firesword.png image and another copy of the original, placed above the others, with a 50% transparency (change it in the upper part of the Layer palette). As a last touch we add the same red bit we used in the Victor shield as a gem in the breastplate.

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/hero-frankenstein/faces.png http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/hero-frankenstein/human-swordman-variations.png

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Team Color Shifting

2009-05-06T09:33:06Z

Jetryl: Major Edits

by Richard Kettering (Jetryl)

==Making Team-Colored Sprites:==

Wesnoth's sprites are only drawn in one color, but in an actual game, all of our unit's clothing will change color to the color of whatever team they're on. We call this "team color" shifting. Any team color shifting system needs a way of indicating which areas of the graphic are to be changed in color. Ours solves this by selecting a certain, specific range of colors, and shifting the pixels whenever they are that source color in the unit image. In our system, this can be done with any set of colors that you choose, on a per-unit basis. However, we've got a shortcut for one set of colors, magenta. We picked a color that because it would stick out like a sore thumb; it's not an 'earthtone', and isn't commonly seen in nature.

It's not just any magenta; it has to be from the following, very specific set:
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/colorswatch.png

Also, it won't show up on a unit unless they have this line in their unitname.cfg file:
{MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}

You'll need to have some costume element on the unit which can be designated as the team-colored piece of their outfit; It's best to design units around having this. The easiest way to designate this, is to define a new layer in a capable program (photoshop, gimp, etc), overlaid on the rest of the image, in which you draw with our special values of magenta.

==Time-Saving Tips:==
If units are drawn with a small color set, as used in traditional sprite art, you can use a properly-set paint-bucket tool to replace all instances of a given color. You'll want to set it to be non-contiguous, non-antialiased and to have a tolerance of 0 (presumably, you also want it to fill based on "all layers" - these settings are based on Photoshop, and the Gimp is likely similar).

If you're working on a sprite which isn't strictly pixel art (e.g. which doesn't have a tiny set of unique RGB values), you're not out of luck at all. Simply take the same paint-bucket tool with the same settings, and crank the tolerance up to about 20-30. The paint-bucket will then affect all of those similar, subtle gradations in shade which were achieved with the paintbrush tool, replacing them all with a single color. Use this with progressively lighter shades, and you'll fill in 90% of the target area, after which it is trivial to fill the holes left behind with a pencil tool.

Also, if you'd like a sane representation of what the final colors will look like, you can shift this separate team-color layer in your graphics application by using a '''temporary''' hue/saturation filter on that layer (I use +40 to the hue on the magenta colors to give a red hue similar but '''not''' identical to the one which the game uses).

It is often easiest to simply sample the colors from a unit to which already has team colors on it.

==Screenshots==
This is a screenshot of what a unit would look like if it were drawn directly, without the special pixels:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_off.png

This is a screenshot of the team-colored pixels in a separate photoshop layer:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_alone.png

And this is what the combined image looks like, which will get mixed-down into a single PNG file:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_on.png

== WML How To: ==
We've defined a WML macro to specify a set of magenta colors, as seen in the previous palette. To use this, you simply sample the color with your graphics program's eyedropper tool, and then draw with it. The macro is used just like the flag_rgb business - you simply insert the following in your unit .cfg file (for reference, the macro itself is defined in utils.cfg):
{MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}

Note that these shift ONLY the precise RGB values given - do not confuse color with hue, because every specific shade - every specific instance with a different luminosity and saturation value - must be specified separately.

The game will shift the color set to one of the team colors; in doing so it will completely overrun the saturation of the original color. It will change the hue to that of the team, and shift the luminosity as well. The coloration you give is set in terms of relative luminosity - the entire patch may be bright or dark depending on which team the unit is on. Also note that the first color specified is special, because it is treated as the median value, and will be assigned the precise luminosity value of the team color. Anything brighter than it will be brighter than the team color, anything darker will be darker.

==== design errata for nerds/game-designers: ====
E.g. "Why we did it the way we did." There are a number of other ways to do this, but this was what we settled on. A different option might have been to use special grayscale image maps to indicate what to change, they would have basically doubled the number of images used by the game. Alternately, we could have done some bizarre wizardry with graphics files, and included something like an alpha-channel to indicate which pixels to change; we decided against this because that would break the huge advantage of using a very standard format like PNG, which is that everyone can easily grab a program to edit it. Design nitpickers will notice one minor disadvantage in how we did it. The colors which get shifted away are inaccessible for direct use; but because they're such a small set of colors, and because they were chosen to be "unusual" colors (rather than common ones like earthtones), it's unlikely that not being able to use these specific RGB values would ever be a problem.

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Team Color Shifting

2009-05-06T09:00:08Z

Jetryl: typo

by Richard Kettering (Jetryl)

===How to make units which conform to the system that lets us shift team colors.===

Any team color shifting system needs a way of indicating which areas of the graphic are to be changed in color. Ours solves this by selecting a certain range of colors, and shifting the pixels whenever they are that source color in the unit image. In our system, this can be done with any set of colors that you choose, on a per-unit basis. There are other ways that this could have been done, but this one was chosen for several reasons. For one thing, if we had used special grayscale image maps to indicate what to change, they would have basically doubled the number of images used by the game. The notable disadvantages of our system are that the colors which get shifted away are inaccessible for use, which is a minor issue, and that we only have a binary choice of a pixel getting shifted, which is a somewhat more major limitation, albeit one which is worth working around.

These colors are defined in the unit .cfg file. They are defined as follows, for an example in which we shift the colors black and white:
flag_rgb=0,0,0,255,255,255
Note that these shift ONLY the precise RGB values given - do not confuse color with hue, because every specific shade - every specific instance with a different luminosity and saturation value - must be specified separately.

The game will shift the color set to one of the team colors; in doing so it will completely overrun the saturation of the original color (E- not sure about that). It will change the hue to that of the team, and shift the luminosity as well. The coloration you give is set in terms of relative luminosity - the entire patch may be bright or dark depending on which team the unit is on.

Also note that the first color specified is special, because it is treated as the median value, and will be assigned the precise luminosity value of the team color. Anything brighter than it will be brighter than the team color, anything darker will be darker.

==WorkFlow:==
There are two general ways to do things. No matter what, you need a patch of color on the target unit which is separate from other colors, and is contiguous. It is best if this is only on specific sections, and does not have any stray pixels lying around in other areas of the image.

This can, on very rare occasions, be done to existing graphics with no changes in the target image; however it is almost always best to redesign the unit around use of the team color system. In this, you often go so far as to change the costuming, and to include props showing the team color which would not have been included before.

Possibly the easiest way to do this, to a reworked image, is to define a new layer in a capable program (photoshop, gimp, etc), overlaid on the rest of the image, in which you draw with a color that will stick out like a sore thumb. Magenta has often been used for this because it largely has no use as a normal color for general unit graphics.

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/colorswatch.png

We've actually defined a WML macro to specify a set of magenta colors, as seen in the previous palette. To use this, you simply sample the color with your graphics program's eyedropper tool, and then draw with it. The macro is used just like the flag_rgb business - you simply insert the following in your unit .cfg file (for reference, the macro itself is defined in utils.cfg):

{MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}

==Time-Saving Tips:==
If units are drawn with a small color set, as used in traditional sprite art, you can use a properly-set paint-bucket tool to replace all instances of a given color. You'll want to set it to be non-contiguous, non-antialiased and to have a tolerance of 0 (presumably, you also want it to fill based on "all layers" - these settings are based on Photoshop, and the Gimp is likely similar).

If someone used a "non-traditional" spriting technique (such as jetryl or wayfarer, using a paintbrush instead of a pencil tool), you're not out of luck at all. Simply take the same paint-bucket tool with the same settings, and crank the tolerance up to about 20-30. The paint-bucket will then affect all of those similar, subtle gradations in shade which were achieved with the paintbrush tool, replacing them all with a single color. Use this with progressively lighter shades, and you'll fill in 90% of the target area, after which it is trivial to fill the holes left behind with a pencil tool.

Also, if you'd like a sane representation of what the final colors will look like, you can shift this separate team-color layer in your graphics application by using a '''temporary''' hue/saturation filter on that layer (I use +40 to the hue on the magenta colors to give a red hue similar but '''not''' identical to the one which the game uses).

Finally, to keep things intuitive, if you are using the magenta swatch, which you should, it is often easiest to simply sample the colors from a unit to which this has already been applied.

==Screenshots==
This is a screenshot of what a unit looks like with his team color layer turned off - this is the graphic before the edit, essentially:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_off.png

This is a screenshot of the team color layer itself. Note that it is only what is changed:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_alone.png

And this is what the combined image looks like, which will get mixed-down into a single PNG file:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_on.png

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Team Color Shifting

2009-05-06T08:59:46Z

Jetryl: Changed images to point at wesnoth webspace.

by Richard Kettering (Jetryl)

===How to make units which conform to the system that lets us shift team colors.===

Any team color shifting system needs a way of indicating which areas of the graphic are to be changed in color. Ours solves this by selecting a certain range of colors, and shifting the pixels whenever they are that source color in the unit image. In our system, this can be done with any set of colors that you choose, on a per-unit basis. There are other ways that this could have been done, but this one was chosen for several reasons. For one thing, if we had used special grayscale image maps to indicate what to change, they would have basically doubled the number of images used by the game. The notable disadvantages of our system are that the colors which get shifted away are inaccessible for use, which is a minor issue, and that we only have a binary choice of a pixel getting shifted, which is a somewhat more major limitation, albeit one which is worth working around.

These colors are defined in the unit .cfg file. They are defined as follows, for an example in which we shift the colors black and white:
flag_rgb=0,0,0,255,255,255
Note that these shift ONLY the precise RGB values given - do not confuse color with hue, because every specific shade - every specific instance with a different luminosity and saturation value - must be specified separately.

The game will shift the color set to one of the team colors; in doing so it will completely overrun the saturation of the original color (E- not sure about that). It will change the hue to that of the team, and shift the luminosity as well. The coloration you give is set in terms of relative luminosity - the entire patch may be bright or dark depending on which team the unit is on.

Also note that the first color specified is special, because it is treated as the median value, and will be assigned the precise luminosity value of the team color. Anything brighter than it will be brighter than the team color, anything darker will be darker.

==WorkFlow:==
There are two general ways to do things. No matter what, you need a patch of color on the target unit which is separate from other colors, and is contiguous. It is best if this is only on specific sections, and does not have any stray pixels lying around in other areas of the image.

This can, on very rare occasions, be done to existing graphics with no changes in the target image; however it is almost always best to redesign the unit around use of the team color system. In this, you often go so far as to change the costuming, and to include props showing the team color which would not have been included before.

Possibly the easiest way to do this, to a reworked image, is to define a new layer in a capable program (photoshop, gimp, etc), overlaid on the rest of the image, in which you draw with a color that will stick out like a sore thumb. Magenta has often been used for this because it largely has no use as a normal color for general unit graphics.

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/colorswatch.png

We've actually defined a WML macro to specify a set of magenta colors, as seen in the previous palette. To use this, you simply sample the color with your graphics program's eyedropper tool, and then draw with it. The macro is used just like the flag_rgb business - you simply insert the following in your unit .cfg file (for reference, the macro itself is defined in utils.cfg):

{MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}

==Time-Saving Tips:==
If units are drawn with a small color set, as used in traditional sprite art, you can use a properly-set paint-bucket tool to replace all instances of a given color. You'll want to set it to be non-contiguous, non-antialiased and to have a tolerance of 0 (presumably, you also want it to fill based on "all layers" - these settings are based on Photoshop, and the Gimp is likely similar).

If someone used a "non-traditional" spriting technique (such as jetryl or wayfarer, using a paintbrush instead of a pencil tool), you're not out of luck at all. Simply take the same paint-bucket tool with the same settings, and crank the tolerance up to about 20-30. The paint-bucket will then affect all of those similar, subtle gradations in shade which were achieved with the paintbrush tool, replacing them all with a single color. Use this with progressively lighter shades, and you'll fill in 90% of the target area, after which it is trivial to fill the holes left behind with a pencil tool.

Also, if you'd like a sane representation of what the final colors will look like, you can shift this separate team-color layer in your graphics application by using a '''temporary''' hue/saturation filter on that layer (I use +40 to the hue on the magenta colors to give a red hue similar but '''not''' identical to the one which the game uses).

Finally, to keep things intuitive, if you are using the magenta swatch, which you should, it is often easiest to simply sample the colors from a unit to which this has already been applied.

==Screenshots==
This is a screenshot of what a unit looks like with his team color layer turned off - this is the graphic before the edit, essentially:

hhttp://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_off.png

This is a screenshot of the team color layer itself. Note that it is only what is changed:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_alone.png

And this is what the combined image looks like, which will get mixed-down into a single PNG file:

hhttp://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_on.png

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Creating Shadows Under Units

2009-04-19T04:57:11Z

Jetryl: Added images.

by Richard Kettering (Jetryl)

Wesnoth has been through several iterations of how shadows are drawn, our most recent being a slightly blurred version.

Our current standard for drawing shadows is fairly simple. All of the shadow pixels are given an opacity of 60% (or in other words, a transparency of 40%). The preferred shadow color is RGB: 22,0,52 (on a scale from 0->255; in hex it would be 160034). This has minor cosmetic advantages over pitch black (rgb: 0,0,0), because most shadowed surfaces in the real world have a large amount of blue-ish ambient light reflected into them, rather than being just a darker version of their source color. It also makes shadows easier to work with in mixed-down PNG files, because you can select just the shadow by clicking on it with the magic wand tool (since it's a different color than black, which invariably ends up getting used on the bodies of most units).

To create a shadow, take a unit you wish to apply shadows to.
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/shadow-tutorial-1.png

Create a new layer (we're assuming here that you're using Gimp/Photoshop or some layer-supporting graphics program), and draw in it, with the pencil tool set to RGB: 22,0,52 the desired shape of the shadow you would like. Note for most units, that our perspective will make the shadow of most creatures somewhat wider than it is tall.
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/shadow-tutorial-2.png

Finally, move this layer underneath all your other layers, and set its opacity to 60%.
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/shadow-tutorial-3.png

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Creating Shadows Under Units

2009-03-05T03:08:31Z

Jetryl: Updated for latest standard.

by Richard Kettering (Jetryl)

Wesnoth has been through several iterations of how shadows are drawn, our most recent being a slightly blurred version.

Our current standard for drawing shadows is fairly simple. All of the shadow pixels are given an opacity of 60% (or in other words, a transparency of 40%). The preferred shadow color is RGB: 22,0,52 (on a scale from 0->255; in hex it would be 160034). This has minor cosmetic advantages over pitch black (rgb: 0,0,0), because most shadowed surfaces in the real world have a large amount of blue-ish ambient light reflected into them, rather than being just a darker version of their source color. It also makes shadows easier to work with in mixed-down PNG files, because you can select just the shadow by clicking on it with the magic wand tool (since it's a different color than black, which invariably ends up getting used on the bodies of most units).

To create a shadow, take a unit you wish to apply shadows to.

Create a new layer (we're assuming here that you're using Gimp/Photoshop or some layer-supporting graphics program), and draw in it, with the pencil tool set to RGB: 22,0,52 the desired shape of the shadow you would like. Note for most units, that our perspective will make the shadow of most creatures somewhat wider than it is tall.

Finally, move this layer underneath all your other layers, and set its opacity to 60%.

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Art Programs

2008-06-26T19:42:02Z

Jetryl: /* Free Image Editors */ Added paintbrush

{| style="float:right; margin-left:1em;"
|__TOC__
|}
'''Big Note:''' It is mostly-possible to make wesnoth graphics with nothing more than MSPaint or Appleworks. However, there are two major and '''vital''' things lacking in those programs - first, these programs cannot make images with transparent pixels, and second, they may not be able to save in the PNG format used by Wesnoth. A program capable of those will have to be applied to images made with MSPaint when they are finished.

=== Free Image Editors ===
The following are free image editing programs which can be used to create graphics for wesnoth. These programs are Open-Source Software, like wesnoth, meaning they are free to use, and that you are free to look at the sourcecode.

[http://www.gimp.org '''The GIMP'''] (for windows & linux); the "Gnu Image Manipulation Program" is recommended.

[http://seashore.sourceforge.net/ '''Seashore'''] (for mac) this port of the the GIMP to a cocoa-based gui is recommended. Seashore provides the basic features of GIMP.

[http://www.opensword.org/ '''Pixen'''] (for mac) is the OpenSword Group's tool for traditional SNES style sprite art - unlike most other editors, it has been designed for that specific task, and users may find it much less daunting than the Gimp or Photoshop. This program was written in cocoa, and has a very good interface - version 3 will even include built-in support for making animations.

[http://www.j-domain.de/homepage.php?page=20 '''JDraw'''] (for anything that can run Java - mac and windows included) is an image editor which has a subset of the features of Pixen, and a superset of the features of MSPaint. It is a simple, straightforward pixel editing program. If you use a mac, Pixen is probably a better idea.

[http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/ '''Paint.net'''] (for windows) is generally regarded as inferior to the Gimp or Photoshop, but is easier to look at for those with shorter attention spans, so some might find it of interest.

[http://ase.sourceforge.net/ '''Allegro Sprite Editor'''] (for windows/linux) is a sprite editing program. Free/OSS, note that it is NOT capable of saving PNGs.

[http://paintbrush.sourceforge.net/ '''Paintbrush'''] (for mac) is a program intended to be a slightly modernized clone of the old MacPaint/MSPaint. Free/OSS, but note that though it is capable of saving PNGs, it is not capable of handling transparency.

=== Free Image Post-Processors ===

[http://www.amake.us/software/pngcrusher/ '''PNGCrusher'''] (for mac) is a handy lightweight tool that will compress your PNGs much more efficiently than Photoshop. It is best used in tandem with saving the files from GraphicConverter, with the PNG filtering options on. The tool it is based on, OptiPNG, is open source, and runs on both linux and windows.

=== Proprietary Image Editors ===

==== Shareware ====
[http://www.lemkesoft.de/ '''GraphicConverter'''] (for mac) by Lemkesoft is an excellent program for preparing and compressing png images for the game, and may also be useful for the creation of images. The shareware fee is $30, although large parts of the program are fully functional for free.

[http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/ '''Pixel Image Editor'''] (for mac/windows/linux/BeOS/others) is a very full-featured program, intended to fulfill the same function that photoshop does. It currently has a shareware fee of $32, though the final price once the product reaches v2.0, will be $79.

[http://www.ultimatepaint.com/ '''JTL Ultimate Paint'''] (for windows) is a basic painting program, following the tradition of the earlier "DeluxePaint". Geared at painting, it can use photoshop plugins. It currently costs $34 for a basic version. I do not know if this program can export PNG images, so ''caveat emptor''.

[http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/ '''Pro Motion'''] (for windows) is a commercial pixel editing program. It has many features tailored for animation and seamless square-tile creation, as well as features designed to ease the creation of images that would run in a game on the Game Boy Advance or a Mobile Phone platform. The price of the normal version is $78.

[http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/index.html '''GraphicsGale'''] (for windows) is a pixel editing program designed for animation. It has both a freeware version, and a 1995¥ (roughly $20) shareware version. Be warned that it can '''not''' save files in the PNG format.

==== Non-shareware ====
[http://www.adobe.com/ '''Photoshop or Photoshop Elements'''] (for windows & mac), these industry standard Adobe applications are available for ~$700 and ~$100, respectively (the prices vary depending on where you get them). If you can acquire the use of these programs through a business or academic situation, they are extremely powerful, and are more than capable of some very advanced sprite techniques which elude simple bitmap programs - the price, however, is likely too much of a barrier to entry for most contributors. Photoshop should have little advantage over Elements for creating unit and terrain art. Photoshop (and presumably Elements) does not compactly save PNG files. For space savings, Adobe users are recommended to resave final PNGs through Adobe's companion application ImageReady, or another application such as GraphicConverter or PNGCrusher. Note - the ImageReady compression can also be used by saving the files through the "Save for Web..." menu command within Photoshop, if ImageReady is installed.

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Basic Animation Tutorial

2007-10-30T03:01:34Z

Jetryl: /* Moving only the active element */

by Jetryl

== Introduction ==

Animation works by fooling the mind into thinking that a series of still images are one continuously moving object. Certain things have to happen for the illusion to work. The basic principles are as follows, though keep in mind that these are interrelated:

* A moving object can only travel below a certain ratio of "screen space travelled" to "number of frames". If an object travels too far in too few frames, it will not look like it is moving, rather, it will look like it is disappearing from one location, and suddenly appearing in another.

* If the frames iterate too slowly - eg, less that 5 frames per second, the illusion of motion fails, and the whole thing looks more like a slideshow than an animation. Many 3d videogamers demand a framerate of 30fps from their hardware, or else they find the game to be too "jerky" and frustrating to play - some, even, demand 60fps. As a priciple, though, animation tends to fall apart somewhere between 5-10 fps.

Wesnoth is able to get away with a lot because we can programmatically create motion, some of the time. When a unit attacks, the code slides the attack image around. This allows us to use single images where we would be better served by multiple images. We can only get away with this in certain situations, however, and part of this is because the code-driven movement is both done at the maximum framerate of the running copy of wesnoth (often in the ballpark of a 3d game; some 30-60fps), and the code-driven movement is out-of-synch with the procedural animation, seemingly giving us additional frames of animation.

== Common mistakes: ==

All of these mistakes are ''absolutely unacceptable'' in an official in-game image. Some are very easy to correct, such as alignment, others, such as redrawing hidden surfaces, can make an animation much harder to do, but this is the price you ''must'' pay to make something look right. They're the laws of the real world, and fortunately, no one can use "style" as a cop-out for not following them - if you ignore these, your animation will look ''terrible''.

As a general principle, whenever you are tempted to use a shortcut to finish something, don't. It will look bad, and in the long run, it won't save any time, because if we end up using the animation, someone will have to pay the time to correct it. We will not use broken, half-hearted attempts at animations.

===Moving only the active element===
An animator thinks, "Hey, I'm animating a man swinging a sword. That means all I have to do is move the sword down in his hand." The animator then wonders why on earth his animation looks so poorly done.

Even the most subtle human motions will result in adjustments of the entire body, for balance. Human beings occupy what is known in physics as an "unstable" equilibrium point. If you set a pen on its point, it will fall over - amusingly enough, human beings are built, balance-wise, much like a pen. If we make any movement, we need to make an appropriate counter-movement, or we will fall on our face. Because of the way the human body is constructed, this generally means a rotation or movement of the entire torso, which makes anything connected (which is, the entire body) move with it.

In order to understand how something is supposed to move, you may need to look in the mirror, or look at a movie. There are many examples of good, medieval action films - titles such as Braveheart, or Lord of the Rings come to mind. Watch one of those movies, find a point where a character swings a sword, and watch what happens to the rest of the body. It's not subtle at all.
* Wrong: http://exong.net/wesnoth-attach/files/dark_queen_577.gif
* Right: http://exong.net/wesnoth-attach/files/orc_grunt_eastattack_263.gif

===Hidden surfaces must be redrawn===
When an object turns, in an animation, and shows a side that wasn't visble before, it ''must'' be drawn from scratch. If a man has his back to you, and turns around, his now-visible face will look a whole heck of a lot different from the back of his head, which was visible before. This is obvious! However, this is an often-repeated mistake, because people are afraid of having to draw parts from scratch. Cutting and pasting body parts, and moving them around can only be used for the tiniest motions, or motions in which there is NO rotation. The good news is, this is a great way for people to practice drawing parts of sprites, because here, they only have to draw a part of the unit's body, rather than the whole thing.

===Turned surfaces must be redrawn===
After about a 30-45 degree turn of any part of a sprite, the surface of that part has to be redrawn to account for the rotation. If a man is facing you, and turns sideways, his appearance will change considerably - for one thing, there will only be one eye visible where there were two visible before. Like I said above, '''DO NOT CUT AND PASTE'''. It simply will _ not look right.
* Wrong: http://exong.net/wesnoth-attach/files/elvish-rider-die_272.gif

===Misaligned Frames===
Each image in a series must line up correctly with the image before it. If they don't, the image shakes around inside the animation.
* Wrong: http://exong.net/wesnoth-attach/files/elfherb_170.gif

== Exaggeration techniques: ==

Traditional animation studios discovered several techniques along the way to "procedurally" liven up a strict representation of movement - that is, techniques that are probably correct to use even if you're not "drawing from life" and witnessing them firsthand. These were especially powerful in the first days of animation, because the drawings made were so simple, and left out a lot of the detail of the natural world - these are some of the first details to put back in. All of these are based vaguely on movement in the real world. If you exaggerate these too much, which you can certainly get away with, it will result in the animation looking cartoony, which is not necessarily a bad thing. These were developed in the first days of animation - in fact, fellows like Walt Disney were likely those who pioneered them.

* '''Wind-Up/Anticipation''' - When human beings prepare for a big move, such as swinging a baseball bat, or sword, they tend to give themselves some space to gain momentum. When a pitcher winds up for a throw, he curls back so that the ball will spend more time in his hand, thus spending more time accelerating, and thus have a higher speed. For wesnoth images, this is a great technique to use on big swords and clubs. If a man is going to throw a punch, he reels back with the arm that is preparing to deliver it. If a cobra is going to strike, it first rears back its head. Think of what "Popeye the Sailor Man" does when he's about to clobber someone, and you'll have good example of the "cartoony" range of things.

* '''Inertia and Air Resistance''' - Different things are affected by physics in different ways. When a person makes a motion, certain muscles drive the motion, and the rest of the body is pulled by this force acting on it. The most important thing is that different parts of the body will move at different speeds - this is related to my mantra of ''"move the whole body"'' - if you do it, things will look a ''lot'' more realistic.

* '''Non-rigid Objects''' - Most objects in the real world flex in extraordinary ways when they move, ways that you would never guess, but which are clearly percieved by the "subconcious," and thus look right when animated. For a stunning example, if you look at a slow-motion recording of baseball being hit by a bat, the baseball gets flattened like a pancake! This happens only for the tiniest moment, after which it oscillates back and forth (like a spring) returning to it's normal shape. In wesnoth animation, using such a thing only for a single frame can make for a much livelier animation.

* '''Follow Through''' - often taught to beginning boxers, a strike given with enough force to damage will often be targeted not at the surface of the opponent, but deep inside and even behind him. This is also related to many situations in which the person performing an action doesn't care where the moving object stops - a baseball player is not concerned with where the bat stops in his swing, rather he just wants to hit the ball as hard as he can, which is why the bat will often swing a full half-circle beyond home plate. In animating wesnoth images, this is why it looks better if really strong sword strokes go ''clean through'' the point where the opponent is standing. As an example, this is why the Elvish Hero's attack looks stronger than that of the Elvish Fighter.

* '''Cycling/Looping''' - In the real world, points of view do not remain fixed like they do in animations or videogames, but certain motions often get repeated, sometimes almost identically. One of the first tricks that animators used was to make animations of people doing something like walking. Instead of imitating the real world, wherein each step taken is subtly different from the next, as the mind carefully coordinates changing balance and the uneven conditions of the ground "plane", the animators simply drew a single step of the person walking, and lined up the images so that the final frame lined up with the first frame. Though one could not change the point of view on the subject, the animation could be looped indefinitely, and would look convincingly like viewing a person walking from a specific angle. For our purposes, this can be used to link together any repeating animations (such as walking animations).

== Some examples ==

Taken from Zhukov's edit of the orcish grunt
<table>
<tr><td>
http://exong.net/wesnoth-attach/files/orc-grunt-westbase_146.png
</td><td>
The base frame for an Orcish Grunt
</td></tr>
<tr><td>
http://exong.net/wesnoth-attach/files/orc_grunt-westattack_f1_203.png
</td><td>
Wind up - note the exaggerated pullback
</td></tr>
<tr><td>
http://exong.net/wesnoth-attach/files/orc_grunt-westattack_f3_123.png
</td><td>
Strike - note the whole body has moved, and most (but not all) of it has had to be redrawn.
</td></tr>
</table>

== See Also ==

* [[Art Tutorials]]
* [[Create Art]]
* [[Create]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Art Supplies

2007-10-30T02:48:34Z

Jetryl: Removed references to the Jetryl Personality cult.

What "physical art supplies" (not counting computer programs, although I make an addendum about them) you need to draw the way that professional artists like [http://www.machall.com/ Ian McConville], or [http://www.applegeeks.com/ Mohammad F. Haque], or certain artists who have contributed to wesnoth, do.

Not much, really. You need a good pencil, decent paper, and a few good erasers. That's it. One thing I should drive home is that buying great art supplies; or in fact, buying things specially set aside as art supplies, will not make you better at art any more than buying a better football will make you a good football player. You simply need something that is functional - to extend the football metaphor, it would be worth getting a better ball if yours had a leak and was always a bit flat, or if yours had some funny lump in it; but any brand new ball from a local store would be fine. With these things, there is a point of extremely diminishing returns. Unless you are ''extremely'' good,'''if you spend more than $25 on art supplies, you are probably wasting your money.'''

====The Pencil====
A regular graphite pencil, or a good mechanical pencil, will do the job.

I (Jetryl) do all of my drawings with a mechanical pencil, bought at a local store. I've grown quite fond of a specific make - the Pentel e-Sharp series with its "Lead-Maximizer" technology, and have grown so because that specific brand has a slightly unusual tip, which holds the lead more tightly throughout the life of a single stick of graphite. Generally, towards the end of a stick of graphite in a mechanical pencil (especially the cheaper "Bic" variety), the stick will no longer be gripped by the lead advancer inside the pencil. This allows it to rotate freely, and also slide in and out of the pencil (potentially falling out, if you held the pencil in the open air, pointing straight down). This causes a loss of certain fine control, and sometimes causes accidental strokes when the pencil is close to the page and the lead falls down and onto the surface of the page. A good mechanical pencil like mine solves this problem.

Certain professional artists will get these things titled "lead/graphite holders" - not devices that advance the lead for you, but ones whose head simply grips a stick of lead like a vise and have a pencil-like outer shell for you to grasp and draw with. These solve the same problem.

Amongst mechanical pencils, .5mm lead pencils are probably the best bet; they offer better control of details than .7mm pencils. .9mm, .3mm, and other sized pencils can be found for purchase, though they are considerably harder to find than the .5mm and .7mm pencils available at your local corner store. When I need something sharper than the .5mm width point, I take a very sharp piece of metal (a razor blade works well), and hone the tip of the graphite stick down for maximum precision.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil Traditional pencils] made with a shaft of graphite wrapped in wood come in many varieties of hardness, and can be used to shade in areas with respectively varying control over the level of shading (typically, softer lead gives darker marks, harder lead, lighter marks).

Total cost of a few decent pencils: $3-5

====The Paper====
Paper, like ice for a skater, can actually mess with your work if it's too rough. You (like myself) can get away with using nothing but mere printer paper, rather than buying fancy art paper. Just be warned that while some works beautifully, certain varieties aren't so reliable. You want to get paper that is very bright (probably about 95 or so, at least by HammerMill's rating system), and paper that has an extremely smooth surface, which you can only judge by trying it. An excellent way to do trial and error is to swipe a few sheets from any copiers you encounter; usually they'll each be stocked with a different brand, and they'll have spare, labeled, unopened reams inside or near them, so you can identify the brand.

Paper is composed of a bunch of fibers - on a microscopic level, these look vaguely like a bunch of chunks of hay or grass mashed together. Or perhaps like a rough, hilly topography. When you draw with a pencil, the lines you make generally only show up on the peaks of those "hills", on the fibers that stick up higher than their peers. This means that there are little gaps in your lines. On really bad paper, these can become quite apparent, and can be so bad that, like grooves in a record guiding a needle, they cause your pencil to move in directions you don't want it to. That can foul up finer details in a drawing. If the paper is causing these problems, it's not good enough. I suggest buying the best ream (500 sheet pack) of laser printer paper you can find in your local department store. This should cost you no more than about $6-10.

Professional artists sometimes buy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_paper quality paper] called "bristol board" or "vellum" for their illustrations (such as those mentioned at the start of this tutorial). It's only worth the money when you get really, really good at illustration; I myself am not good enough to capitalize on the difference, so I don't buy it.

Total cost for a ream of good paper: about $10

====The Erasers====
Your best friend.

A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneaded_eraser kneaded eraser] is a must. This is your primary tool. These are versatile things, and you may find them very strange if you're unfamiliar with them. They can be deformed like putty, often useful for making a point with which to erase fine details (a task they excel at), and also do not leave "shavings". They pull the graphite into their own fibrous mass, removing it from the paper as you rub the eraser against it. Because of this, they will over extended use become filled with graphite, and thus useless for pulling more out - it's at that point that you throw them away.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraser Other erasers] can also be very useful, including the white ones attached to most mechanical pencils. I use an "art gum" eraser for any "nuke and pave" tasks, wherein I want to erase a section of a drawing back to as close to pure white paper as I can get. It leaves a lot of shavings, and is a unwieldy tool for fine details, but does that single job very nicely. White vinyl erasers, and many other various brands/varieties can be used for similar purposes. Kneaded erasers, especially after some use, don't work especially well for nuking something down to white, and thus a few other erasers to complement them works well. The non-pink eraser at the end of my pencil works rather similarly.

You should avoid the ubiquitous "pink erasers" often seen in school classrooms, and also avoid anything harsh enough to tear up the page (like certain erasers I've seen which are designed to erase ''pen'' markings). The classic pink erasers don't do so well at lifting the graphite off the page, and sometimes have a detrimental effect of grinding it under the fibers, at which point you can no longer erase it without removing a layer of the paper, which is often unfeasible or destructive. They also have a tendency to dry out with age, at which point they're largely unable to erase, and will cause damage to your drawing if you try to use them.

Total cost for a batch of three erasers: about $10

====The Computer====
If you want to color drawings on a computer, which I don't suggest trying until you can do really good pencil lineart, then you will need a few things. Any computer of about 500mhz, with a copy of the Gimp or Photoshop will do well. In 2006, these are trivial to acquire - people throw these kinds of machines away, and you might be able to get one for free, if you don't have one already. That underscores the real point, here, which is that the machine you're reading this on is more than likely ''grossly'' overqualified for doing this kind of work. You'll also need a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_scanner scanner], which will set you back about $100 for a decent one, and I very strongly suggest getting a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_tablet graphics tablet], which costs about $100 as well. Wacom sells the very nice Graphire tablets, of which the 6x8 size is perfectly adequate for anyone's needs ([http://www.goodbrush.com/ Craig Mullins] has done his work with tools worse than what I listed above, as have many other artists).

For drawing in a cell-shaded style like this, I do not suggest coloring with anything other than a computer. People used to use things called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screentone screentones] to color cell-shading art in the past, but computers are better than them in practically any way, especially efficiency of work, and being able to correct mistakes..

Total cost for a great scanner and tablet: less than $200

Total cost for a suitable computer: free, you probably have one.

Total cost for [[Art_Programs|drawing software]]: free

Art Supplies

2007-10-30T01:58:54Z

Jetryl: /* The Paper */

What "physical art supplies" (not counting computer programs, although I make an addendum about them) you need to draw the way that Jetryl, [http://www.machall.com/ Ian McConville], or [http://www.applegeeks.com/ Mohammad F. Haque] do.

Not much, really. You need a good pencil, decent paper, and a few good erasers. That's it. One thing I should drive home is that buying great art supplies; or in fact, buying things specially set aside as art supplies, will not make you better at art any more than buying a better football will make you a good football player. You simply need something that is functional - to extend the football metaphor, it would be worth getting a better ball if yours had a leak and was always a bit flat, or if yours had some funny lump in it; but any brand new ball from a local store would be fine. With these things, there is a point of extremely diminishing returns. If you spend more than $25 on the sum total of one batch of these art supplies, you are wasting your money.

====The Pencil====
I do all of my drawings with a mechanical pencil, bought at my local Target™ store. Cost me about $3. I've grown quite fond of a specific make - the Pentel e-Sharp series with its "Lead-Maximizer" technology, and have grown so because that specific brand has a slightly unusual tip, which holds the lead more tightly throughout the life of a single stick of graphite. Generally, towards the end of a stick of graphite in a mechanical pencil (especially the cheaper "Bic" variety), the stick will no longer be gripped by the lead advancer inside the pencil. This allows it to rotate freely, and also slide in and out of the pencil (potentially falling out, if you held the pencil in the open air, pointing straight down). This causes a loss of certain fine control, and sometimes causes accidental strokes when the pencil is close to the page and the lead falls down and onto the surface of the page. A good mechanical pencil like mine solves this problem.

Certain professional artists will get these things titled "lead/graphite holders" - not devices that advance the lead for you, but ones whose head simply grips a stick of lead like a vise and have a pencil-like outer shell for you to grasp and draw with. These solve the same problem, though I've never used them (and actually have never seen on - the above info I give is as a secondary source, and might possibly be inaccurate). What I've got works, and I haven't gotten around to experimenting with that yet.

I use a .5mm lead pencil. .3mm pencils can be found for purchase, though they are considerably harder to find than the .5mm and .7mm pencils available at your local corner store. When I need something sharper than the .5mm width point, I take a very sharp piece of metal (a razor blade works well), and hone the tip down for maximum precision.

====The Paper====
Paper, like ice for a skater, can actually mess with your work if it's too rough. You (like myself) can get away with using nothing but mere printer paper, rather than buying fancy art paper. Just be warned that while some works beautifully, certain varieties aren't so reliable. You want to get paper that is very bright (probably about 95 or so, at least by HammerMill's rating system), and paper that has an extremely smooth surface, which you can only judge by trying it. An excellent way to do trial and error is to swipe a few sheets from any copiers you encounter; usually they'll each be stocked with a different brand, and they'll have spare, labeled, unopened reams inside or near them, so you can identify the brand.

Paper is composed of a bunch of fibers - on a microscopic level, these look vaguely like a bunch of chunks of hay or grass mashed together. Or perhaps like a rough, hilly topography. When you draw with a pencil, the lines you make generally only show up on the peaks of those "hills", on the fibers that stick up higher than their peers. This means that there are little gaps in your lines. On really bad paper, these can become quite apparent, and can be so bad that, like grooves in a record guiding a needle, they cause your pencil to move in directions you don't want it to. That can foul up finer details in a drawing. If the paper is causing these problems, it's not good enough. I suggest buying the best ream (500 sheet pack) of laser printer paper you can find in your local department store. This should cost you no more than about $6-10.

Professional artists sometimes buy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_paper quality paper] called "bristol board" or "vellum" for their illustrations (such as those mentioned at the start of this tutorial). It's only worth the money when you get really, really good at illustration; I myself am not good enough to capitalize on the difference, so I don't buy it.

Total cost for a ream of good paper: about $10

====The Erasers====
Your best friend.

A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneaded_eraser kneaded eraser] is a must. This is your primary tool. These are versatile things, and you may find them very strange if you're unfamiliar with them. They can be deformed like putty, often useful for making a point with which to erase fine details (a task they excel at), and also do not leave "shavings". They pull the graphite into their own fibrous mass, removing it from the paper as you rub the eraser against it. Because of this, they will over extended use become filled with graphite, and thus useless for pulling more out - it's at that point that you throw them away.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraser Other erasers] can also be very useful, including the white ones attached to most mechanical pencils. I use an "art gum" eraser for any "nuke and pave" tasks, wherein I want to erase a section of a drawing back to as close to pure white paper as I can get. It leaves a lot of shavings, and is a unwieldy tool for fine details, but does that single job very nicely. White vinyl erasers, and many other various brands/varieties can be used for similar purposes. Kneaded erasers, especially after some use, don't work especially well for nuking something down to white, and thus a few other erasers to complement them works well. The non-pink eraser at the end of my pencil works rather similarly.

You should avoid the ubiquitous "pink erasers" often seen in school classrooms, and also avoid anything harsh enough to tear up the page (like certain erasers I've seen which are designed to erase ''pen'' markings). The classic pink erasers don't do so well at lifting the graphite off the page, and sometimes have a detrimental effect of grinding it under the fibers, at which point you can no longer erase it without removing a layer of the paper, which is often unfeasible or destructive. They also have a tendency to dry out with age, at which point they're largely unable to erase, and will cause damage to your drawing if you try to use them.

Total cost for a batch of three erasers: about $10

====The Computer====
If you want to color drawings on a computer, which I don't suggest trying until you can do really good pencil lineart, then you will need a few things. Any computer of about 500mhz, with a copy of the Gimp or Photoshop will do well. In 2006, these are trivial to acquire - people throw these kinds of machines away, and you might be able to get one for free, if you don't have one already. That underscores the real point, here, which is that the machine you're reading this on is more than likely ''grossly'' overqualified for doing this kind of work. You'll also need a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_scanner scanner], which will set you back about $100 for a decent one, and I very strongly suggest getting a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_tablet graphics tablet], which costs about $100 as well. Wacom sells the very nice Graphire tablets, of which the 6x8 size is perfectly adequate for anyone's needs ([http://www.goodbrush.com/ Craig Mullins] has done his work with tools worse than what I listed above, as have many other artists).

For drawing in a cell-shaded style like this, I do not suggest coloring with anything other than a computer. People used to use things called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screentone screentones] to color cell-shading art in the past, but computers are better than them in practically any way, especially efficiency of work, and being able to correct mistakes..

Total cost for a great scanner and tablet: less than $200

Total cost for a suitable computer: free, you probably have one.

Total cost for [[Art_Programs|drawing software]]: free

Art Supplies

2007-10-30T01:47:18Z

Jetryl: /* The Erasers */

What "physical art supplies" (not counting computer programs, although I make an addendum about them) you need to draw the way that Jetryl, [http://www.machall.com/ Ian McConville], or [http://www.applegeeks.com/ Mohammad F. Haque] do.

Not much, really. You need a good pencil, decent paper, and a few good erasers. That's it. One thing I should drive home is that buying great art supplies; or in fact, buying things specially set aside as art supplies, will not make you better at art any more than buying a better football will make you a good football player. You simply need something that is functional - to extend the football metaphor, it would be worth getting a better ball if yours had a leak and was always a bit flat, or if yours had some funny lump in it; but any brand new ball from a local store would be fine. With these things, there is a point of extremely diminishing returns. If you spend more than $25 on the sum total of one batch of these art supplies, you are wasting your money.

====The Pencil====
I do all of my drawings with a mechanical pencil, bought at my local Target™ store. Cost me about $3. I've grown quite fond of a specific make - the Pentel e-Sharp series with its "Lead-Maximizer" technology, and have grown so because that specific brand has a slightly unusual tip, which holds the lead more tightly throughout the life of a single stick of graphite. Generally, towards the end of a stick of graphite in a mechanical pencil (especially the cheaper "Bic" variety), the stick will no longer be gripped by the lead advancer inside the pencil. This allows it to rotate freely, and also slide in and out of the pencil (potentially falling out, if you held the pencil in the open air, pointing straight down). This causes a loss of certain fine control, and sometimes causes accidental strokes when the pencil is close to the page and the lead falls down and onto the surface of the page. A good mechanical pencil like mine solves this problem.

Certain professional artists will get these things titled "lead/graphite holders" - not devices that advance the lead for you, but ones whose head simply grips a stick of lead like a vise and have a pencil-like outer shell for you to grasp and draw with. These solve the same problem, though I've never used them (and actually have never seen on - the above info I give is as a secondary source, and might possibly be inaccurate). What I've got works, and I haven't gotten around to experimenting with that yet.

I use a .5mm lead pencil. .3mm pencils can be found for purchase, though they are considerably harder to find than the .5mm and .7mm pencils available at your local corner store. When I need something sharper than the .5mm width point, I take a very sharp piece of metal (a razor blade works well), and hone the tip down for maximum precision.

====The Paper====
Paper, like ice for a skater, can actually mess with you if it's too rough. I use printer paper, believe it or not, and while some works beautifully, certain varieties have failed me. You want to get paper that is very bright (probably about 95 or so, at least by HammerMill's rating system), and paper that has an extremely smooth surface, which you can only judge by trying it.

Paper is composed of a bunch of fibers - on a microscopic level, these look vaguely like a bunch of chunks of hay or grass mashed together. Or perhaps like a rough, hilly topography. When you draw with a pencil, the lines you make generally only show up on the peaks of those "hills", on the fibers that stick up higher than their peers. This means that there are little gaps in your lines.

On really bad paper, these can become quite apparent, and can be so bad that, like grooves in a record guiding a needle, they cause your pencil to move in directions you don't want it to. That can foul up finer details in a drawing. If the paper is causing these problems, it's not good enough. I suggest buying the best ream (500 sheet pack) of laser printer paper you can find in your local department store. This should cost you no more than about $6-10.

Professional artists sometimes buy paper called "bristol board" or "vellum" for their illustrations (Hawk has said that he does). It's only worth the money when you get really, really good at illustration; I myself am not good enough to capitalize on the difference, so I don't buy it.

====The Erasers====
Your best friend.

A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneaded_eraser kneaded eraser] is a must. This is your primary tool. These are versatile things, and you may find them very strange if you're unfamiliar with them. They can be deformed like putty, often useful for making a point with which to erase fine details (a task they excel at), and also do not leave "shavings". They pull the graphite into their own fibrous mass, removing it from the paper as you rub the eraser against it. Because of this, they will over extended use become filled with graphite, and thus useless for pulling more out - it's at that point that you throw them away.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraser Other erasers] can also be very useful, including the white ones attached to most mechanical pencils. I use an "art gum" eraser for any "nuke and pave" tasks, wherein I want to erase a section of a drawing back to as close to pure white paper as I can get. It leaves a lot of shavings, and is a unwieldy tool for fine details, but does that single job very nicely. White vinyl erasers, and many other various brands/varieties can be used for similar purposes. Kneaded erasers, especially after some use, don't work especially well for nuking something down to white, and thus a few other erasers to complement them works well. The non-pink eraser at the end of my pencil works rather similarly.

You should avoid the ubiquitous "pink erasers" often seen in school classrooms, and also avoid anything harsh enough to tear up the page (like certain erasers I've seen which are designed to erase ''pen'' markings). The classic pink erasers don't do so well at lifting the graphite off the page, and sometimes have a detrimental effect of grinding it under the fibers, at which point you can no longer erase it without removing a layer of the paper, which is often unfeasible or destructive. They also have a tendency to dry out with age, at which point they're largely unable to erase, and will cause damage to your drawing if you try to use them.

Total cost for a batch of three erasers: about $10

====The Computer====
If you want to color drawings on a computer, which I don't suggest trying until you can do really good pencil lineart, then you will need a few things. Any computer of about 500mhz, with a copy of the Gimp or Photoshop will do well. In 2006, these are trivial to acquire - people throw these kinds of machines away, and you might be able to get one for free, if you don't have one already. That underscores the real point, here, which is that the machine you're reading this on is more than likely ''grossly'' overqualified for doing this kind of work. You'll also need a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_scanner scanner], which will set you back about $100 for a decent one, and I very strongly suggest getting a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_tablet graphics tablet], which costs about $100 as well. Wacom sells the very nice Graphire tablets, of which the 6x8 size is perfectly adequate for anyone's needs ([http://www.goodbrush.com/ Craig Mullins] has done his work with tools worse than what I listed above, as have many other artists).

For drawing in a cell-shaded style like this, I do not suggest coloring with anything other than a computer. People used to use things called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screentone screentones] to color cell-shading art in the past, but computers are better than them in practically any way, especially efficiency of work, and being able to correct mistakes..

Total cost for a great scanner and tablet: less than $200

Total cost for a suitable computer: free, you probably have one.

Total cost for [[Art_Programs|drawing software]]: free

Art Supplies

2007-10-30T00:47:22Z

Jetryl: /* The Computer */

What "physical art supplies" (not counting computer programs, although I make an addendum about them) you need to draw the way that Jetryl, [http://www.machall.com/ Ian McConville], or [http://www.applegeeks.com/ Mohammad F. Haque] do.

Not much, really. You need a good pencil, decent paper, and a few good erasers. That's it. One thing I should drive home is that buying great art supplies; or in fact, buying things specially set aside as art supplies, will not make you better at art any more than buying a better football will make you a good football player. You simply need something that is functional - to extend the football metaphor, it would be worth getting a better ball if yours had a leak and was always a bit flat, or if yours had some funny lump in it; but any brand new ball from a local store would be fine. With these things, there is a point of extremely diminishing returns. If you spend more than $25 on the sum total of one batch of these art supplies, you are wasting your money.

====The Pencil====
I do all of my drawings with a mechanical pencil, bought at my local Target™ store. Cost me about $3. I've grown quite fond of a specific make - the Pentel e-Sharp series with its "Lead-Maximizer" technology, and have grown so because that specific brand has a slightly unusual tip, which holds the lead more tightly throughout the life of a single stick of graphite. Generally, towards the end of a stick of graphite in a mechanical pencil (especially the cheaper "Bic" variety), the stick will no longer be gripped by the lead advancer inside the pencil. This allows it to rotate freely, and also slide in and out of the pencil (potentially falling out, if you held the pencil in the open air, pointing straight down). This causes a loss of certain fine control, and sometimes causes accidental strokes when the pencil is close to the page and the lead falls down and onto the surface of the page. A good mechanical pencil like mine solves this problem.

Certain professional artists will get these things titled "lead/graphite holders" - not devices that advance the lead for you, but ones whose head simply grips a stick of lead like a vise and have a pencil-like outer shell for you to grasp and draw with. These solve the same problem, though I've never used them (and actually have never seen on - the above info I give is as a secondary source, and might possibly be inaccurate). What I've got works, and I haven't gotten around to experimenting with that yet.

I use a .5mm lead pencil. .3mm pencils can be found for purchase, though they are considerably harder to find than the .5mm and .7mm pencils available at your local corner store. When I need something sharper than the .5mm width point, I take a very sharp piece of metal (a razor blade works well), and hone the tip down for maximum precision.

====The Paper====
Paper, like ice for a skater, can actually mess with you if it's too rough. I use printer paper, believe it or not, and while some works beautifully, certain varieties have failed me. You want to get paper that is very bright (probably about 95 or so, at least by HammerMill's rating system), and paper that has an extremely smooth surface, which you can only judge by trying it.

Paper is composed of a bunch of fibers - on a microscopic level, these look vaguely like a bunch of chunks of hay or grass mashed together. Or perhaps like a rough, hilly topography. When you draw with a pencil, the lines you make generally only show up on the peaks of those "hills", on the fibers that stick up higher than their peers. This means that there are little gaps in your lines.

On really bad paper, these can become quite apparent, and can be so bad that, like grooves in a record guiding a needle, they cause your pencil to move in directions you don't want it to. That can foul up finer details in a drawing. If the paper is causing these problems, it's not good enough. I suggest buying the best ream (500 sheet pack) of laser printer paper you can find in your local department store. This should cost you no more than about $6-10.

Professional artists sometimes buy paper called "bristol board" or "vellum" for their illustrations (Hawk has said that he does). It's only worth the money when you get really, really good at illustration; I myself am not good enough to capitalize on the difference, so I don't buy it.

====The Erasers====
Your best friend. I personally avoid those pink erasers, and also avoid anything harsh enough to tear up the page (like certain pen erasers I've seen).

A kneaded eraser is a must. These are versatile, and strange things. They can be deformed like putty, often useful for making a point with which to erase fine details (a task they excel at), and also do not leave "shavings". They pull the graphite into their own fibrous mass, and will over extended use become useless for pulling more out - it's at that point that you throw them away.

Other erasers can also be very useful, including the one attached to the pencil. I use an "art gum" eraser for any "nuke and pave" sections wherein I want to erase a section of a drawing back to as close to pure white paper as I can get. It leaves a lot of shavings, and is a unwieldy tool for fine details, but does that single task very nicely.

White vinyl erasers, and many other various brands/varieties can be used for similar purposes. Kneaded erasers, especially after some use, don't work especially well for nuking something down to white, and thus a few other erasers to complement them works well. The non-pink eraser at the end of my pencil works rather similarly.

The classic pink erasers, I generally avoid, because they don't do so well at lifting the graphite off the page, and sometimes have a detrimental effect of grinding it under the fibers, at which point you can no longer erase it without removing a layer of the paper, which is often unfeasible or destructive. They also have a tendency to dry out with age, at which point they do almost nothing but grinding graphite into the page instead of lifting it off.

Total cost for a batch of three erasers: about $10

====The Computer====
If you want to color drawings on a computer, which I don't suggest trying until you can do really good pencil lineart, then you will need a few things. Any computer of about 500mhz, with a copy of the Gimp or Photoshop will do well. In 2006, these are trivial to acquire - people throw these kinds of machines away, and you might be able to get one for free, if you don't have one already. That underscores the real point, here, which is that the machine you're reading this on is more than likely ''grossly'' overqualified for doing this kind of work. You'll also need a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_scanner scanner], which will set you back about $100 for a decent one, and I very strongly suggest getting a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_tablet graphics tablet], which costs about $100 as well. Wacom sells the very nice Graphire tablets, of which the 6x8 size is perfectly adequate for anyone's needs ([http://www.goodbrush.com/ Craig Mullins] has done his work with tools worse than what I listed above, as have many other artists).

For drawing in a cell-shaded style like this, I do not suggest coloring with anything other than a computer. People used to use things called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screentone screentones] to color cell-shading art in the past, but computers are better than them in practically any way, especially efficiency of work, and being able to correct mistakes..

Total cost for a great scanner and tablet: less than $200

Total cost for a suitable computer: free, you probably have one.

Total cost for [[Art_Programs|drawing software]]: free

Designing weapons and armour

2007-08-01T14:17:11Z

Jetryl: added sgt. groovy's costume site

by Zookeeper

Often one sees that someone draws these things looking all silly. Slight exaggeration of weaponry and such is of course fine in a fantasy setting, but it's not uncommon at all to go over the board and draw something that couldn't function in reality at all. This mostly applies to portraits and other realistic imagery, not really unit graphics as such.

Now, my point is simply: you can make weapons and armour be flashy and cool while keeping them very realistic, and a real-world reference also helps you to get things functional without having to think what kind of sword handle would work and what wouldn't, for example (and, no offense to artists drawing fantasy stuff, but that usually goes a bit awry), and that there are plenty of references available. So even if you don't feel the need for the weapons you draw to look realistic, having some references still helps to actually make it look good (in the same way as having a reference when drawing a person makes it much easier to get it look right and good).

For this purpose, I thought I'd go through some related sites I know of and post some links here. These are armouries, general information/review sites, etc, which contain good pictures of historical arms and armour. Mostly (if not all) are only european stuff though (which sort of fits with at least the mainline Wesnoth setting), but that's all I had available right now.

* http://www.armouronline.com/ - the full body armour section is good, weapons are generally crappy here.
* http://www.myarmoury.com/ - hard to navigate, but contains a lot of good pictures, if you take the time to find them. The "reviews" page is a good place to start from.
* http://www.volny.cz/grex/vyrobky/vyrob_e.htm - some odd czech site, but has some nice armour.
* http://www.lutel.cz/index_.php?en=1 - quite a number of all sorts of weapons in the catalog (especially the polearms and such look nice).
* http://www.darksword-armory.com/ - a collection of often historically accurate weaponry
* http://www.by-the-sword.com/ - various things
* http://www.siue.edu/COSTUMES/history.html - a site with lot of pictures of clothing from different eras and areas, from 19 century engravings. The scans could be of higher quality, but you can find plenty of stuff for reference/inspiration for fantasy clothing. Many of the same pictures can also be found in a book A Pictorial History of Costume (Pepin Press, no author).

Feel free to post your additions (especially to the type of items not covered on these sites), too, since we don't have much here yet.

Races

2007-07-27T20:02:56Z

Jetryl: /* Orcs */

== The Six Main Races ==

=== Men ===
The race of men is an extremely diverse one. Although men originally came from the Old Continent, they have spread all over the world, and split into many different cultures and races. They do not possess much magic, though they can learn it, and can learn many more types of it than most others. They have no extra special abilities or aptitudes except their versatility and drive. Although often at odds with all races, they can occasionally form alliances with the less aggressive races such as elves and dwarves, and the less scrupulous among them do not shrink back from hiring orcish mercenaries, either. They have no natural enemies, although the majority of men, like most people of all races, have an instinctive dislike of the undead. Men are shorter than the elves, but taller still than dwarves or orcs. Their skin color can vary, from almost white to dark brown.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_human.html Human unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_human.html Human unit tree (development)]

==== Wesnothians ====
Many different groups of men exist, but the majority of them on the Great Continent live in the country of Wesnoth. The Wesnothians first appeared on the Great Continent from a land far across the ocean to the West, the Green Isle. Their capital city is Weldyn. The country is protected by the soldiers of the Wesnothian Army, the most organized military force in the known world. Its warriors come from the main provinces, where all men are conscripted at an early age.

==== The Clansmen ====
The eastern provinces of Wesnoth, known as the Clan Homelands, have a geography consisting of more open plains and rolling hills than the western, more civilized provinces. They are home to the Horse Clans, who are allied with the Wesnothian Army but are somewhat separate, and maintain their own identity - as well as their own army. Some consider them to be a tributary state, that sends food and soldiers to Wesnoth in exchange for protection; others say they are on equal footing with the western half of Wesnoth, and they just serve different purposes in the country. In any case, the eastern provinces do not have a conscript army the way Western Wesnoth does. Training for fighting is part of the way of life of the Clans, so the parents will teach the children to ride horses, fight and shoot a bow from an early age. In general, the Clan warriors are less organized than the Civilized fighters, and their strengths and weaknesses complement each other.

==== Outlaws and Necromancers ====
Bands of outlaws roam the wild areas of the Great Continent, stealing from unprotected villages. Most would run in fear if faced by a true army, but the more skilled of them would not be afraid to walk right into an opponent's camp, assassinate their leader, and run away.

Although the art of necromancy is outlawed in Wesnoth, some mages choose to practice it, starting them on the road to Lichdom.

=== Elves ===

Elves are the elder race. They are skilled with the bow and arrow - almost all of them carry one - and are also good with the sword. They do not use many weapons but these, although they are in command of powerful magic, and do use it when needed. Physically, Elves are quite tall, and seem even taller due to their slimness. They are peaceful beings, but will fight against any who enter their homeland unasked. They live mostly in the forests of the Southwest, although some choose to live in the harsh Northlands.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_elf.html Elf unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_elf.html Elf unit tree (development)]

=== Orcs ===

Orcs are a race of fierce, brown-skinned human-like creatures found across the wild places of the world. They came from across the sea, following the humans of the Green Isle. They are violent, quick-tempered, and belligerent, and hold an ancient hatred for the race of elves. Although orcs are disorganized and prone to infighting, warbands under a strong leader can cut bloody inroads into the boundaries where civilization meets wilderness. Most live in the Northland, away from the settled land of Wesnoth, whose people they are more often than not at war with. They are a greedy race, and
often can be found fighting under the banner of a lich-lord or human, hoping to gain riches from those they defeat.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_orc.html Orc unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_orc.html Orc unit tree (development)]

Goblins are, despite their appearance, members of the exact same race as orcs, and are born as siblings to the orcs. Unlike similar races, who usually bear children singly or in pairs, orcs will have large litters of children all at once; which is a large part of why their populations can explode so quickly. Within any litter, there will only be one or two true orcs, who will grow to the full size and strength of their race. A few more will be half-orcs, notably weaker than their big brothers, and relegated to supporting roles in combat, such as archery. The rest, often a full half of more of any litter, will be goblins. Goblins are puny, and quite frail; similar in size and stature to a human child, even at the apex of their growth. They have a rather tragic fate; a lifetime of near-slavery to their larger kin, and use as sword-fodder in battle. In spite of this, they thrive; in part because they are so very numerous, and also because their brother orcs are well aware how dependent they are on the goblins.

Goblins accomplish the bulk of manual labor needed by the orcs, with the sole exception of jobs which require the brute strength of true orcs, which the orcs revel in doing as proof of their prowess.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_goblin.html Goblin unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_goblin.html Goblin unit tree (development)]

=== Dwarves ===

Dwarves were living on the Great Continent before Haldric arrived, but they were also immigrants, like him, coming from the East across the mountains. Dwarves are the height of human children, but are stronger than even fully grown men.
They are a solitary folk, cautious and slow to anger, but once their anger is roused they are terrible fighters.
Wielding many weapons with equal skill, dwarves are effective against many different races. They see in pitch darkness due to their constant work underground, and their heavy armor protects them against almost any physical attack, although magic can harm them effectively. The most skilled smiths of any in the realm, they are often hired by foreign kings to craft magical items, and the weapons and jewelry they make have been the cause of numerous wars.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_dwarf.html Dwarf unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_dwarf.html Dwarf unit tree (development)]

=== Undead ===

As their race's name means, these are lost souls caught between this realm and next. Themselves deprived of life, they wish to likewise deprive all others of it. They are created by Necromancers, practitioners of dark magic, and are controlled by them when raised. After the necromancer controlling them dies, they remain in this world, and continue fighting for a purpose no one, perhaps not even themselves, know. Most of them are strong against physical attacks, but are weak against fire and holy assaults. Since they do not require bodily warmth to survive, cold is very ineffectual
against them.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_undead.html Undead unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_undead.html Undead unit tree (development)]

=== Drakes ===

Drakes are the sons of dragons, almost the last legacy of those mighty beasts.
Most of the race can fly and spit fire.
When the fire in their body is extinguished so is their life.
Because of this they are weak against cold, but they are good against most other attacks.
However, due to their soft underbellies, "sharp, pointy weapons" have always been their weakness, a characteristic most consider very dragonlike. They are heavy and move slowly, but once they reach their enemy they are devastating.
Their homeland was an island named Morogor, located between Wesnoth and the Green Isle, but it slowly sank into the sea, and now many of them are nomads, flying over the sea looking for a place to settle undisturbed.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_drake.html Drake unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_drake.html Drake unit tree (development)]

== Other Races ==

There are other races than these six main ones. They often align with the larger races, but these alliances are usually not permanent.

=== Saurians ===
These are the smaller, more crafty allies of the Drakes. They often live in swamps or other damp places.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_lizard.html Saurian unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_lizard.html Saurian unit tree (development)]

=== Merfolk ===
The Merfolk live in the shallow parts of the ocean, wary of the monsters that lurk in the deep. Ordinarily they form alliances with no one, but in Asheviere's time they allied with the elves in order to defeat their captors. Mermen are powerful and quick in any watery environment, but struggle greatly to move on land.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_merman.html Merman unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_merman.html Merman unit tree (development)]

=== Nagas ===
Nagas are the long time enemies of the Merfolk, and in Asheviere's time they allied with orcs to finally defeat their opponents. They usually join forces with anyone willing to help them defeat the mermen.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_naga.html Naga unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_naga.html Naga unit tree (development)]

=== Ogres ===
The Ogres are wild beasts that live in the Northlands, but the Wesnothian army occasionally captures them and trains them for battle. They are extremely brutish and stupid, but possess enough intelligence to wield a weapon.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_ogre.html Ogre unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_ogre.html Ogre unit tree (development)]

=== Trolls ===
The Trolls are slightly more intelligent than Ogres, and ally with the Orcs whenever their shared homeland is in danger. However, most of the time they avoid each other.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_troll.html Troll unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_troll.html Troll unit tree (development)]

===Woses===
Little is known about the Woses, apart from their tree-like appearance. However these beings have not descended from trees, despite the similarity in form. They seem to be wardens of the natural world.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_wose.html Wose unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_wose.html Wose unit tree (development)]

=== Monsters ===
There are many monsters that roam about the land, not obeying anyone's orders. Occasionally, but not often, those who see them survive to tell the tale, and it is only from them that the people of Wesnoth know of their existence.
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/tree_monster.html Monster unit tree (stable)]
* [http://zapicm.freeshell.org/dev/tree_monster.html Monster unit tree (development)]

See Also:
* [[UnitDescriptionRewriting]] - coordinating the revision

Art Programs

2007-03-03T02:30:05Z

Jetryl: cleaned up header for clarity

{| style="float:right; margin-left:1em;"
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'''Big Note:''' It is mostly-possible to make wesnoth graphics with nothing more than MSPaint or Appleworks. However, there are two major and '''vital''' things lacking in those programs - first, these programs cannot make images with transparent pixels, and second, they may not be able to save in the PNG format used by Wesnoth. A program capable of those will have to be applied to images made with MSPaint when they are finished.

=== Free Image Editors ===
The following are free image editing programs which can be used to create graphics for wesnoth. These programs are Open-Source Software, like wesnoth, meaning they are free to use, and that you are free to look at the sourcecode.

[http://www.gimp.org '''The GIMP'''] (for windows & linux); the "Gnu Image Manipulation Program" is recommended.

[http://seashore.sourceforge.net/ '''Seashore'''] (for mac) this port of the the GIMP to a cocoa-based gui is recommended. Seashore provides the basic features of GIMP.

[http://www.opensword.org/ '''Pixen'''] (for mac) is the OpenSword Group's tool for traditional SNES style sprite art - unlike most other editors, it has been designed for that specific task, and users may find it much less daunting than the Gimp or Photoshop. This program was written in cocoa, and has a very good interface - version 3 will even include built-in support for making animations.

[http://www.j-domain.de/homepage.php?page=20 '''JDraw'''] (for anything that can run Java - mac and windows included) is an image editor which has a subset of the features of Pixen, and a superset of the features of MSPaint. It is a simple, straightforward pixel editing program. If you use a mac, Pixen is probably a better idea.

[http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/ '''Paint.net'''] (for windows) is generally regarded as inferior to the Gimp or Photoshop, but some might find it of interest.

[http://ase.sourceforge.net/ '''Allegro Sprite Editor'''] (for windows/linux) is a sprite editing program. Free/OSS, note that it is NOT capable of saving PNGs.

=== Free Image Post-Processors ===

[http://www.amake.us/software/pngcrusher/ '''PNGCrusher'''] (for mac) is a handy lightweight tool that will compress your PNGs much more efficiently than Photoshop. It is best used in tandem with saving the files from GraphicConverter, with the PNG filtering options on. The tool it is based on, OptiPNG, is open source, and runs on both linux and windows.

=== Proprietary Image Editors ===

==== Shareware ====
[http://www.lemkesoft.de/ '''GraphicConverter'''] (for mac) by Lemkesoft is an excellent program for preparing and compressing png images for the game, and may also be useful for the creation of images. The shareware fee is $30, although large parts of the program are fully functional for free.

[http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/ '''Pixel Image Editor'''] (for mac/windows/linux/BeOS/others) is a very full-featured program, intended to fulfill the same function that photoshop does. It currently has a shareware fee of $32, though the final price once the product reaches v2.0, will be $79.

[http://www.ultimatepaint.com/ '''JTL Ultimate Paint'''] (for windows) is a basic painting program, following the tradition of the earlier "DeluxePaint". Geared at painting, it can use photoshop plugins. It currently costs $34 for a basic version. I do not know if this program can export PNG images, so ''caveat emptor''.

[http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/ '''Pro Motion'''] (for windows) is a commercial pixel editing program. It has many features tailored for animation and seamless square-tile creation, as well as features designed to ease the creation of images that would run in a game on the Game Boy Advance or a Mobile Phone platform. The price of the normal version is $78.

[http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/index.html '''GraphicsGale'''] (for windows) is a pixel editing program designed for animation. It has both a freeware version, and a 1995¥ (roughly $20) shareware version. Be warned that it can '''not''' save files in the PNG format.

==== Non-shareware ====
[http://www.adobe.com/ '''Photoshop or Photoshop Elements'''] (for windows & mac), these industry standard Adobe applications are available for ~$700 and ~$100, respectively (the prices vary depending on where you get them). If you can acquire the use of these programs through a business or academic situation, they are extremely powerful, and are more than capable of some very advanced sprite techniques which elude simple bitmap programs - the price, however, is likely too much of a barrier to entry for most contributors. Photoshop should have little advantage over Elements for creating unit and terrain art. Photoshop (and presumably Elements) does not compactly save PNG files. For space savings, Adobe users are recommended to resave final PNGs through Adobe's companion application ImageReady, or another application such as GraphicConverter or PNGCrusher. Note - the ImageReady compression can also be used by saving the files through the "Save for Web..." menu command within Photoshop, if ImageReady is installed.

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Credits

2007-02-28T23:30:23Z

Jetryl: /* Minor Contributors */ added metadata for Rev. V! and EELuminatus

{| style="float:right"
|
__TOC__
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In July 2003, '''David White''' released the first version of Wesnoth. Since then, many people have joined the project, contributing in very different ways.

== Developers ==
====Coders, (minor and major)====
* Alfredo Beaumont (ziberpunk) - autotools
* András Salamon ([[User:Ott|ott]]) - QA, bug fixing, subediting, game mechanics
* Benoît Timbert (Noyga) - coder
* Bram Ridder (Morloth) - editor improvements
* [[User:bruno|Bruno Wolff III]] - Campaign web interface, [[MainlineScenarios#The_Dark_Hordes|The Dark Hordes]] maintainer, bug fixing, minor coder
* Cédric Duval - coder, internationalization manager
* David Philippi (Torangan) - internationalization manager, wescamp
* [mailto:davidnwhite_AT_verizon.net David White] (Sirp) - founder, lead developer, scenario designer
* Dominic Bolin (Xan) - programmer
* Guillaume Melquiond (silene) - coding, bug fixes
* Jérémy Rosen (Boucman) - coder
* Jörg Hinrichs (Yogi Bear/YogiHH) - coder
* Jon Daniel (forcemstr) - coder, bug fixes
* [mailto:mcnabb_AT_gravity.psu.edu J.W.C. McNabb] (Darth Fool) - coder, graphics
* [mailto:justin.zaun_AT_gmail.com Justin Zaun] (jzaun) - coder, scenario designer
* [mailto:erl_AT_erl.se Kristoffer Erlandsson] (erl) - help system, editor
* Nicolas Weeger (ryo) - Python API
* [mailto:patrick_x99(AT).hotmail.com Patrick Parker] ([[User:Sapient|Sapient]]) - misc. gui changes, orphaned-idea adopter
* [mailto:philippe.plantier_AT_naema.org Philippe Plantier] ([[User:Ayin|Ayin]]) - several parts of the code, notably terrain graphics code
* [mailto:ydirson_AT_altern.org Yann Dirson] - gettext support, tinygui

====Miscellaneous====
* Benjamin Drieu (benj) - campaign writer (wrote "Son of the Black Eye")
* [mailto:dragonking_AT_o2.pl Bartek Waresiak] (Dragonking) - multiplayer balancing
* Crossbow/Miyo - administrator, release manager
* Francisco Muñoz (fmunoz) - artwork manager, many images, scenario designer (also listed below)
* Hogne Håskjold (frame) - terrain designer (also listed below)
* [mailto:isaac_AT_sindominio.net Isaac Clerencia] - administrator, release manager, debian packager
* James Spencer (Shade) - campaign writer (wrote "The Rise of Wesnoth")
* Joseph Simmons (Turin) - campaign writer, some graphics (wrote "The Eastern Invasion," and others)
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - internationalization manager
* Mike Quiñones (Doc Paterson) - multiplayer balancing, multiplayer maps
* [mailto:Crazy-Ivanovic_AT_gmx.net Nils Kneuper] (Ivanovic) - internationalization manager, campaign maintainer (Two Brothers), release manager
* Richard Kettering (Jetryl) - artwork manager, many images (also listed below)
* Richard S. (Noy) - multiplayer balancing
* Soliton - multiplayer balancing
* Susanna Björverud (sanna) - internationalization manager
* [mailto:kleinfel_AT_wpi.edu Zack Kleinfeld] - multiplayer maps, unit balancing

====Unclassified====
* Jan Zvánovec (jaz)
* John B. Messerly (jbm)
* [mailto:jorda_AT_ettin.org Jordà Polo] (ettin)
* J.R. Blain (Cowboy)
* Maksim Orlovich (SadEagle)
* Zas

== Artists ==
==== Major Contributors ====
* Francisco Muñoz (fmunoz) - Founding Artist and former lead artist, worked consistently on all aspects till around v0.7-0.9.
* Richard Kettering [http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Jetryl (Jetryl)] - Current art director/slave, major focus on sprites, portraits, buildings, and icons
* Hogne Håskjold (frame/freim) - Current director of terrain art, made much of the current terrains (esp. mountains)
* J. W. Bjerk [http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Eleazar (Eleazar)] - terrain (esp Chasm, Cave, Water), sprite animations, various visual tweaks
* Pekka Aikio (pekka) - tiles, esp. castles, and attack icons
* Lari Nieminen (zookeeper) - Current sprite animation director and WML wizard
* James Woo (Pickslide) - portraits (major focus on orcs and campaigns, especially UtBS, TEI, TSoF)
* Jason Lutes - portraits (major focus on humans, some campaign portraits)
* ?? (Neoriceisgood) - sprite creator and animator (major focus on drakes, dwarves, saurians)
* Peter Geinitz (Shadow/Wayfarer) - sprite creator and animator

==== Moderate Contributors ====
* Alex Jarocha-Ernst (Jormungandr) - portraits
* Moritz Göbelbecker (mog) - tiles, esp. swamp, encampment, ice, and work with lava/chasm
* Erkki Lonkainen (Eternal) - created and animated many replacement sprites (esp. ogre, orc assassin & spear units, and cockatrice)
* Maximiliano Buis (Redeth) - Made nearly all of the idle animations, and some death animations (as of 1.3.1)
* Leonhard ? (Leonhard) - made several of the new attack icons
* Michael Gil de Muro (grp21) - portraits (for the campaign "The Rise of Wesnoth")
* Robert Bolin (Zebulon) - tiles, sprite editing and animations
* Christophe Anjard (Christophe33) - made many of the old (c. v0.6) terrains, and some sprites for the dwarves
* Johann de Venecia (Johann) - drew the new campaign story art for HttT
* Mark Goodenough (Ranger M) - Sprite animator

==== Minor Contributors ====

* Eli Dupree (Elvish Pillager) - sprites and animations
* Murray Cook (Zhukov) - Sprite animator
* Gerald Clears (Smok'em Jags) - sprite animator
* Jesse Holland (Kestenvarn) - map illustrator, designed the current map for HttT
* Mikko Kraft (Deserter) - Sprite animator
* Michael Mielewczik (Mille) - Sprite animator
* Stephen Stone (Disto) - Sprite animator
* Andrew James Patterson (Kamahawk) - sprites
* Diego Brea (Cobretti) - sprite creator/animator
* ?? (antwerpz) - sprite creator/animator for old saurian units
* Gareth Miller (Gafgarion) - made some early sprites/tiles
* James Barton (Sangel) - sprites
* John Muccigrosso (Eponymous Archon) - made some early sprites, such as the human bowmen
* ?? (Slainte) - made sprites for c. v0.6 mages, also made many of the old attack icons
* ?? (Svetac) - made many of the old attack icons
* Johanna Manninen (lohari) - edited tiles, ported freeciv tiles used in very early versions of wesnoth
* Tristan Millner (tatmf) - made portrait of dwarven fighter
* EEL (EELuminatus) - Made death animations for the wose line.
* Eric Holdos (Rev. V!) - Made a few extra frames for the elvish captain/hero.

==== Very Minor Contributors ====
* Gideon Chia (Deonjo) - new "units" icon for general status bar
* John-Robert Funck (XJaPaN) - sprite animator
* Anton Ecker (Kaldred) - burnt villages
* Jonatan Alamà (tin) - made red logo used until before v1.0
* Jimmy Olsson (Azlan) - made old icons for windows version
* Randall Walls (slightcrazed) - sprite animator
* Jason Frailey (Valdroni) - made scorpion portrait
* Nicholas Kerpan (Thrawn) - made human theif portrait
* ?? (Highhole) - revised storm trident
* Irwin Ismail (Swordy) - original projectile/attack icon for chakram
* Evan Crook (Flametrooper) - Sprite animator (TC conversion)
* Daniel Borgmann (dborg) - semi-transparent map grid
* Garrett Wessner (Stilgar) - gold coin-pile

== Musicians ==
* Aleksi Aubry-Carlson (Aleksi) - music coordinator/composer
* Joseph Toscano (zhaymusic.com) - music
* Pau Congost - music
* Fredrik Lindroth - music
* Timothy Pinkham (TimothyP) - music coordinator/composer

== Translators ==
* adson - hungarian translation
* İhsan Akın - turkish translation
* Agata Chmiel - polish translation
* Aleksej Korgenkov (Grimpanto) - esperanto translation
* Alessio D'Ascanio (otaku) - italian translation
* Alexander Alexiou (Santi) - greek translation
* Alexander Kjäll (capitol) - swedish translation
* Alexandr Menovchicov - russian translation
* Alexey Remizov - russian translation
* Alexey Zakharchenko - russian translation
* Alfredo Beaumont (ziberpunk) - basque translation
* Ambra Viviani Loos - brazilian portuguese translation
* Americo Iacovizzi (DarkAmex) - italian translation
* Anders K. Madsen (madsen) - danish translation
* András Salamon ([[User:Ott|ott]]) - afrikaans, english and hungarian translation
* Andre Schmidt (schmidta) - german translation
* Anežka Bubeníčková (Bubu) - czech translation
* Ankka - finnish translation
* Anton Tsigularov (Atilla) - bulgarian translation
* Arkadiusz Danilecki (szopen) - polish translation
* Arnaud Garoux (La vie en wose) - french translation
* Arne Deprez - dutch translation
* Artur R. Czechowski - polish translation
* Åse Petersson (tintin) - swedish translation
* Aurélien Brevers (Breversa) - french translation
* Azamat Hackimov ([[User:Winterheart|winterheart]]) - russian translation
* Bartek Waresiak (Dragonking) - polish translation
* Beer (Eddi) - hungarian translation
* Benoit Astruc - french translation
* Benoît Timbert (Noyga) - french translation
* Bjarke Sørensen (basher) - danish translation
* BlueStar - japanese translation
* Boris Stumm (quijote_) - german translation
* BOrsuk - polish translation
* Branko Kokanovic (kokan) - serbian translation
* Bruno Fève (PP) - french translation
* [mailto:caslav_DOT_ilic_AT_gmx_DOT_net Časlav Ilić] - serbian translation
* Cédric Duval - french translation
* Carles Company (brrr) - catalan translation
* Celso Goya - brazilian portuguese translation
* Christoph Berg (chrber) - german translation
* [mailto:cbterra_AT_gmail.com Claudio Terra] - brazilian portuguese translation
* Claus Aranha - brazilian portuguese translation
* crys0000 - italian translation
* Dan Rosàs Garcia (focks) - catalan translation
* Damien Jacquot - french translation
* Daniel López (Azazelo) - catalan translation
* DaringTremayne - french translation
* David Martínez Moreno - spanish translation
* David Nečas (Yeti) - czech translation
* dentro - hungarian translation
* Denica Mincheva - bulgarian translation
* Enes Akın (yekialem) - turkish translation
* Erik J. Mesoy (Circon) - norwegian translation
* Eugenio Favalli (ElvenProgrammer) - italian translation
* Federico Tomassetti - italian translation
* Flamma - spanish translation
* Foppe Benedictus - dutch translation
* Francesco Lorenzon (Likso) - esperanto translation
* Franciso Muñoz (fmunoz) - spanish translation
* François Mariage (Paquito) - french translation
* François Orieux - french translation
* Gabriel Rodríguez (Chewie) - spanish translation
* Gaute Jao (Bombadil) - norwegian translation
* Geoffroy Douillié ([[User:Gdou|Gdou]]) - french translation
* Georgi Dimitrov (oblak)- bulgarian translation
* Gérard Bodin - french translation
* Gerfried Fuchs (Alfie) - german translation
* Gilluin - hungarian translation
* Guillaume Duwelz-Rebert - french translation
* [mailto:massart.guillaume_AT_wanadoo.fr Guillaume Massart (Piou2fois)] - french translation
* Guillaume Melquiond (silene) - french translation
* Hallvard Norheim Bø (Lysander) - norwegian translation
* Harry Kaimenas - greek translation
* Håvard Korsvoll - norwegian translation
* Huang huan (unicon) - chinese translation
* Hugo Gerlach (Entrimo) - swedish translation
* Ilya Kaznacheev - russian translation
* Ilya Kotov - russian translation
* Ivan Kovacs - slovak translation
* isazi - italian translation
* Iván Herrero (navitux) - spanish translation
* Jaka Kranjc (lynx) - slovenian translation
* Jan Greve (Jan) - german translation
* Jan-Heiner Laberenz (jan-heiner) - german translation
* Jean Privat (Tout) - french translation
* Jean-Luc Richard (Le Gnome) - french translation
* Jehan Hysseo (Jey) - french translation
* Jérémy Rosen (Boucman) - french translation
* Jesper Fuglsang Wolff (ulven) - danish translation
* Joan Queralt - catalan translation
* Joe Hansen - danish translation
* Joeri Melis - dutch translation
* Jonatan Alamà (tin) - catalan translation
* [mailto:jorda_AT_ettin.org Jordà Polo] (ettin) - catalan translation coordinator
* Jose Gordillo (kilder) - spanish and catalan translation
* Jose Manuel Gomez (joseg) - spanish translation
* Joset Anthony Zamora (sophie^) - filipino translation
* Julien Moncel - french translation
* Julien Tailleur - french translation
* Julen Landa (genars) - basque translation
* Jussi Rautio (jgrr) - finnish translation
* Kai Ensenbach (Pingu) - german translation
* Kékkői László (BlackEvil) - hungarian translation
* Karol Nowak (grzywacz) - polish translation
* Katerina Sykioti - greek translation
* Kertész Csaba - hungarian translation
* Khiraly - hungarian translation
* Kim Woong (Kazya) - korean translation
* kko - finnish translation
* Konstantinos Karasavvas - greek translation
* Konstantinos Egarhos - greek translation
* Kosif - turkish translation
* Kovács Dániel - hungarian translation
* krix - hungarian translation
* Lala - dutch translation
* Leo Danielson (Lugo Moll) - swedish translation
* Luciano Montanaro (Luciano) - italian translation
* Lukáš Faltýnek - czech translation
* Ľubo Fajth - esperanto translation
* Maarten Albrecht - dutch and esperanto translation
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - danish translation
* Mark Polo (mpolo) - latin translation
* Mark Recasens - catalan translation
* Mart Tõnso - estonian translation
* Martin Dzbor - slovak translation
* Martin Šín - czech translation
* Matej Repinc - slovenian translation
* Mathias Bundgaard Svensson (freaken) - danish translation
* Matias Parmala - finnish translation
* methinks - polish translation
* Michał Jedynak (Artanis) - polish translation
* Michał Ligowski (misiorysio) - polish translation
* Michel Loos - brazilian portuguese translation
* Michel Poléni (Thanatloc) - french translation
* Mikel Olasagasti (Hey_neken) - basque translation
* Mikko Kraft (deserter) - finnish translation
* Mintaka - czech translation
* Naoki Iimura (amatubu) いいむらなおき - japanese translation
* Nico Oliver - afrikaans translation
* Nicolas Boudin (Blurgk) - french translation
* Nikolay Vladimirov (Turki) - bulgarian translation
* [mailto:Crazy-Ivanovic_AT_gmx.net Nils Kneuper] (Ivanovic) - german translation
* [mailto:okyada_AT_gmail.com Nobuhito Okada] 岡田信人 - japanese translation
* [mailto:tapik_AT_buchtovi.cz Oto Buchta] ([[User:Tapik|tapik]]) - czech translation
* Pau Rul·lan Ferragut - catalan translation
* Paweł Stradomski - polish translation
* Paweł Tomak - polish translation
* paxed - finnish translation
* Petr Kopač (Ferda) - czech translation
* Petr Kovár (Juans) - czech translation
* [mailto:philippe.plantier_AT_naema.org Philippe Plantier] ([[User:Ayin|Ayin]]) - french translation
* Pieter Vermeylen (Onne) - dutch translation
* Pınar Yanardağ (moonquelle) - turkish translation
* Q - japanese translation
* Rastislav Šarišský (Asto) - esperanto translation
* Renato Cunha - brazilian portuguese translation
* Ricardo Sodré Andrade - brazilian portuguese translation
* Roberto Garcia (Motxales) - catalan translation
* Roel Thijs (Roel) - dutch translation
* Roger Koot - dutch translation
* RokStar - italian translation
* Roman Tuchin (Sankt) - russian translation
* Rudolf Orság - czech translation
* Ruben Philipp Wickenhäuser (The Very Uhu) - german translation
* Sébastien Raynaud (Galactic turkey) - french translation
* Sérgio de Miranda Costa - brazilian portuguese translation
* Selim Farsakoğlu - turkish translation
* Sofronius - czech translation
* Spiros, Giorgis - greek translation
* [mailto:sreckotoroman_AT_gmail_DOT_com Srećko Toroman] (FreeCraft) - serbian translation
* Stefan Bergström (tephlon) - swedish translation
* Stephan Grochtmann (Schattenstephan) - german translation
* [mailto:susanna.bjorverud_AT_telia.com Susanna Björverud] (sanna) - swedish translation
* Susanne Mesoy (Rarlgland) - norwegian translation
* Széll Tamás (TomJoad) - hungarian translation
* Takanobu Hirai - japanese translation
* Tiago Souza (Salvador) - brazilian portuguese translation
* Tobe Deprez - dutch translation
* Vít Komárek - czech translation
* Vít Krčál - czech translation
* [http://www.viliam.bur.sk/ Viliam Búr] - slovak translation
* Vladimír Slávik - czech translation
* Vlad Glagolev (Stelz) - russian translation
* vonHalenbach - german translation
* William Dupré - french translation
* wint3r - swedish translation
* [mailto:ydirson_AT_altern.org Yann Dirson] - french translation
* Yuji Matsumoto - japanese translation
* Zas - french translation

== Other Contributions ==
* Ben Anderman (crimson_penguin) - unit list
* Dacyn - scenario designer
* Cyril Bouthors (CyrilB) - debian packager, patron
* Darryl Dixon - packager
* edge - packager
* Francesco Gigli (Jaramir) - wiki, wesnoth.slack.it
* Frédéric Wagner
* Jay Hopping - packager
* Jeff Breidenbach (Jab) - Bilinear interpolation
* Joshua Northey (Becephalus) - multiplayer maps
* Laurent Wacrenier (lwa) - Mac OS X packager
* Marcin Konicki (ahwayakchih) - BeOS packager
* Marcus Phillips (Sithrandel) - Mac OS X packager (for v1.0 and before)
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - slackware packager
* Miguel Zapico (elricz) - unit list translations
* Peter Groen (pg) - multiplayer maps
* Ruben Philipp Wickenhäuser (The Very Uhu) - multiplayer maps
* Sam Phillips (dark172) - creation of campains and multiplayer maps
* Tom Chance (telex4) - multiplayer maps, scenario balancing
* Vlad Glagolev (Stelz) - OpenBSD packager

{{Home}}

Credits

2007-02-28T23:20:31Z

Jetryl: /* Moderate Contributors */ Added Redeth

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In July 2003, '''David White''' released the first version of Wesnoth. Since then, many people have joined the project, contributing in very different ways.

== Developers ==
====Coders, (minor and major)====
* Alfredo Beaumont (ziberpunk) - autotools
* András Salamon ([[User:Ott|ott]]) - QA, bug fixing, subediting, game mechanics
* Benoît Timbert (Noyga) - coder
* Bram Ridder (Morloth) - editor improvements
* [[User:bruno|Bruno Wolff III]] - Campaign web interface, [[MainlineScenarios#The_Dark_Hordes|The Dark Hordes]] maintainer, bug fixing, minor coder
* Cédric Duval - coder, internationalization manager
* David Philippi (Torangan) - internationalization manager, wescamp
* [mailto:davidnwhite_AT_verizon.net David White] (Sirp) - founder, lead developer, scenario designer
* Dominic Bolin (Xan) - programmer
* Guillaume Melquiond (silene) - coding, bug fixes
* Jérémy Rosen (Boucman) - coder
* Jörg Hinrichs (Yogi Bear/YogiHH) - coder
* Jon Daniel (forcemstr) - coder, bug fixes
* [mailto:mcnabb_AT_gravity.psu.edu J.W.C. McNabb] (Darth Fool) - coder, graphics
* [mailto:justin.zaun_AT_gmail.com Justin Zaun] (jzaun) - coder, scenario designer
* [mailto:erl_AT_erl.se Kristoffer Erlandsson] (erl) - help system, editor
* Nicolas Weeger (ryo) - Python API
* [mailto:patrick_x99(AT).hotmail.com Patrick Parker] ([[User:Sapient|Sapient]]) - misc. gui changes, orphaned-idea adopter
* [mailto:philippe.plantier_AT_naema.org Philippe Plantier] ([[User:Ayin|Ayin]]) - several parts of the code, notably terrain graphics code
* [mailto:ydirson_AT_altern.org Yann Dirson] - gettext support, tinygui

====Miscellaneous====
* Benjamin Drieu (benj) - campaign writer (wrote "Son of the Black Eye")
* [mailto:dragonking_AT_o2.pl Bartek Waresiak] (Dragonking) - multiplayer balancing
* Crossbow/Miyo - administrator, release manager
* Francisco Muñoz (fmunoz) - artwork manager, many images, scenario designer (also listed below)
* Hogne Håskjold (frame) - terrain designer (also listed below)
* [mailto:isaac_AT_sindominio.net Isaac Clerencia] - administrator, release manager, debian packager
* James Spencer (Shade) - campaign writer (wrote "The Rise of Wesnoth")
* Joseph Simmons (Turin) - campaign writer, some graphics (wrote "The Eastern Invasion," and others)
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - internationalization manager
* Mike Quiñones (Doc Paterson) - multiplayer balancing, multiplayer maps
* [mailto:Crazy-Ivanovic_AT_gmx.net Nils Kneuper] (Ivanovic) - internationalization manager, campaign maintainer (Two Brothers), release manager
* Richard Kettering (Jetryl) - artwork manager, many images (also listed below)
* Richard S. (Noy) - multiplayer balancing
* Soliton - multiplayer balancing
* Susanna Björverud (sanna) - internationalization manager
* [mailto:kleinfel_AT_wpi.edu Zack Kleinfeld] - multiplayer maps, unit balancing

====Unclassified====
* Jan Zvánovec (jaz)
* John B. Messerly (jbm)
* [mailto:jorda_AT_ettin.org Jordà Polo] (ettin)
* J.R. Blain (Cowboy)
* Maksim Orlovich (SadEagle)
* Zas

== Artists ==
==== Major Contributors ====
* Francisco Muñoz (fmunoz) - Founding Artist and former lead artist, worked consistently on all aspects till around v0.7-0.9.
* Richard Kettering [http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Jetryl (Jetryl)] - Current art director/slave, major focus on sprites, portraits, buildings, and icons
* Hogne Håskjold (frame/freim) - Current director of terrain art, made much of the current terrains (esp. mountains)
* J. W. Bjerk [http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Eleazar (Eleazar)] - terrain (esp Chasm, Cave, Water), sprite animations, various visual tweaks
* Pekka Aikio (pekka) - tiles, esp. castles, and attack icons
* Lari Nieminen (zookeeper) - Current sprite animation director and WML wizard
* James Woo (Pickslide) - portraits (major focus on orcs and campaigns, especially UtBS, TEI, TSoF)
* Jason Lutes - portraits (major focus on humans, some campaign portraits)
* ?? (Neoriceisgood) - sprite creator and animator (major focus on drakes, dwarves, saurians)
* Peter Geinitz (Shadow/Wayfarer) - sprite creator and animator

==== Moderate Contributors ====
* Alex Jarocha-Ernst (Jormungandr) - portraits
* Moritz Göbelbecker (mog) - tiles, esp. swamp, encampment, ice, and work with lava/chasm
* Erkki Lonkainen (Eternal) - created and animated many replacement sprites (esp. ogre, orc assassin & spear units, and cockatrice)
* Maximiliano Buis (Redeth) - Made nearly all of the idle animations, and some death animations (as of 1.3.1)
* Leonhard ? (Leonhard) - made several of the new attack icons
* Michael Gil de Muro (grp21) - portraits (for the campaign "The Rise of Wesnoth")
* Robert Bolin (Zebulon) - tiles, sprite editing and animations
* Christophe Anjard (Christophe33) - made many of the old (c. v0.6) terrains, and some sprites for the dwarves
* Johann de Venecia (Johann) - drew the new campaign story art for HttT
* Mark Goodenough (Ranger M) - Sprite animator

==== Minor Contributors ====

* Eli Dupree (Elvish Pillager) - sprites and animations
* Murray Cook (Zhukov) - Sprite animator
* Gerald Clears (Smok'em Jags) - sprite animator
* Jesse Holland (Kestenvarn) - map illustrator, designed the current map for HttT
* Mikko Kraft (Deserter) - Sprite animator
* Michael Mielewczik (Mille) - Sprite animator
* Stephen Stone (Disto) - Sprite animator
* Andrew James Patterson (Kamahawk) - sprites
* Diego Brea (Cobretti) - sprite creator/animator
* ?? (antwerpz) - sprite creator/animator for old saurian units
* Gareth Miller (Gafgarion) - made some early sprites/tiles
* James Barton (Sangel) - sprites
* John Muccigrosso (Eponymous Archon) - made some early sprites, such as the human bowmen
* ?? (Slainte) - made sprites for c. v0.6 mages, also made many of the old attack icons
* ?? (Svetac) - made many of the old attack icons
* Johanna Manninen (lohari) - edited tiles, ported freeciv tiles used in very early versions of wesnoth
* Tristan Millner (tatmf) - made portrait of dwarven fighter
* EEL (EELuminatus)
* Eric Holdos (Rev. V!)

==== Very Minor Contributors ====
* Gideon Chia (Deonjo) - new "units" icon for general status bar
* John-Robert Funck (XJaPaN) - sprite animator
* Anton Ecker (Kaldred) - burnt villages
* Jonatan Alamà (tin) - made red logo used until before v1.0
* Jimmy Olsson (Azlan) - made old icons for windows version
* Randall Walls (slightcrazed) - sprite animator
* Jason Frailey (Valdroni) - made scorpion portrait
* Nicholas Kerpan (Thrawn) - made human theif portrait
* ?? (Highhole) - revised storm trident
* Irwin Ismail (Swordy) - original projectile/attack icon for chakram
* Evan Crook (Flametrooper) - Sprite animator (TC conversion)
* Daniel Borgmann (dborg) - semi-transparent map grid
* Garrett Wessner (Stilgar) - gold coin-pile

== Musicians ==
* Aleksi Aubry-Carlson (Aleksi) - music coordinator/composer
* Joseph Toscano (zhaymusic.com) - music
* Pau Congost - music
* Fredrik Lindroth - music
* Timothy Pinkham (TimothyP) - music coordinator/composer

== Translators ==
* adson - hungarian translation
* İhsan Akın - turkish translation
* Agata Chmiel - polish translation
* Aleksej Korgenkov (Grimpanto) - esperanto translation
* Alessio D'Ascanio (otaku) - italian translation
* Alexander Alexiou (Santi) - greek translation
* Alexander Kjäll (capitol) - swedish translation
* Alexandr Menovchicov - russian translation
* Alexey Remizov - russian translation
* Alexey Zakharchenko - russian translation
* Alfredo Beaumont (ziberpunk) - basque translation
* Ambra Viviani Loos - brazilian portuguese translation
* Americo Iacovizzi (DarkAmex) - italian translation
* Anders K. Madsen (madsen) - danish translation
* András Salamon ([[User:Ott|ott]]) - afrikaans, english and hungarian translation
* Andre Schmidt (schmidta) - german translation
* Anežka Bubeníčková (Bubu) - czech translation
* Ankka - finnish translation
* Anton Tsigularov (Atilla) - bulgarian translation
* Arkadiusz Danilecki (szopen) - polish translation
* Arnaud Garoux (La vie en wose) - french translation
* Arne Deprez - dutch translation
* Artur R. Czechowski - polish translation
* Åse Petersson (tintin) - swedish translation
* Aurélien Brevers (Breversa) - french translation
* Azamat Hackimov ([[User:Winterheart|winterheart]]) - russian translation
* Bartek Waresiak (Dragonking) - polish translation
* Beer (Eddi) - hungarian translation
* Benoit Astruc - french translation
* Benoît Timbert (Noyga) - french translation
* Bjarke Sørensen (basher) - danish translation
* BlueStar - japanese translation
* Boris Stumm (quijote_) - german translation
* BOrsuk - polish translation
* Branko Kokanovic (kokan) - serbian translation
* Bruno Fève (PP) - french translation
* [mailto:caslav_DOT_ilic_AT_gmx_DOT_net Časlav Ilić] - serbian translation
* Cédric Duval - french translation
* Carles Company (brrr) - catalan translation
* Celso Goya - brazilian portuguese translation
* Christoph Berg (chrber) - german translation
* [mailto:cbterra_AT_gmail.com Claudio Terra] - brazilian portuguese translation
* Claus Aranha - brazilian portuguese translation
* crys0000 - italian translation
* Dan Rosàs Garcia (focks) - catalan translation
* Damien Jacquot - french translation
* Daniel López (Azazelo) - catalan translation
* DaringTremayne - french translation
* David Martínez Moreno - spanish translation
* David Nečas (Yeti) - czech translation
* dentro - hungarian translation
* Denica Mincheva - bulgarian translation
* Enes Akın (yekialem) - turkish translation
* Erik J. Mesoy (Circon) - norwegian translation
* Eugenio Favalli (ElvenProgrammer) - italian translation
* Federico Tomassetti - italian translation
* Flamma - spanish translation
* Foppe Benedictus - dutch translation
* Francesco Lorenzon (Likso) - esperanto translation
* Franciso Muñoz (fmunoz) - spanish translation
* François Mariage (Paquito) - french translation
* François Orieux - french translation
* Gabriel Rodríguez (Chewie) - spanish translation
* Gaute Jao (Bombadil) - norwegian translation
* Geoffroy Douillié ([[User:Gdou|Gdou]]) - french translation
* Georgi Dimitrov (oblak)- bulgarian translation
* Gérard Bodin - french translation
* Gerfried Fuchs (Alfie) - german translation
* Gilluin - hungarian translation
* Guillaume Duwelz-Rebert - french translation
* [mailto:massart.guillaume_AT_wanadoo.fr Guillaume Massart (Piou2fois)] - french translation
* Guillaume Melquiond (silene) - french translation
* Hallvard Norheim Bø (Lysander) - norwegian translation
* Harry Kaimenas - greek translation
* Håvard Korsvoll - norwegian translation
* Huang huan (unicon) - chinese translation
* Hugo Gerlach (Entrimo) - swedish translation
* Ilya Kaznacheev - russian translation
* Ilya Kotov - russian translation
* Ivan Kovacs - slovak translation
* isazi - italian translation
* Iván Herrero (navitux) - spanish translation
* Jaka Kranjc (lynx) - slovenian translation
* Jan Greve (Jan) - german translation
* Jan-Heiner Laberenz (jan-heiner) - german translation
* Jean Privat (Tout) - french translation
* Jean-Luc Richard (Le Gnome) - french translation
* Jehan Hysseo (Jey) - french translation
* Jérémy Rosen (Boucman) - french translation
* Jesper Fuglsang Wolff (ulven) - danish translation
* Joan Queralt - catalan translation
* Joe Hansen - danish translation
* Joeri Melis - dutch translation
* Jonatan Alamà (tin) - catalan translation
* [mailto:jorda_AT_ettin.org Jordà Polo] (ettin) - catalan translation coordinator
* Jose Gordillo (kilder) - spanish and catalan translation
* Jose Manuel Gomez (joseg) - spanish translation
* Joset Anthony Zamora (sophie^) - filipino translation
* Julien Moncel - french translation
* Julien Tailleur - french translation
* Julen Landa (genars) - basque translation
* Jussi Rautio (jgrr) - finnish translation
* Kai Ensenbach (Pingu) - german translation
* Kékkői László (BlackEvil) - hungarian translation
* Karol Nowak (grzywacz) - polish translation
* Katerina Sykioti - greek translation
* Kertész Csaba - hungarian translation
* Khiraly - hungarian translation
* Kim Woong (Kazya) - korean translation
* kko - finnish translation
* Konstantinos Karasavvas - greek translation
* Konstantinos Egarhos - greek translation
* Kosif - turkish translation
* Kovács Dániel - hungarian translation
* krix - hungarian translation
* Lala - dutch translation
* Leo Danielson (Lugo Moll) - swedish translation
* Luciano Montanaro (Luciano) - italian translation
* Lukáš Faltýnek - czech translation
* Ľubo Fajth - esperanto translation
* Maarten Albrecht - dutch and esperanto translation
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - danish translation
* Mark Polo (mpolo) - latin translation
* Mark Recasens - catalan translation
* Mart Tõnso - estonian translation
* Martin Dzbor - slovak translation
* Martin Šín - czech translation
* Matej Repinc - slovenian translation
* Mathias Bundgaard Svensson (freaken) - danish translation
* Matias Parmala - finnish translation
* methinks - polish translation
* Michał Jedynak (Artanis) - polish translation
* Michał Ligowski (misiorysio) - polish translation
* Michel Loos - brazilian portuguese translation
* Michel Poléni (Thanatloc) - french translation
* Mikel Olasagasti (Hey_neken) - basque translation
* Mikko Kraft (deserter) - finnish translation
* Mintaka - czech translation
* Naoki Iimura (amatubu) いいむらなおき - japanese translation
* Nico Oliver - afrikaans translation
* Nicolas Boudin (Blurgk) - french translation
* Nikolay Vladimirov (Turki) - bulgarian translation
* [mailto:Crazy-Ivanovic_AT_gmx.net Nils Kneuper] (Ivanovic) - german translation
* [mailto:okyada_AT_gmail.com Nobuhito Okada] 岡田信人 - japanese translation
* [mailto:tapik_AT_buchtovi.cz Oto Buchta] ([[User:Tapik|tapik]]) - czech translation
* Pau Rul·lan Ferragut - catalan translation
* Paweł Stradomski - polish translation
* Paweł Tomak - polish translation
* paxed - finnish translation
* Petr Kopač (Ferda) - czech translation
* Petr Kovár (Juans) - czech translation
* [mailto:philippe.plantier_AT_naema.org Philippe Plantier] ([[User:Ayin|Ayin]]) - french translation
* Pieter Vermeylen (Onne) - dutch translation
* Pınar Yanardağ (moonquelle) - turkish translation
* Q - japanese translation
* Rastislav Šarišský (Asto) - esperanto translation
* Renato Cunha - brazilian portuguese translation
* Ricardo Sodré Andrade - brazilian portuguese translation
* Roberto Garcia (Motxales) - catalan translation
* Roel Thijs (Roel) - dutch translation
* Roger Koot - dutch translation
* RokStar - italian translation
* Roman Tuchin (Sankt) - russian translation
* Rudolf Orság - czech translation
* Ruben Philipp Wickenhäuser (The Very Uhu) - german translation
* Sébastien Raynaud (Galactic turkey) - french translation
* Sérgio de Miranda Costa - brazilian portuguese translation
* Selim Farsakoğlu - turkish translation
* Sofronius - czech translation
* Spiros, Giorgis - greek translation
* [mailto:sreckotoroman_AT_gmail_DOT_com Srećko Toroman] (FreeCraft) - serbian translation
* Stefan Bergström (tephlon) - swedish translation
* Stephan Grochtmann (Schattenstephan) - german translation
* [mailto:susanna.bjorverud_AT_telia.com Susanna Björverud] (sanna) - swedish translation
* Susanne Mesoy (Rarlgland) - norwegian translation
* Széll Tamás (TomJoad) - hungarian translation
* Takanobu Hirai - japanese translation
* Tiago Souza (Salvador) - brazilian portuguese translation
* Tobe Deprez - dutch translation
* Vít Komárek - czech translation
* Vít Krčál - czech translation
* [http://www.viliam.bur.sk/ Viliam Búr] - slovak translation
* Vladimír Slávik - czech translation
* Vlad Glagolev (Stelz) - russian translation
* vonHalenbach - german translation
* William Dupré - french translation
* wint3r - swedish translation
* [mailto:ydirson_AT_altern.org Yann Dirson] - french translation
* Yuji Matsumoto - japanese translation
* Zas - french translation

== Other Contributions ==
* Ben Anderman (crimson_penguin) - unit list
* Dacyn - scenario designer
* Cyril Bouthors (CyrilB) - debian packager, patron
* Darryl Dixon - packager
* edge - packager
* Francesco Gigli (Jaramir) - wiki, wesnoth.slack.it
* Frédéric Wagner
* Jay Hopping - packager
* Jeff Breidenbach (Jab) - Bilinear interpolation
* Joshua Northey (Becephalus) - multiplayer maps
* Laurent Wacrenier (lwa) - Mac OS X packager
* Marcin Konicki (ahwayakchih) - BeOS packager
* Marcus Phillips (Sithrandel) - Mac OS X packager (for v1.0 and before)
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - slackware packager
* Miguel Zapico (elricz) - unit list translations
* Peter Groen (pg) - multiplayer maps
* Ruben Philipp Wickenhäuser (The Very Uhu) - multiplayer maps
* Sam Phillips (dark172) - creation of campains and multiplayer maps
* Tom Chance (telex4) - multiplayer maps, scenario balancing
* Vlad Glagolev (Stelz) - OpenBSD packager

{{Home}}

Designing weapons and armour

2007-02-12T03:27:20Z

Jetryl: Added two links

by Zookeeper

Often one sees that someone draws these things looking all silly. Slight exaggeration of weaponry and such is of course fine in a fantasy setting, but it's not uncommon at all to go over the board and draw something that couldn't function in reality at all. This mostly applies to portraits and other realistic imagery, not really unit graphics as such.

Now, my point is simply: you can make weapons and armour be flashy and cool while keeping them very realistic, and a real-world reference also helps you to get things functional without having to think what kind of sword handle would work and what wouldn't, for example (and, no offense to artists drawing fantasy stuff, but that usually goes a bit awry), and that there are plenty of references available. So even if you don't feel the need for the weapons you draw to look realistic, having some references still helps to actually make it look good (in the same way as having a reference when drawing a person makes it much easier to get it look right and good).

For this purpose, I thought I'd go through some related sites I know of and post some links here. These are armouries, general information/review sites, etc, which contain good pictures of historical arms and armour. Mostly (if not all) are only european stuff though (which sort of fits with at least the mainline Wesnoth setting), but that's all I had available right now.

* http://www.armouronline.com/ - the full body armour section is good, weapons are generally crappy here.
* http://www.myarmoury.com/ - hard to navigate, but contains a lot of good pictures, if you take the time to find them. The "reviews" page is a good place to start from.
* http://www.volny.cz/grex/vyrobky/vyrob_e.htm - some odd czech site, but has some nice armour.
* http://www.lutel.cz/index_.php?en=1 - quite a number of all sorts of weapons in the catalog (especially the polearms and such look nice).
* http://www.darksword-armory.com/ - a collection of often historically accurate weaponry
* http://www.by-the-sword.com/ - various things

Feel free to post your additions (especially to the type of items not covered on these sites), too, since I don't have much here yet.

Art Programs

2007-02-10T06:39:25Z

Jetryl: /* Free Image Editors */

{| style="float:right; margin-left:1em;"
|__TOC__
|}
'''Big Note:''' It is possible to make graphics only in a program like MSPaint or Appleworks. There are, however, two major and '''vital''' things lacking in those programs - first, these programs cannot make images with transparent pixels, and second, they may not be able to save in the PNG format used by Wesnoth. A program capable of those will have to be applied to images made with MSPaint when they are finished.

=== Free Image Editors ===
The following are free image editing programs which can be used to create graphics for wesnoth. These programs are Open-Source Software, like wesnoth, meaning they are free to use, and that you are free to look at the sourcecode.

[http://www.gimp.org '''The GIMP'''] (for windows & linux); the "Gnu Image Manipulation Program" is recommended.

[http://seashore.sourceforge.net/ '''Seashore'''] (for mac) this port of the the GIMP to a cocoa-based gui is recommended.

[http://www.opensword.org/ '''Pixen'''] (for mac) is the OpenSword Group's tool for traditional SNES style sprite art - unlike most other editors, it has been designed for that specific task, and users may find it much less daunting than the Gimp or Photoshop. This program was written in cocoa, and has a very good interface - version 3 will even include built-in support for making animations.

[http://www.j-domain.de/homepage.php?page=20 '''JDraw'''] (for anything that can run Java - mac and windows included) is an image editor which has a subset of the features of Pixen, and a superset of the features of MSPaint. It is a simple, straightforward pixel editing program. If you use a mac, Pixen is probably a better idea.

[http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/ '''Paint.net'''] (for windows) is generally regarded as inferior to the Gimp or Photoshop, but some might find it of interest.

[http://ase.sourceforge.net/ '''Allegro Sprite Editor'''] (for windows/linux) is a sprite editing program. Free/OSS, note that it is NOT capable of saving PNGs.

=== Free Image Post-Processors ===

[http://www.amake.us/software/pngcrusher/ '''PNGCrusher'''] (for mac) is a handy lightweight tool that will compress your PNGs much more efficiently than Photoshop. It is best used in tandem with saving the files from GraphicConverter, with the PNG filtering options on. The tool it is based on, OptiPNG, is open source, and runs on both linux and windows.

=== Proprietary Image Editors ===

==== Shareware ====
[http://www.lemkesoft.de/ '''GraphicConverter'''] (for mac) by Lemkesoft is an excellent program for preparing and compressing png images for the game, and may also be useful for the creation of images. The shareware fee is $30, although large parts of the program are fully functional for free.

[http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/ '''Pixel Image Editor'''] (for mac/windows/linux/BeOS/others) is a very full-featured program, intended to fulfill the same function that photoshop does. It currently has a shareware fee of $32, though the final price once the product reaches v2.0, will be $79.

[http://www.ultimatepaint.com/ '''JTL Ultimate Paint'''] (for windows) is a basic painting program, following the tradition of the earlier "DeluxePaint". Geared at painting, it can use photoshop plugins. It currently costs $34 for a basic version. I do not know if this program can export PNG images, so ''caveat emptor''.

[http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/ '''Pro Motion'''] (for windows) is a commercial pixel editing program. It has many features tailored for animation and seamless square-tile creation, as well as features designed to ease the creation of images that would run in a game on the Game Boy Advance or a Mobile Phone platform. The price of the normal version is $78.

[http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/index.html '''GraphicsGale'''] (for windows) is a pixel editing program designed for animation. It has both a freeware version, and a 1995¥ (roughly $20) shareware version. Be warned that it can '''not''' save files in the PNG format.

==== Non-shareware ====
[http://www.adobe.com/ '''Photoshop or Photoshop Elements'''] (for windows & mac), these industry standard Adobe applications are available for ~$700 and ~$100, respectively (the prices vary depending on where you get them). If you can acquire the use of these programs through a business or academic situation, they are extremely powerful, and are more than capable of some very advanced sprite techniques which elude simple bitmap programs - the price, however, is likely too much of a barrier to entry for most contributors. Photoshop should have little advantage over Elements for creating unit and terrain art. Photoshop (and presumably Elements) does not compactly save PNG files. For space savings, Adobe users are recommended to resave final PNGs through Adobe's companion application ImageReady, or another application such as GraphicConverter or PNGCrusher. Note - the ImageReady compression can also be used by saving the files through the "Save for Web..." menu command within Photoshop, if ImageReady is installed.

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

User talk:Allefant

2007-01-23T07:13:39Z

Jetryl: msg from jetryl

Got the message you sent about my GL page, the "preface" should be fixed, now. Thanks! -[[User:Jetryl|Jetryl]]

--

Ok, it's fixed now hopefully. It was all about space and %20 being the same/not the same at various places. Hm, and btw., should things like the new logo drafts also go into the gfxlib?

:good question... I'm not sure. When I started the GL, it was intended to be only for terrain and units, since they were mainly created by copy/pasting from one another... when portrait arrived, I was not maintaining it actively anymore, and when I came back some portrait had been sliped in so I put new ones in. what do you think ? [[User:Boucman|Boucman]]

::Well, I'd say, the focus of the GL should be on campaign authors looking for inofficial artwork, and not on keeping track of the contributions of all artists. Terrain and units definitely fall into the first category. Portraits are a grey area.. some might be useful (e.g. a portrait to go along with the pig unit), others might not. Things like the logo drafts clearly fall into the second category.<br>
Defining any stricter rules makes little sense I guess - it's a wiki after all, anyone is free to add/remove images even after the initial UnsortedContrib placement.. --[[User:Allefant|Allefant]] 21:01, 2 September 2005 (CEST)

== Obsolete GrabberBot pages ==

You're welcome :-)

The obsolete GrabberBot pages you mentioned in my talk page were deleted.

Cheers, [[User:Ayin|Ayin]] <sup>[[User_talk:Ayin|(talk)]]</sup> 19:45, 8 November 2005 (CET)

Art Programs

2007-01-17T09:17:28Z

Jetryl: /* Shareware */ Corrected GraphicConverter link

{| style="float:right; margin-left:1em;"
|__TOC__
|}
'''Big Note:''' It is possible to make graphics only in a program like MSPaint or Appleworks. There are, however, two major and '''vital''' things lacking in those programs - first, these programs cannot make images with transparent pixels, and second, they may not be able to save in the PNG format used by Wesnoth. A program capable of those will have to be applied to images made with MSPaint when they are finished.

=== Free Image Editors ===
The following are free image editing programs which can be used to create graphics for wesnoth. These programs are Open-Source Software, like wesnoth, meaning they are free to use, and that you are free to look at the sourcecode.

[http://www.gimp.org '''The GIMP'''] (for windows & linux); the "Gnu Image Manipulation Program" is recommended.

[http://seashore.sourceforge.net/ '''Seashore'''] (for mac) this port of the the GIMP to a cocoa-based gui is recommended.

[http://www.opensword.org/ '''Pixen'''] (for mac) is the OpenSword Group's tool for traditional SNES style sprite art - unlike most other editors, it has been designed for that specific task, and users may find it much less daunting than the Gimp or Photoshop. This program was written in cocoa, and has a very good interface - version 3 will even include built-in support for making animations.

[http://www.j-domain.de/homepage.php?page=20 '''JDraw'''] (for anything that can run Java - mac and windows included) is an image editor which has a subset of the features of Pixen, and a superset of the features of MSPaint. It is a simple, straightforward pixel editing program. If you use a mac, Pixen is probably a better idea.

[http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/ '''Paint.net'''] (for windows) is generally regarded as inferior to the Gimp or Photoshop, but some might find it of interest.

=== Free Image Post-Processors ===

[http://www.amake.us/software/pngcrusher/ '''PNGCrusher'''] (for mac) is a handy lightweight tool that will compress your PNGs much more efficiently than Photoshop. It is best used in tandem with saving the files from GraphicConverter, with the PNG filtering options on. The tool it is based on, OptiPNG, is open source, and runs on both linux and windows.

=== Proprietary Image Editors ===

==== Shareware ====
[http://www.lemkesoft.de/ '''GraphicConverter'''] (for mac) by Lemkesoft is an excellent program for preparing and compressing png images for the game, and may also be useful for the creation of images. The shareware fee is $30, although large parts of the program are fully functional for free.

[http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/ '''Pixel Image Editor'''] (for mac/windows/linux/BeOS/others) is a very full-featured program, intended to fulfill the same function that photoshop does. It currently has a shareware fee of $32, though the final price once the product reaches v2.0, will be $79.

[http://www.ultimatepaint.com/ '''JTL Ultimate Paint'''] (for windows) is a basic painting program, following the tradition of the earlier "DeluxePaint". Geared at painting, it can use photoshop plugins. It currently costs $34 for a basic version. I do not know if this program can export PNG images, so ''caveat emptor''.

[http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/ '''Pro Motion'''] (for windows) is a commercial pixel editing program. It has many features tailored for animation and seamless square-tile creation, as well as features designed to ease the creation of images that would run in a game on the Game Boy Advance or a Mobile Phone platform. The price of the normal version is $78.

[http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/index.html '''GraphicsGale'''] (for windows) is a pixel editing program designed for animation. It has both a freeware version, and a 1995¥ (roughly $20) shareware version. Be warned that it can '''not''' save files in the PNG format.

==== Non-shareware ====
[http://www.adobe.com/ '''Photoshop or Photoshop Elements'''] (for windows & mac), these industry standard Adobe applications are available for ~$700 and ~$100, respectively (the prices vary depending on where you get them). If you can acquire the use of these programs through a business or academic situation, they are extremely powerful, and are more than capable of some very advanced sprite techniques which elude simple bitmap programs - the price, however, is likely too much of a barrier to entry for most contributors. Photoshop should have little advantage over Elements for creating unit and terrain art. Photoshop (and presumably Elements) does not compactly save PNG files. For space savings, Adobe users are recommended to resave final PNGs through Adobe's companion application ImageReady, or another application such as GraphicConverter or PNGCrusher. Note - the ImageReady compression can also be used by saving the files through the "Save for Web..." menu command within Photoshop, if ImageReady is installed.

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]

Create Art

2006-12-24T10:29:12Z

Jetryl: /* General Art and Computer Graphics */ added designing weapons and armour

{| style="float:right; margin-left:1em;"
|__TOC__
|}

== Getting Started ==

=== General Information ===

Graphic artists usually meet on the [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=9 artwork development forum] or on the [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=18 restricted art development forum]. The former is a great place to post and discuss new and current Wesnoth art and graphics, and the latter to see what the art development team is working on.

Unit and terrain art is stored in the portable network graphics (PNG) format. Each frame of a unit animation, and each variation of a terrain is stored as a separate .png file in the "images" subdirectory of wesnoth, and generally these files will be 72 x 72 pixels (the size of Wesnoth's basic hexagonal tile) with an alpha channel (a part of the file that indicates how transparent each pixel is). When creating your own images, you can test them without overwriting any game data by putting them in your userdata directory (see [[EditingWesnoth]] for details on Wesnoth's directory structure). The game also supports JPEG images, though these are better suited for story art.

To edit these graphics, you'll need some program capable of creating PNGs - some of the programs in the following list are free, open-source software, and will do the job nicely: [[Art Programs]]

If you need some inspiration, we have a [[GraphicLibrary|Graphics Library]] which collects art posted on the forum. You can use this for ideas, and as a scrap heap for different parts of unit images (a technique described [[Give Your Hero A Personality|here]]). One of the best examples of the library's content came from the project artist "Neoriceisgood," which can be seen in the following [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4466 forum thread].

=== Roadmap ===
A list of what's being done and what needs doing:
* '''[[Tiles Status]]''' - a roadmap/plan of sorts for future work on terrain tiles
* [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9162&sid=21cf168d2b077d06bb0017c059b4add6 A list] of current work that needs to be done with sprites.

== Art Tutorials ==

These are a work-in-progress, and describe both how to make art fit into wesnoth's style, as well as giving some considerable tips on drawing in general. Especially useful is the [[External Tutorials]] page which lists a large number of art tutorials available on the web.

=== General Art and Computer Graphics ===
* [[Using the Levels Adjustment]] - making scanned pencil drawings ''not'' look washed out.
* [[How to Anti-Alias Sprite Art]] - A means of removing the jagged edges on pixel lines
* [[Art Supplies]] - What physical items you need to do larger cell-shaded art like that of Jetryl/Jormungadr/et al
* [[Inking With Pencils|Computer Inking a Sketch]] - Info from Jason Lutes on his portrait workflow
* [[Scaling Digital Images]] - how to properly resize an image on a computer
* [[How to Shade]] - at attempt at tackling a very complicated topic
* [[Cartography for Wesnoth|How to make Wesnoth-style Maps ]] - Kestenvarn's tricks of the trade
* [[Designing weapons and armour]] - Advice from zookeeper on designing realistic weapons for your characters

=== [[Terrain|Terrain Graphics]] ===

The following is information specific to drawing terrain for Wesnoth. Read Frame's "Tiles Tutorial" for a good overview of how terrain graphics work.

* [[Tiles Tutorial]] - Frame's tutorial describing the process of making terrain tiles in wesnoth, and how they interact with adjacent tiles.
* [[How To Make Seamless Tiles]] - The tutorial is aimed at Photoshop users, but the technique is similar with The GIMP.
* [[CastleTutorial|Castle Tutorial]] - A description of how Wesnoth's castle tiles work (needs updating, but useful nonetheless)
* [[MultiHexTutorial|Multi-Hex Tiling Tutorial]] - A description of how multi-hex tiles work.
* [[Editing Castles]] - Instructions for how to make/edit castles (and other corner-based terrains) using yobbo's GIMP script.

These describe the system used to specify how terrains behave in game:
* [[TerrainLettersWML]] - A list of the letters used to represent terrain types.
* [[TerrainGraphicsWML]] - If you really need to get technical, start here.
* [http://www.anathas.org/ayin/wesnoth/doc/terrain_graphics_wml Ayin's Terrain Graphics document] - If you really, ''really'' need to get technical, this describes the terrain graphics WML system in depth.

=== Sprite Art ===
The following are different tutorials about sprite work compiled by various wesnoth sprite artists. These will give you the most specific-to-wesnoth information about making sprites, and are well worth a read.

* [[Creating Unit Art]] - a list of specifications you will need to match.
* [[Give Your Hero A Personality]] - tricks for editing existing images, including some clip art.
* [[Basic Animation Tutorial]] - or "How to Animate Sprites for Dummies," covering the basic theory, and all of the mistakes to avoid.
* [[Advanced Animation Tutorial]] - how to wire in the animation frames to units in a way that makes the animation look good in-game. Doesn't cover any drawing as such, but focuses on timing conventions and some standard techniques for getting as much as possible out of the frames that are already drawn.
* [[Team Color Shifting]] - how to use our new team color system.
* [[Creating Shadows Under Units]] - how we create the shadows for the units in-game
* [[Making Bow Animations]] - the current standard for how we want bow animations to work

=== External Tutorials ===
The following page contains dozens of links to tutorials covering all manner of artwork, including sprite art. These were not made by wesnoth artists, but should prove very useful for general instruction.

* [[External Tutorials]]

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[EditingWesnoth]]
* [[GraphicLibrary]] - Lots of usercontributed graphics (most should be GPL'ed)
* [[Project]]

Designing weapons and armour

2006-12-24T10:27:15Z

Jetryl:

by Zookeeper

Often one sees that someone draws these things looking all silly. Slight exaggeration of weaponry and such is of course fine in a fantasy setting, but it's not uncommon at all to go over the board and draw something that couldn't function in reality at all. This mostly applies to portraits and other realistic imagery, not really unit graphics as such.

Now, my point is simply: you can make weapons and armour be flashy and cool while keeping them very realistic, and a real-world reference also helps you to get things functional without having to think what kind of sword handle would work and what wouldn't, for example (and, no offense to artists drawing fantasy stuff, but that usually goes a bit awry), and that there are plenty of references available. So even if you don't feel the need for the weapons you draw to look realistic, having some references still helps to actually make it look good (in the same way as having a reference when drawing a person makes it much easier to get it look right and good).

For this purpose, I thought I'd go through some related sites I know of and post some links here. These are armouries, general information/review sites, etc, which contain good pictures of historical arms and armour. Mostly (if not all) are only european stuff though (which sort of fits with at least the mainline Wesnoth setting), but that's all I had available right now.

* http://www.armouronline.com/ - the full body armour section is good, weapons are generally crappy here.
* http://www.myarmoury.com/ - hard to navigate, but contains a lot of good pictures, if you take the time to find them. The "reviews" page is a good place to start from.
* http://www.volny.cz/grex/vyrobky/vyrob_e.htm - some odd czech site, but has some nice armour.
* http://www.lutel.cz/index_.php?en=1 - quite a number of all sorts of weapons in the catalog (especially the polearms and such look nice).

Feel free to post your additions (especially to the type of items not covered on these sites), too, since I don't have much here yet.

Credits

2006-12-13T05:55:54Z

Jetryl: /* Major Contributors */ fleshed out info on Pickslide

{| style="float:right"
|
__TOC__
|}
In July 2003, '''David White''' released the first version of Wesnoth. Since then, many people have joined the project, contributing in very different ways.

== Developers ==
====Coders, (minor and major)====
* Alfredo Beaumont (ziberpunk) - autotools
* András Salamon ([[User:Ott|ott]]) - QA, bug fixing, subediting, game mechanics
* Benoît Timbert (Noyga) - coder
* Bram Ridder (Morloth) - editor improvements
* [[User:bruno|Bruno Wolff III]] - Campaign web interface, [[MainlineScenarios#The_Dark_Hordes|The Dark Hordes]] maintainer, bug fixing, minor coder
* Cédric Duval - coder, internationalization manager
* David Philippi (Torangan) - internationalization manager, wescamp
* [mailto:davidnwhite_AT_verizon.net David White] (Sirp) - founder, lead developer, scenario designer
* Dominic Bolin (Xan) - programmer
* Guillaume Melquiond (silene) - coding, bug fixes
* Jérémy Rosen (Boucman) - coder
* Jörg Hinrichs (Yogi Bear/YogiHH) - coder
* Jon Daniel (forcemstr) - coder, bug fixes
* [mailto:mcnabb_AT_gravity.psu.edu J.W.C. McNabb] (Darth Fool) - coder, graphics
* Justin Zaun (jzaun) - coder, scenario designer
* [mailto:erl_AT_erl.se Kristoffer Erlandsson] (erl) - help system, editor
* Nicolas Weeger (ryo) - Python API
* [mailto:patrick_x99(AT).hotmail.com Patrick Parker] ([[User:Sapient|Sapient]]) - misc. gui changes, orphaned-idea adopter
* [mailto:philippe.plantier_AT_naema.org Philippe Plantier] ([[User:Ayin|Ayin]]) - several parts of the code, notably terrain graphics code
* [mailto:ydirson_AT_altern.org Yann Dirson] - gettext support, tinygui

====Miscellaneous====
* Benjamin Drieu (benj) - campaign writer (wrote "Son of the Black Eye")
* [mailto:dragonking_AT_o2.pl Bartek Waresiak] (Dragonking) - multiplayer balancing
* Crossbow/Miyo - administrator, release manager
* Francisco Muñoz (fmunoz) - artwork manager, many images, scenario designer (also listed below)
* Hogne Håskjold (frame) - terrain designer (also listed below)
* [mailto:isaac_AT_sindominio.net Isaac Clerencia] - administrator, release manager
* James Spencer (Shade) - campaign writer (wrote "The Rise of Wesnoth")
* Joseph Simmons (Turin) - campaign writer, some graphics (wrote "The Eastern Invasion," and others)
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - internationalization manager
* Mike Quiñones (Doc Paterson) - multiplayer balancing, multiplayer maps
* [mailto:Crazy-Ivanovic_AT_gmx.net Nils Kneuper] (Ivanovic) - internationalization manager, campaign maintainer (Two Brothers)
* Richard Kettering (Jetryl) - artwork manager, many images (also listed below)
* Richard S. (Noy) - multiplayer balancing
* Soliton - multiplayer balancing
* Susanna Björverud (sanna) - internationalization manager
* [mailto:kleinfel_AT_wpi.edu Zack Kleinfeld] - multiplayer maps, unit balancing

====Unclassified====
* Jan Zvánovec (jaz)
* John B. Messerly (jbm)
* [mailto:jorda_AT_ettin.org Jordà Polo] (ettin)
* J.R. Blain (Cowboy)
* Maksim Orlovich (SadEagle)
* Zas

== Artists ==
==== Major Contributors ====
* Francisco Muñoz (fmunoz) - Founding Artist and former lead artist, worked consistently on all aspects till around v0.7-0.9.
* Richard Kettering [http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Jetryl (Jetryl)] - Current art director/slave, major focus on sprites, portraits, buildings, and icons
* Hogne Håskjold (frame/freim) - Current director of terrain art, made much of the current terrains (esp. mountains)
* J. W. Bjerk [http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Eleazar (Eleazar)] - terrain (esp Chasm, Cave, Water), sprite animations, various visual tweaks
* Pekka Aikio (pekka) - tiles, esp. castles, and attack icons
* Lari Nieminen (zookeeper) - Current sprite animation director and WML wizard
* James Woo (Pickslide) - portraits (major focus on orcs and campaigns, especially UtBS, TEI, TSoF)
* Jason Lutes - portraits (major focus on humans, some campaign portraits)
* ?? (Neoriceisgood) - sprite creator and animator (major focus on drakes, dwarves, saurians)
* Peter Geinitz (Shadow/Wayfarer) - sprite creator and animator

==== Moderate Contributors ====
* Alex Jarocha-Ernst (Jormungandr) - portraits
* Moritz Göbelbecker (mog) - tiles, esp. swamp, encampment, ice, and work with lava/chasm
* Erkki Lonkainen (Eternal) - created and animated many replacement sprites (esp. ogre, orc assassin & spear units, and cockatrice)
* Leonhard ? (Leonhard) - made several of the new attack icons
* Michael Gil de Muro (grp21) - portraits (for the campaign "The Rise of Wesnoth")
* Robert Bolin (Zebulon) - tiles, sprite editing and animations
* Christophe Anjard (Christophe33) - made many of the old (c. v0.6) terrains, and some sprites for the dwarves
* Johann de Venecia (Johann) - drew the new campaign story art for HttT
* Mark Goodenough (Ranger M) - Sprite animator

==== Minor Contributors ====

* Eli Dupree (Elvish Pillager) - sprites and animations
* Murray Cook (Zhukov) - Sprite animator
* Gerald Clears (Smok'em Jags) - sprite animator
* Jesse Holland (Kestenvarn) - map illustrator, designed the current map for HttT
* Mikko Kraft (Deserter) - Sprite animator
* Michael Mielewczik (Mille) - Sprite animator
* Stephen Stone (Disto) - Sprite animator
* Andrew James Patterson (Kamahawk) - sprites
* Diego Brea (Cobretti) - sprite creator/animator
* ?? (antwerpz) - sprite creator/animator for old saurian units
* Gareth Miller (Gafgarion) - made some early sprites/tiles
* James Barton (Sangel) - sprites
* John Muccigrosso (Eponymous Archon) - made some early sprites, such as the human bowmen
* ?? (Slainte) - made sprites for c. v0.6 mages, also made many of the old attack icons
* ?? (Svetac) - made many of the old attack icons
* Johanna Manninen (lohari) - edited tiles, ported freeciv tiles used in very early versions of wesnoth
* Tristan Millner (tatmf) - made portrait of dwarven fighter

==== Very Minor Contributors ====
* Gideon Chia (Deonjo) - new "units" icon for general status bar
* John-Robert Funck (XJaPaN) - sprite animator
* Jonatan Alamà (tin) - made red logo used until before v1.0
* Jimmy Olsson (Azlan) - made old icons for windows version
* Randall Walls (slightcrazed) - sprite animator
* Jason Frailey (Valdroni) - made scorpion portrait
* Nicholas Kerpan (Thrawn) - made human theif portrait
* ?? (Highhole) - revised storm trident
* Irwin Ismail (Swordy) - original projectile/attack icon for chakram
* Evan Crook (Flametrooper) - Sprite animator (TC conversion)

== Musicians ==
* Aleksi Aubry-Carlson (Aleksi) - music coordinator/composer
* Joseph Toscano (zhaymusic.com) - music
* Pau Congost - music
* Fredrik Lindroth - music
* Timothy Pinkham (TimothyP)

== Translators ==
* adson - hungarian translation
* İhsan Akın - turkish translation
* Agata Chmiel - polish translation
* Aleksej Korgenkov (Grimpanto) - esperanto translation
* Alessio D'Ascanio (otaku) - italian translation
* Alexander Alexiou (Santi) - greek translation
* Alexander Kjäll (capitol) - swedish translation
* Alexandr Menovchicov - russian translation
* Alexey Remizov - russian translation
* Alexey Zakharchenko - russian translation
* Alfredo Beaumont (ziberpunk) - basque translation
* Ambra Viviani Loos - brazilian portuguese translation
* Americo Iacovizzi (DarkAmex) - italian translation
* Anders K. Madsen (madsen) - danish translation
* András Salamon ([[User:Ott|ott]]) - afrikaans, english and hungarian translation
* Andre Schmidt (schmidta) - german translation
* Anežka Bubeníčková (Bubu) - czech translation
* Ankka - finnish translation
* Anton Tsigularov (Atilla) - bulgarian translation
* Arkadiusz Danilecki (szopen) - polish translation
* Arnaud Garoux (La vie en wose) - french translation
* Arne Deprez - dutch translation
* Artur R. Czechowski - polish translation
* Åse Petersson (tintin) - swedish translation
* Aurélien Brevers (Breversa) - french translation
* Azamat Hackimov - russian translation
* Bartek Waresiak (Dragonking) - polish translation
* Beer (Eddi) - hungarian translation
* Benoit Astruc - french translation
* Benoît Timbert (Noyga) - french translation
* Bjarke Sørensen (basher) - danish translation
* BlueStar - japanese translation
* Boris Stumm (quijote_) - german translation
* BOrsuk - polish translation
* Branko Kokanovic (kokan) - serbian translation
* Bruno Fève (PP) - french translation
* Cédric Duval - french translation
* Carles Company (brrr) - catalan translation
* Celso Goya - brazilian portuguese translation
* Christoph Berg (chrber) - german translation
* [mailto:cbterra_AT_gmail.com Claudio Terra] - brazilian portuguese translation
* Claus Aranha - brazilian portuguese translation
* crys0000 - italian translation
* Dan Rosàs Garcia (focks) - catalan translation
* Damien Jacquot - french translation
* Daniel López (Azazelo) - catalan translation
* DaringTremayne - french translation
* David Martínez Moreno - spanish translation
* David Nečas (Yeti) - czech translation
* dentro - hungarian translation
* Enes Akın (yekialem) - turkish translation
* Erik J. Mesoy (Circon) - norwegian translation
* Eugenio Favalli (ElvenProgrammer) - italian translation
* Federico Tomassetti - italian translation
* Flamma - spanish translation
* Foppe Benedictus - dutch translation
* Franciso Muñoz (fmunoz) - spanish translation
* François Mariage (Paquito) - french translation
* François Orieux - french translation
* Gabriel Rodríguez (Chewie) - spanish translation
* Gaute Jao (Bombadil) - norwegian translation
* Geoffroy Douillié ([[User:Gdou|Gdou]]) - french translation
* Georgi Dimitrov (oblak)- bulgarian translation
* Gérard Bodin - french translation
* Gerfried Fuchs (Alfie) - german translation
* Gilluin - hungarian translation
* Guillaume Duwelz-Rebert - french translation
* [mailto:massart.guillaume_AT_wanadoo.fr Guillaume Massart (Piou2fois)] - french translation
* Guillaume Melquiond (silene) - french translation
* Hallvard Norheim Bø (Lysander) - norwegian translation
* Håvard Korsvoll - norwegian translation
* Huang huan (unicon) - chinese translation
* Hugo Gerlach (Entrimo) - swedish translation
* Ilya Kaznacheev - russian translation
* Ilya Kotov - russian translation
* Ivan Kovacs - slovak translation
* isazi - italian translation
* Iván Herrero (navitux) - spanish translator
* Jaka Kranjc (lynx) - slovenian translation
* Jan Greve (Jan) - german translation
* Jan-Heiner Laberenz (jan-heiner) - german translation
* Jean Privat (Tout) - french translation
* Jean-Luc Richard (Le Gnome) - french translation
* Jehan Hysseo (Jey) - french translation
* Jérémy Rosen (Boucman) - french translation
* Jesper Fuglsang Wolff (ulven) - danish translation
* Joan Queralt - catalan translation
* Joeri Melis - dutch translation
* Jonatan Alamà (tin) - catalan translation
* [mailto:jorda_AT_ettin.org Jordà Polo] (ettin) - catalan translation coordinator
* Jose Gordillo (kilder) - spanish and catalan translation
* Jose Manuel Gomez (joseg) - spanish translation
* Joset Anthony Zamora (sophie^) - filipino translation
* Julien Moncel - french translation
* Julien Tailleur - french translation
* Julen Landa (genars) - basque translation
* Jussi Rautio (jgrr) - finnish translation
* Kai Ensenbach (Pingu) - german translation
* Kékkői László (BlackEvil) - hungarian translation
* Karol Nowak (grzywacz) - polish translation
* Katerina Sykioti - greek translation
* Kertész Csaba - hungarian translation
* Khiraly - hungarian translation
* Kim Woong (Kazya) - korean translation
* kko - finnish translation
* Konstantinos Karasavvas - greek translation
* Kosif - turkish translation
* Kovács Dániel - hungarian translation
* krix - hungarian translation
* Lala - dutch translation
* Leo Danielson (Lugo Moll) - swedish translation
* Luciano Montanaro (Luciano) - italian translation
* Lukáš Faltýnek - czech translation
* Ľubo Fajth - esperanto translation
* Maarten Albrecht - dutch and esperanto translation
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - danish translation
* Mark Polo (mpolo) - latin translation
* Mark Recasens - catalan translation
* Marko Vasic - serbian translation
* Mart Tõnso - estonian translation
* Martin Dzbor - slovak translation
* Martin Šín - czech translation
* Matej Repinc - slovenian translation
* Mathias Bundgaard Svensson (freaken) - danish translation
* Matias Parmala - finnish translation
* methinks - polish translation
* Michał Jedynak (Artanis) - polish translation
* Michał Ligowski (misiorysio) - polish translation
* Michel Loos - brazilian portuguese translation
* Mikel Olasagasti (Hey_neken) - basque translation
* Mikko Kraft (deserter) - finnish translation
* Mintaka - czech translation
* Naoki Iimura (amatubu) いいむらなおき - japanese translation
* Nico Oliver - afrikaans translation
* Nicolas Boudin (Blurgk) - french translation
* [mailto:Crazy-Ivanovic_AT_gmx.net Nils Kneuper] (Ivanovic) - german translation
* [mailto:okyada_AT_gmail.com Nobuhito Okada] 岡田信人 - japanese translation
* [mailto:tapik_AT_buchtovi.cz Oto Buchta] ([[User:Tapik|tapik]]) - czech translation
* Pau Rul·lan Ferragut - catalan translation
* Paweł Stradomski - polish translation
* Paweł Tomak - polish translation
* paxed - finnish translation
* Petr Kopač (Ferda) - czech translation
* Petr Kovár (Juans) - czech translation
* [mailto:philippe.plantier_AT_naema.org Philippe Plantier] ([[User:Ayin|Ayin]]) - french translation
* Pieter Vermeylen (Onne) - dutch translation
* Pınar Yanardağ (moonquelle) - turkish translation
* Q - japanese translation
* Rastislav Šarišský (Asto) - esperanto translation
* Renato Cunha - brazilian portuguese translation
* Ricardo Sodré Andrade - brazilian portuguese translation
* Roberto Garcia (Motxales) - catalan translation
* Roel Thijs (Roel) - dutch translation
* Roger Koot - dutch translation
* RokStar - italian translation
* Roman Tuchin (Sankt) - russian translation
* Rudolf Orság - czech translation
* Ruben Philipp Wickenhäuser (The Very Uhu) - german translation
* Sébastien Raynaud (Galactic turkey) - french translation
* Sérgio de Miranda Costa - brazilian portuguese translation
* Selim Farsakoğlu - turkish translation
* Sofronius - czech translation
* Spiros, Giorgis - greek translation
* [mailto:sreckotoroman_AT_gmail_DOT_com Srećko Toroman] (FreeCraft) - serbian translation
* Stefan Bergström (tephlon) - swedish translation
* Stephan Grochtmann (Schattenstephan) - german translation
* [mailto:susanna.bjorverud_AT_telia.com Susanna Björverud] (sanna) - swedish translation
* Susanne Mesoy (Rarlgland) - norwegian translation
* Széll Tamás (TomJoad) - hungarian translation
* Takanobu Hirai - japanese translation
* Tiago Souza (Salvador) - brazilian portuguese translation
* Tobe Deprez - dutch translation
* Vít Komárek - czech translation
* Vít Krčál - czech translation
* [http://www.viliam.bur.sk/ Viliam Búr] - slovak translation
* Vladimír Slávik - czech translation
* vonHalenbach - german translation
* William Dupré - french translation
* wint3r - swedish translation
* [mailto:ydirson_AT_altern.org Yann Dirson] - french translation
* Yuji Matsumoto - japanese translation
* Zas - french translation

== Other Contributions ==
* ?? (lwa) - Mac OS X packager
* Ben Anderman (crimson_penguin) - unit list
* Dacyn - scenario designer
* Cyril Bouthors (CyrilB) - debian packager, patron
* Darryl Dixon - packager
* edge - packager
* Francesco Gigli (Jaramir) - wiki, wesnoth.slack.it
* Frédéric Wagner
* Jay Hopping - packager
* Jeff Breidenbach (Jab) - Bilinear interpolation
* Joshua Northey (Becephalus) - multiplayer maps
* Marcin Konicki (ahwayakchih) - BeOS packager
* Marcus Phillips (Sithrandel) - Mac OS X packager (for v1.0 and before)
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - slackware packager
* Miguel Zapico (elricz) - unit list translations
* Peter Groen (pg) - multiplayer maps
* Ruben Philipp Wickenhäuser (The Very Uhu) - multiplayer maps
* Tom Chance (telex4) - multiplayer maps, scenario balancing
* Sam Phillips (dark172) - creation of campains and multiplayer maps

{{Home}}

Credits

2006-12-09T10:17:10Z

Jetryl: /* Moderate Contributors */

{| style="float:right"
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__TOC__
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In July 2003, '''David White''' released the first version of Wesnoth. Since then, many people have joined the project, contributing in very different ways.

== Developers ==
====Coders, (minor and major)====
* Alfredo Beaumont (ziberpunk) - autotools
* András Salamon ([[User:Ott|ott]]) - QA, bug fixing, subediting, game mechanics
* Benoît Timbert (Noyga) - coder
* Bram Ridder (Morloth) - editor improvements
* [[User:bruno|Bruno Wolff III]] - Campaign web interface, [[MainlineScenarios#The_Dark_Hordes|The Dark Hordes]] maintainer, bug fixing, minor coder
* Cédric Duval - coder, internationalization manager
* David Philippi (Torangan) - internationalization manager, wescamp
* [mailto:davidnwhite_AT_verizon.net David White] (Sirp) - founder, lead developer, scenario designer
* Dominic Bolin (Xan) - programmer
* Guillaume Melquiond (silene) - coding, bug fixes
* Jérémy Rosen (Boucman) - coder
* Jörg Hinrichs (Yogi Bear/YogiHH) - coder
* Jon Daniel (forcemstr) - coder, bug fixes
* [mailto:mcnabb_AT_gravity.psu.edu J.W.C. McNabb] (Darth Fool) - coder, graphics
* Justin Zaun (jzaun) - coder, scenario designer
* [mailto:erl_AT_erl.se Kristoffer Erlandsson] (erl) - help system, editor
* Nicolas Weeger (ryo) - Python API
* [mailto:patrick_x99(AT).hotmail.com Patrick Parker] ([[User:Sapient|Sapient]]) - misc. gui changes, orphaned-idea adopter
* [mailto:philippe.plantier_AT_naema.org Philippe Plantier] ([[User:Ayin|Ayin]]) - several parts of the code, notably terrain graphics code
* [mailto:ydirson_AT_altern.org Yann Dirson] - gettext support, tinygui

====Miscellaneous====
* Benjamin Drieu (benj) - campaign writer (wrote "Son of the Black Eye")
* [mailto:dragonking_AT_o2.pl Bartek Waresiak] (Dragonking) - multiplayer balancing
* Crossbow/Miyo - administrator, release manager
* Francisco Muñoz (fmunoz) - artwork manager, many images, scenario designer (also listed below)
* Hogne Håskjold (frame) - terrain designer (also listed below)
* [mailto:isaac_AT_sindominio.net Isaac Clerencia] - administrator, release manager
* James Spencer (Shade) - campaign writer (wrote "The Rise of Wesnoth")
* Joseph Simmons (Turin) - campaign writer, some graphics (wrote "The Eastern Invasion," and others)
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - internationalization manager
* Mike Quiñones (Doc Paterson) - multiplayer balancing, multiplayer maps
* [mailto:Crazy-Ivanovic_AT_gmx.net Nils Kneuper] (Ivanovic) - internationalization manager, campaign maintainer (Two Brothers)
* Richard Kettering (Jetryl) - artwork manager, many images (also listed below)
* Richard S. (Noy) - multiplayer balancing
* Soliton - multiplayer balancing
* Susanna Björverud (sanna) - internationalization manager
* [mailto:kleinfel_AT_wpi.edu Zack Kleinfeld] - multiplayer maps, unit balancing

====Unclassified====
* Jan Zvánovec (jaz)
* John B. Messerly (jbm)
* [mailto:jorda_AT_ettin.org Jordà Polo] (ettin)
* J.R. Blain (Cowboy)
* Maksim Orlovich (SadEagle)
* Zas

== Artists ==
==== Major Contributors ====
* Francisco Muñoz (fmunoz) - Founding Artist and former lead artist, worked consistently on all aspects till around v0.7-0.9.
* Richard Kettering [http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Jetryl (Jetryl)] - Current art director/slave, major focus on sprites, portraits, buildings, and icons
* Hogne Håskjold (frame/freim) - Current director of terrain art, made much of the current terrains (esp. mountains)
* J. W. Bjerk [http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Eleazar (Eleazar)] - terrain (esp Chasm, Cave, Water), sprite animations, various visual tweaks
* Pekka Aikio (pekka) - tiles, esp. castles, and attack icons
* Lari Nieminen (zookeeper) - Current sprite animation director and WML wizard
* James Woo (Pickslide) - portraits (major focus on orcs and campaigns)
* Jason Lutes - portraits (major focus on humans, some campaign portraits)
* ?? (Neoriceisgood) - sprite creator and animator (major focus on drakes, dwarves, saurians)
* Peter Geinitz (Shadow/Wayfarer) - sprite creator and animator

==== Moderate Contributors ====
* Alex Jarocha-Ernst (Jormungandr) - portraits
* Moritz Göbelbecker (mog) - tiles, esp. swamp, encampment, ice, and work with lava/chasm
* Erkki Lonkainen (Eternal) - created and animated many replacement sprites (esp. ogre, orc assassin & spear units, and cockatrice)
* Leonhard ? (Leonhard) - made several of the new attack icons
* Michael Gil de Muro (grp21) - portraits (for the campaign "The Rise of Wesnoth")
* Robert Bolin (Zebulon) - tiles, sprite editing and animations
* Christophe Anjard (Christophe33) - made many of the old (c. v0.6) terrains, and some sprites for the dwarves
* Johann de Venecia (Johann) - drew the new campaign story art for HttT
* Mark Goodenough (Ranger M) - Sprite animator

==== Minor Contributors ====

* Eli Dupree (Elvish Pillager) - sprites and animations
* Murray Cook (Zhukov) - Sprite animator
* Gerald Clears (Smok'em Jags) - sprite animator
* Jesse Holland (Kestenvarn) - map illustrator, designed the current map for HttT
* Mikko Kraft (Deserter) - Sprite animator
* Michael Mielewczik (Mille) - Sprite animator
* Stephen Stone (Disto) - Sprite animator
* Andrew James Patterson (Kamahawk) - sprites
* Diego Brea (Cobretti) - sprite creator/animator
* ?? (antwerpz) - sprite creator/animator for old saurian units
* Gareth Miller (Gafgarion) - made some early sprites/tiles
* James Barton (Sangel) - sprites
* John Muccigrosso (Eponymous Archon) - made some early sprites, such as the human bowmen
* ?? (Slainte) - made sprites for c. v0.6 mages, also made many of the old attack icons
* ?? (Svetac) - made many of the old attack icons
* Johanna Manninen (lohari) - edited tiles, ported freeciv tiles used in very early versions of wesnoth
* Tristan Millner (tatmf) - made portrait of dwarven fighter

==== Very Minor Contributors ====
* Gideon Chia (Deonjo) - new "units" icon for general status bar
* John-Robert Funck (XJaPaN) - sprite animator
* Jonatan Alamà (tin) - made red logo used until before v1.0
* Jimmy Olsson (Azlan) - made old icons for windows version
* Randall Walls (slightcrazed) - sprite animator
* Jason Frailey (Valdroni) - made scorpion portrait
* Nicholas Kerpan (Thrawn) - made human theif portrait
* ?? (Highhole) - revised storm trident
* Irwin Ismail (Swordy) - original projectile/attack icon for chakram
* Evan Crook (Flametrooper) - Sprite animator (TC conversion)

== Musicians ==
* Aleksi Aubry-Carlson (Aleksi) - music coordinator/composer
* Joseph Toscano (zhaymusic.com) - music
* Pau Congost - music
* Fredrik Lindroth - music
* Timothy Pinkham (TimothyP)

== Translators ==
* adson - hungarian translation
* İhsan Akın - turkish translation
* Agata Chmiel - polish translation
* Aleksej Korgenkov (Grimpanto) - esperanto translation
* Alessio D'Ascanio (otaku) - italian translation
* Alexander Alexiou (Santi) - greek translation
* Alexander Kjäll (capitol) - swedish translation
* Alexandr Menovchicov - russian translation
* Alexey Remizov - russian translation
* Alexey Zakharchenko - russian translation
* Alfredo Beaumont (ziberpunk) - basque translation
* Ambra Viviani Loos - brazilian portuguese translation
* Americo Iacovizzi (DarkAmex) - italian translation
* Anders K. Madsen (madsen) - danish translation
* András Salamon ([[User:Ott|ott]]) - afrikaans, english and hungarian translation
* Andre Schmidt (schmidta) - german translation
* Anežka Bubeníčková (Bubu) - czech translation
* Ankka - finnish translation
* Anton Tsigularov (Atilla) - bulgarian translation
* Arkadiusz Danilecki (szopen) - polish translation
* Arnaud Garoux (La vie en wose) - french translation
* Arne Deprez - dutch translation
* Artur R. Czechowski - polish translation
* Åse Petersson (tintin) - swedish translation
* Aurélien Brevers (Breversa) - french translation
* Azamat Hackimov - russian translation
* Bartek Waresiak (Dragonking) - polish translation
* Beer (Eddi) - hungarian translation
* Benoit Astruc - french translation
* Benoît Timbert (Noyga) - french translation
* Bjarke Sørensen (basher) - danish translation
* BlueStar - japanese translation
* Boris Stumm (quijote_) - german translation
* BOrsuk - polish translation
* Branko Kokanovic (kokan) - serbian translation
* Bruno Fève (PP) - french translation
* Cédric Duval - french translation
* Carles Company (brrr) - catalan translation
* Celso Goya - brazilian portuguese translation
* Christoph Berg (chrber) - german translation
* [mailto:cbterra_AT_gmail.com Claudio Terra] - brazilian portuguese translation
* Claus Aranha - brazilian portuguese translation
* crys0000 - italian translation
* Dan Rosàs Garcia (focks) - catalan translation
* Damien Jacquot - french translation
* Daniel López (Azazelo) - catalan translation
* DaringTremayne - french translation
* David Martínez Moreno - spanish translation
* David Nečas (Yeti) - czech translation
* dentro - hungarian translation
* Enes Akın (yekialem) - turkish translation
* Erik J. Mesoy (Circon) - norwegian translation
* Eugenio Favalli (ElvenProgrammer) - italian translation
* Federico Tomassetti - italian translation
* Flamma - spanish translation
* Foppe Benedictus - dutch translation
* Franciso Muñoz (fmunoz) - spanish translation
* François Mariage (Paquito) - french translation
* François Orieux - french translation
* Gabriel Rodríguez (Chewie) - spanish translation
* Gaute Jao (Bombadil) - norwegian translation
* Geoffroy Douillié ([[User:Gdou|Gdou]]) - french translation
* Georgi Dimitrov (oblak)- bulgarian translation
* Gérard Bodin - french translation
* Gerfried Fuchs (Alfie) - german translation
* Gilluin - hungarian translation
* Guillaume Duwelz-Rebert - french translation
* [mailto:massart.guillaume_AT_wanadoo.fr Guillaume Massart (Piou2fois)] - french translation
* Guillaume Melquiond (silene) - french translation
* Hallvard Norheim Bø (Lysander) - norwegian translation
* Håvard Korsvoll - norwegian translation
* Huang huan (unicon) - chinese translation
* Hugo Gerlach (Entrimo) - swedish translation
* Ilya Kaznacheev - russian translation
* Ilya Kotov - russian translation
* Ivan Kovacs - slovak translation
* isazi - italian translation
* Iván Herrero (navitux) - spanish translator
* Jaka Kranjc (lynx) - slovenian translation
* Jan Greve (Jan) - german translation
* Jan-Heiner Laberenz (jan-heiner) - german translation
* Jean Privat (Tout) - french translation
* Jean-Luc Richard (Le Gnome) - french translation
* Jehan Hysseo (Jey) - french translation
* Jérémy Rosen (Boucman) - french translation
* Jesper Fuglsang Wolff (ulven) - danish translation
* Joan Queralt - catalan translation
* Joeri Melis - dutch translation
* Jonatan Alamà (tin) - catalan translation
* [mailto:jorda_AT_ettin.org Jordà Polo] (ettin) - catalan translation coordinator
* Jose Gordillo (kilder) - spanish and catalan translation
* Jose Manuel Gomez (joseg) - spanish translation
* Joset Anthony Zamora (sophie^) - filipino translation
* Julien Moncel - french translation
* Julien Tailleur - french translation
* Julen Landa (genars) - basque translation
* Jussi Rautio (jgrr) - finnish translation
* Kai Ensenbach (Pingu) - german translation
* Kékkői László (BlackEvil) - hungarian translation
* Karol Nowak (grzywacz) - polish translation
* Katerina Sykioti - greek translation
* Kertész Csaba - hungarian translation
* Khiraly - hungarian translation
* Kim Woong (Kazya) - korean translation
* kko - finnish translation
* Konstantinos Karasavvas - greek translation
* Kosif - turkish translation
* Kovács Dániel - hungarian translation
* krix - hungarian translation
* Lala - dutch translation
* Leo Danielson (Lugo Moll) - swedish translation
* Luciano Montanaro (Luciano) - italian translation
* Lukáš Faltýnek - czech translation
* Ľubo Fajth - esperanto translation
* Maarten Albrecht - dutch and esperanto translation
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - danish translation
* Mark Polo (mpolo) - latin translation
* Mark Recasens - catalan translation
* Marko Vasic - serbian translation
* Mart Tõnso - estonian translation
* Martin Dzbor - slovak translation
* Martin Šín - czech translation
* Matej Repinc - slovenian translation
* Mathias Bundgaard Svensson (freaken) - danish translation
* Matias Parmala - finnish translation
* methinks - polish translation
* Michał Jedynak (Artanis) - polish translation
* Michał Ligowski (misiorysio) - polish translation
* Michel Loos - brazilian portuguese translation
* Mikel Olasagasti (Hey_neken) - basque translation
* Mikko Kraft (deserter) - finnish translation
* Mintaka - czech translation
* Naoki Iimura (amatubu) いいむらなおき - japanese translation
* Nico Oliver - afrikaans translation
* Nicolas Boudin (Blurgk) - french translation
* [mailto:Crazy-Ivanovic_AT_gmx.net Nils Kneuper] (Ivanovic) - german translation
* [mailto:okyada_AT_gmail.com Nobuhito Okada] 岡田信人 - japanese translation
* [mailto:tapik_AT_buchtovi.cz Oto Buchta] ([[User:Tapik|tapik]]) - czech translation
* Pau Rul·lan Ferragut - catalan translation
* Paweł Stradomski - polish translation
* Paweł Tomak - polish translation
* paxed - finnish translation
* Petr Kopač (Ferda) - czech translation
* Petr Kovár (Juans) - czech translation
* [mailto:philippe.plantier_AT_naema.org Philippe Plantier] ([[User:Ayin|Ayin]]) - french translation
* Pieter Vermeylen (Onne) - dutch translation
* Pınar Yanardağ (moonquelle) - turkish translation
* Q - japanese translation
* Rastislav Šarišský (Asto) - esperanto translation
* Renato Cunha - brazilian portuguese translation
* Ricardo Sodré Andrade - brazilian portuguese translation
* Roberto Garcia (Motxales) - catalan translation
* Roel Thijs (Roel) - dutch translation
* Roger Koot - dutch translation
* RokStar - italian translation
* Roman Tuchin (Sankt) - russian translation
* Rudolf Orság - czech translation
* Ruben Philipp Wickenhäuser (The Very Uhu) - german translation
* Sébastien Raynaud (Galactic turkey) - french translation
* Sérgio de Miranda Costa - brazilian portuguese translation
* Selim Farsakoğlu - turkish translation
* Sofronius - czech translation
* Spiros, Giorgis - greek translation
* [mailto:sreckotoroman_AT_gmail_DOT_com Srećko Toroman] (FreeCraft) - serbian translation
* Stefan Bergström (tephlon) - swedish translation
* Stephan Grochtmann (Schattenstephan) - german translation
* [mailto:susanna.bjorverud_AT_telia.com Susanna Björverud] (sanna) - swedish translation
* Susanne Mesoy (Rarlgland) - norwegian translation
* Széll Tamás (TomJoad) - hungarian translation
* Takanobu Hirai - japanese translation
* Tiago Souza (Salvador) - brazilian portuguese translation
* Tobe Deprez - dutch translation
* Vít Komárek - czech translation
* Vít Krčál - czech translation
* [http://www.viliam.bur.sk/ Viliam Búr] - slovak translation
* Vladimír Slávik - czech translation
* vonHalenbach - german translation
* William Dupré - french translation
* wint3r - swedish translation
* [mailto:ydirson_AT_altern.org Yann Dirson] - french translation
* Yuji Matsumoto - japanese translation
* Zas - french translation

== Other Contributions ==
* ?? (lwa) - Mac OS X packager
* Ben Anderman (crimson_penguin) - unit list
* Dacyn - scenario designer
* Cyril Bouthors (CyrilB) - debian packager, patron
* Darryl Dixon - packager
* edge - packager
* Francesco Gigli (Jaramir) - wiki, wesnoth.slack.it
* Frédéric Wagner
* Jay Hopping - packager
* Jeff Breidenbach (Jab) - Bilinear interpolation
* Joshua Northey (Becephalus) - multiplayer maps
* Marcin Konicki (ahwayakchih) - BeOS packager
* Marcus Phillips (Sithrandel) - Mac OS X packager (for v1.0 and before)
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - slackware packager
* Peter Groen (pg) - multiplayer maps
* Ruben Philipp Wickenhäuser (The Very Uhu) - multiplayer maps
* Tom Chance (telex4) - multiplayer maps, scenario balancing
* Sam Phillips (dark172) - creation of campains and multiplayer maps

{{Home}}

Credits

2006-12-04T02:02:14Z

Jetryl: /* Artists */

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In July 2003, '''David White''' released the first version of Wesnoth. Since then, many people have joined the project, contributing in very different ways.

== Developers ==
====Coders, (minor and major)====
* Alfredo Beaumont (ziberpunk) - autotools
* András Salamon ([[User:Ott|ott]]) - QA, bug fixing, subediting, game mechanics
* Benoît Timbert (Noyga) - coder
* Bram Ridder (Morloth) - editor improvements
* [[User:bruno|Bruno Wolff III]] - Campaign web interface, [[MainlineScenarios#The_Dark_Hordes|The Dark Hordes]] maintainer, bug fixing, minor coder
* Cédric Duval - coder, internationalization manager
* David Philippi (Torangan) - internationalization manager, wescamp
* [mailto:davidnwhite_AT_verizon.net David White] (Sirp) - founder, lead developer, scenario designer
* Dominic Bolin (Xan) - programmer
* Guillaume Melquiond (silene) - coding, bug fixes
* Jérémy Rosen (Boucman) - coder
* Jörg Hinrichs (Yogi Bear/YogiHH) - coder
* Jon Daniel (forcemstr) - coder, bug fixes
* [mailto:mcnabb_AT_gravity.psu.edu J.W.C. McNabb] (Darth Fool) - coder, graphics
* Justin Zaun (jzaun) - coder, scenario designer
* [mailto:erl_AT_erl.se Kristoffer Erlandsson] (erl) - help system, editor
* Nicolas Weeger (ryo) - Python API
* [mailto:patrick_x99(AT).hotmail.com Patrick Parker] ([[User:Sapient|Sapient]]) - misc. gui changes, orphaned-idea adopter
* [mailto:philippe.plantier_AT_naema.org Philippe Plantier] ([[User:Ayin|Ayin]]) - several parts of the code, notably terrain graphics code
* [mailto:ydirson_AT_altern.org Yann Dirson] - gettext support, tinygui

====Miscellaneous====
* Benjamin Drieu (benj) - campaign writer (wrote "Son of the Black Eye")
* [mailto:dragonking_AT_o2.pl Bartek Waresiak] (Dragonking) - multiplayer balancing
* Crossbow/Miyo - administrator, release manager
* Francisco Muñoz (fmunoz) - artwork manager, many images, scenario designer (also listed below)
* Hogne Håskjold (frame) - terrain designer (also listed below)
* [mailto:isaac_AT_sindominio.net Isaac Clerencia] - administrator, release manager
* James Spencer (Shade) - campaign writer (wrote "The Rise of Wesnoth")
* Joseph Simmons (Turin) - campaign writer, some graphics (wrote "The Eastern Invasion," and others)
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - internationalization manager
* Mike Quiñones (Doc Paterson) - multiplayer balancing, multiplayer maps
* [mailto:Crazy-Ivanovic_AT_gmx.net Nils Kneuper] (Ivanovic) - internationalization manager, campaign maintainer (Two Brothers)
* Richard Kettering (Jetryl) - artwork manager, many images (also listed below)
* Richard S. (Noy) - multiplayer balancing
* Soliton - multiplayer balancing
* Susanna Björverud (sanna) - internationalization manager
* [mailto:kleinfel_AT_wpi.edu Zack Kleinfeld] - multiplayer maps, unit balancing

====Unclassified====
* Jan Zvánovec (jaz)
* John B. Messerly (jbm)
* [mailto:jorda_AT_ettin.org Jordà Polo] (ettin)
* J.R. Blain (Cowboy)
* Maksim Orlovich (SadEagle)
* Zas

== Artists ==
==== Major Contributors ====
* Francisco Muñoz (fmunoz) - Founding Artist and former lead artist, worked consistently on all aspects till around v0.7-0.9.
* Richard Kettering [http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Jetryl (Jetryl)] - Current art director/slave, major focus on sprites, portraits, buildings, and icons
* Hogne Håskjold (frame/freim) - Current director of terrain art, made much of the current terrains (esp. mountains)
* J.W. Bjerk [http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Eleazar (Eleazar)] - terrain (esp Chasm, Cave, Water), sprite animations, many general graphics tasks
* Pekka Aikio (pekka) - tiles, esp. castles, and attack icons
* ?? (zookeeper) - Current sprite animation director and WML wizard
* James Woo (Pickslide) - portraits (major focus on orcs and campaigns)
* Jason Lutes - portraits (major focus on humans, some campaign portraits)
* ?? (Neoriceisgood) - sprite creator and animator (major focus on drakes, dwarves, saurians)
* Peter Geinitz (Shadow/Wayfarer) - sprite creator and animator

==== Moderate Contributors ====
* Alex Jarocha-Ernst (Jormungandr) - portraits
* Moritz Göbelbecker (mog) - tiles, esp. swamp, encampment, ice, and work with lava/chasm
* ?? (Eternal) - created and animated many replacement sprites (esp. ogre, orc assassin & spear units, and cockatrice)
* Leonhard ? (Leonhard) - made several of the new attack icons
* Michael Gil de Muro (grp21) - portraits (for the campaign "The Rise of Wesnoth")
* Robert Bolin (Zebulon) - tiles, sprite editing and animations
* Christophe Anjard (Christophe33) - made many of the old (c. v0.6) terrains, and some sprites for the dwarves
* Johann de Venecia (Johann) - drew the new campaign story art for HttT
* Mark Goodenough (Ranger M) - Sprite animator

==== Minor Contributors ====

* Eli Dupree (Elvish Pillager) - sprites and animations
* ?? (Zhukov) - Sprite animator
* Gerald Clears (Smok'em Jags) - sprite animator
* Jesse Holland (Kestenvarn) - map illustrator, designed the current map for HttT
* Mikko Kraft (Deserter) - Sprite animator
* Michael Mielewczik (Mille) - Sprite animator
* Stephen Stone (Disto) - Sprite animator
* Andrew James Patterson (Kamahawk) - sprites
* Diego Brea (Cobretti) - sprite creator/animator
* ?? (antwerpz) - sprite creator/animator for old saurian units
* Gareth Miller (Gafgarion) - made some early sprites/tiles
* James Barton (Sangel) - sprites
* John Muccigrosso (Eponymous Archon) - made some early sprites, such as the human bowmen
* ?? (Slainte) - made sprites for c. v0.6 mages, also made many of the old attack icons
* ?? (Svetac) - made many of the old attack icons
* Johanna Manninen (lohari) - edited tiles, ported freeciv tiles used in very early versions of wesnoth
* Tristan Millner (tatmf) - made portrait of dwarven fighter

==== Very Minor Contributors ====
* Gideon Chia (Deonjo) - new "units" icon for general status bar
* John-Robert Funck (XJaPaN) - sprite animator
* Jonatan Alamà (tin) - made red logo used until before v1.0
* Jimmy Olsson (Azlan) - made old icons for windows version
* Randall Walls (slightcrazed) - sprite animator
* Jason Frailey (Valdroni) - made scorpion portrait
* Nicholas Kerpan (Thrawn) - made human theif portrait
* ?? (Highhole) - revised storm trident
* Irwin Ismail (Swordy) - original projectile/attack icon for chakram
* Evan Crook (Flametrooper) - Sprite animator (TC conversion)

== Musicians ==
* Aleksi Aubry-Carlson (Aleksi) - music coordinator/composer
* Joseph Toscano (zhaymusic.com) - music
* Pau Congost - music
* Fredrik Lindroth - music
* Timothy Pinkham (TimothyP)

== Translators ==
* adson - hungarian translation
* İhsan Akın - turkish translation
* Agata Chmiel - polish translation
* Aleksej Korgenkov (Grimpanto) - esperanto translation
* Alessio D'Ascanio (otaku) - italian translation
* Alexander Alexiou (Santi) - greek translation
* Alexander Kjäll (capitol) - swedish translation
* Alexandr Menovchicov - russian translation
* Alexey Remizov - russian translation
* Alexey Zakharchenko - russian translation
* Alfredo Beaumont (ziberpunk) - basque translation
* Ambra Viviani Loos - brazilian portuguese translation
* Americo Iacovizzi (DarkAmex) - italian translation
* Anders K. Madsen (madsen) - danish translation
* András Salamon ([[User:Ott|ott]]) - afrikaans, english and hungarian translation
* Andre Schmidt (schmidta) - german translation
* Anežka Bubeníčková (Bubu) - czech translation
* Ankka - finnish translation
* Anton Tsigularov (Atilla) - bulgarian translation
* Arkadiusz Danilecki (szopen) - polish translation
* Arnaud Garoux (La vie en wose) - french translation
* Arne Deprez - dutch translation
* Artur R. Czechowski - polish translation
* Åse Petersson (tintin) - swedish translation
* Aurélien Brevers (Breversa) - french translation
* Azamat Hackimov - russian translation
* Bartek Waresiak (Dragonking) - polish translation
* Beer (Eddi) - hungarian translation
* Benoit Astruc - french translation
* Benoît Timbert (Noyga) - french translation
* Bjarke Sørensen (basher) - danish translation
* BlueStar - japanese translation
* Boris Stumm (quijote_) - german translation
* BOrsuk - polish translation
* Branko Kokanovic (kokan) - serbian translation
* Bruno Fève (PP) - french translation
* Cédric Duval - french translation
* Carles Company (brrr) - catalan translation
* Celso Goya - brazilian portuguese translation
* Christoph Berg (chrber) - german translation
* [mailto:cbterra_AT_gmail.com Claudio Terra] - brazilian portuguese translation
* Claus Aranha - brazilian portuguese translation
* crys0000 - italian translation
* Dan Rosàs Garcia (focks) - catalan translation
* Damien Jacquot - french translation
* Daniel López (Azazelo) - catalan translation
* DaringTremayne - french translation
* David Martínez Moreno - spanish translation
* David Nečas (Yeti) - czech translation
* dentro - hungarian translation
* Enes Akın (yekialem) - turkish translation
* Erik J. Mesoy (Circon) - norwegian translation
* Eugenio Favalli (ElvenProgrammer) - italian translation
* Federico Tomassetti - italian translation
* Flamma - spanish translation
* Foppe Benedictus - dutch translation
* Franciso Muñoz (fmunoz) - spanish translation
* François Mariage (Paquito) - french translation
* François Orieux - french translation
* Gabriel Rodríguez (Chewie) - spanish translation
* Gaute Jao (Bombadil) - norwegian translation
* Geoffroy Douillié ([[User:Gdou|Gdou]]) - french translation
* Georgi Dimitrov (oblak)- bulgarian translation
* Gérard Bodin - french translation
* Gerfried Fuchs (Alfie) - german translation
* Gilluin - hungarian translation
* Guillaume Duwelz-Rebert - french translation
* [mailto:massart.guillaume_AT_wanadoo.fr Guillaume Massart (Piou2fois)] - french translation
* Guillaume Melquiond (silene) - french translation
* Hallvard Norheim Bø (Lysander) - norwegian translation
* Håvard Korsvoll - norwegian translation
* Huang huan (unicon) - chinese translation
* Hugo Gerlach (Entrimo) - swedish translation
* Ilya Kaznacheev - russian translation
* Ilya Kotov - russian translation
* Ivan Kovacs - slovak translation
* isazi - italian translation
* Iván Herrero (navitux) - spanish translator
* Jaka Kranjc (lynx) - slovenian translation
* Jan Greve (Jan) - german translation
* Jan-Heiner Laberenz (jan-heiner) - german translation
* Jean Privat (Tout) - french translation
* Jean-Luc Richard (Le Gnome) - french translation
* Jehan Hysseo (Jey) - french translation
* Jérémy Rosen (Boucman) - french translation
* Jesper Fuglsang Wolff (ulven) - danish translation
* Joan Queralt - catalan translation
* Joeri Melis - dutch translation
* Jonatan Alamà (tin) - catalan translation
* [mailto:jorda_AT_ettin.org Jordà Polo] (ettin) - catalan translation coordinator
* Jose Gordillo (kilder) - spanish and catalan translation
* Jose Manuel Gomez (joseg) - spanish translation
* Joset Anthony Zamora (sophie^) - filipino translation
* Julien Moncel - french translation
* Julien Tailleur - french translation
* Julen Landa (genars) - basque translation
* Jussi Rautio (jgrr) - finnish translation
* Kai Ensenbach (Pingu) - german translation
* Kékkői László (BlackEvil) - hungarian translation
* Karol Nowak (grzywacz) - polish translation
* Katerina Sykioti - greek translation
* Kertész Csaba - hungarian translation
* Khiraly - hungarian translation
* Kim Woong (Kazya) - korean translation
* kko - finnish translation
* Konstantinos Karasavvas - greek translation
* Kosif - turkish translation
* Kovács Dániel - hungarian translation
* krix - hungarian translation
* Lala - dutch translation
* Leo Danielson (Lugo Moll) - swedish translation
* Luciano Montanaro (Luciano) - italian translation
* Lukáš Faltýnek - czech translation
* Ľubo Fajth - esperanto translation
* Maarten Albrecht - dutch and esperanto translation
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - danish translation
* Mark Polo (mpolo) - latin translation
* Mark Recasens - catalan translation
* Marko Vasic - serbian translation
* Mart Tõnso - estonian translation
* Martin Dzbor - slovak translation
* Martin Šín - czech translation
* Matej Repinc - slovenian translation
* Mathias Bundgaard Svensson (freaken) - danish translation
* Matias Parmala - finnish translation
* methinks - polish translation
* Michał Jedynak (Artanis) - polish translation
* Michał Ligowski (misiorysio) - polish translation
* Michel Loos - brazilian portuguese translation
* Mikel Olasagasti (Hey_neken) - basque translation
* Mikko Kraft (deserter) - finnish translation
* Mintaka - czech translation
* Naoki Iimura (amatubu) いいむらなおき - japanese translation
* Nico Oliver - afrikaans translation
* Nicolas Boudin (Blurgk) - french translation
* [mailto:Crazy-Ivanovic_AT_gmx.net Nils Kneuper] (Ivanovic) - german translation
* [mailto:okyada_AT_gmail.com Nobuhito Okada] 岡田信人 - japanese translation
* [mailto:tapik_AT_buchtovi.cz Oto Buchta] ([[User:Tapik|tapik]]) - czech translation
* Pau Rul·lan Ferragut - catalan translation
* Paweł Stradomski - polish translation
* Paweł Tomak - polish translation
* paxed - finnish translation
* Petr Kopač (Ferda) - czech translation
* Petr Kovár (Juans) - czech translation
* [mailto:philippe.plantier_AT_naema.org Philippe Plantier] ([[User:Ayin|Ayin]]) - french translation
* Pieter Vermeylen (Onne) - dutch translation
* Pınar Yanardağ (moonquelle) - turkish translation
* Q - japanese translation
* Rastislav Šarišský (Asto) - esperanto translation
* Renato Cunha - brazilian portuguese translation
* Ricardo Sodré Andrade - brazilian portuguese translation
* Roberto Garcia (Motxales) - catalan translation
* Roel Thijs (Roel) - dutch translation
* Roger Koot - dutch translation
* RokStar - italian translation
* Roman Tuchin (Sankt) - russian translation
* Rudolf Orság - czech translation
* Ruben Philipp Wickenhäuser (The Very Uhu) - german translation
* Sébastien Raynaud (Galactic turkey) - french translation
* Sérgio de Miranda Costa - brazilian portuguese translation
* Selim Farsakoğlu - turkish translation
* Sofronius - czech translation
* Spiros, Giorgis - greek translation
* [mailto:sreckotoroman_AT_gmail_DOT_com Srećko Toroman] (FreeCraft) - serbian translation
* Stefan Bergström (tephlon) - swedish translation
* Stephan Grochtmann (Schattenstephan) - german translation
* [mailto:susanna.bjorverud_AT_telia.com Susanna Björverud] (sanna) - swedish translation
* Susanne Mesoy (Rarlgland) - norwegian translation
* Széll Tamás (TomJoad) - hungarian translation
* Takanobu Hirai - japanese translation
* Tiago Souza (Salvador) - brazilian portuguese translation
* Tobe Deprez - dutch translation
* Vít Komárek - czech translation
* Vít Krčál - czech translation
* [http://www.viliam.bur.sk/ Viliam Búr] - slovak translation
* Vladimír Slávik - czech translation
* vonHalenbach - german translation
* William Dupré - french translation
* wint3r - swedish translation
* [mailto:ydirson_AT_altern.org Yann Dirson] - french translation
* Yuji Matsumoto - japanese translation
* Zas - french translation

== Other Contributions ==
* ?? (lwa) - Mac OS X packager
* Ben Anderman (crimson_penguin) - unit list
* Dacyn - scenario designer
* Cyril Bouthors (CyrilB) - debian packager, patron
* Darryl Dixon - packager
* edge - packager
* Francesco Gigli (Jaramir) - wiki, wesnoth.slack.it
* Frédéric Wagner
* Jay Hopping - packager
* Jeff Breidenbach (Jab) - Bilinear interpolation
* Joshua Northey (Becephalus) - multiplayer maps
* Marcin Konicki (ahwayakchih) - BeOS packager
* Marcus Phillips (Sithrandel) - Mac OS X packager (for v1.0 and before)
* Mark Michelsen (skovbaer) - slackware packager
* Peter Groen (pg) - multiplayer maps
* Ruben Philipp Wickenhäuser (The Very Uhu) - multiplayer maps
* Tom Chance (telex4) - multiplayer maps, scenario balancing
* Sam Phillips (dark172) - creation of campains and multiplayer maps

{{Home}}

Art Programs

2006-11-24T06:39:47Z

Jetryl: /* Non-shareware */ spelling

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'''Big Note:''' It is possible to make graphics only in a program like MSPaint or Appleworks. There are, however, two major and '''vital''' things lacking in those programs - first, these programs cannot make images with transparent pixels, and second, they may not be able to save in the PNG format used by Wesnoth. A program capable of those will have to be applied to images made with MSPaint when they are finished.

=== Free Image Editors ===
The following are free image editing programs which can be used to create graphics for wesnoth. These programs are Open-Source Software, like wesnoth, meaning they are free to use, and that you are free to look at the sourcecode.

[http://www.gimp.org '''The GIMP'''] (for windows & linux); the "Gnu Image Manipulation Program" is recommended.

[http://seashore.sourceforge.net/ '''Seashore'''] (for mac) this port of the the GIMP to a cocoa-based gui is recommended.

[http://www.opensword.org/ '''Pixen'''] (for mac) is the OpenSword Group's tool for traditional SNES style sprite art - unlike most other editors, it has been designed for that specific task, and users may find it much less daunting than the Gimp or Photoshop. This program was written in cocoa, and has a very good interface - version 3 will even include built-in support for making animations.

[http://www.j-domain.de/homepage.php?page=20 '''JDraw'''] (for anything that can run Java - mac and windows included) is an image editor which has a subset of the features of Pixen, and a superset of the features of MSPaint. It is a simple, straightforward pixel editing program. If you use a mac, Pixen is probably a better idea.

[http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/ '''Paint.net'''] (for windows) is generally regarded as inferior to the Gimp or Photoshop, but some might find it of interest.

=== Free Image Post-Processors ===

[http://www.amake.us/software/pngcrusher/ '''PNGCrusher'''] (for mac) is a handy lightweight tool that will compress your PNGs much more efficiently than Photoshop. It is best used in tandem with saving the files from GraphicConverter, with the PNG filtering options on. The tool it is based on, OptiPNG, is open source, and runs on both linux and windows.

=== Proprietary Image Editors ===

==== Shareware ====
[http://www.lemkesoft.de/en/graphcon.htm '''GraphicConverter'''] (for mac) by Lemkesoft is an excellent program for preparing and compressing png images for the game, and may also be useful for the creation of images. The shareware fee is $30, although large parts of the program are fully functional for free.

[http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/ '''Pixel Image Editor'''] (for mac/windows/linux/BeOS/others) is a very full-featured program, intended to fulfill the same function that photoshop does. It currently has a shareware fee of $32, though the final price once the product reaches v2.0, will be $79.

[http://www.ultimatepaint.com/ '''JTL Ultimate Paint'''] (for windows) is a basic painting program, following the tradition of the earlier "DeluxePaint". Geared at painting, it can use photoshop plugins. It currently costs $34 for a basic version. I do not know if this program can export PNG images, so ''caveat emptor''.

[http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/ '''Pro Motion'''] (for windows) is a commercial pixel editing program. It has many features tailored for animation and seamless square-tile creation, as well as features designed to ease the creation of images that would run in a game on the Game Boy Advance or a Mobile Phone platform. The price of the normal version is $78.

[http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/index.html '''GraphicsGale'''] (for windows) is a pixel editing program designed for animation. It has both a freeware version, and a 1995¥ (roughly $20) shareware version. Be warned that it can '''not''' save files in the PNG format.

==== Non-shareware ====
[http://www.adobe.com/ '''Photoshop or Photoshop Elements'''] (for windows & mac), these industry standard Adobe applications are available for ~$700 and ~$100, respectively (the prices vary depending on where you get them). If you can acquire the use of these programs through a business or academic situation, they are extremely powerful, and are more than capable of some very advanced sprite techniques which elude simple bitmap programs - the price, however, is likely too much of a barrier to entry for most contributors. Photoshop should have little advantage over Elements for creating unit and terrain art. Photoshop (and presumably Elements) does not compactly save PNG files. For space savings, Adobe users are recommended to resave final PNGs through Adobe's companion application ImageReady, or another application such as GraphicConverter or PNGCrusher. Note - the ImageReady compression can also be used by saving the files through the "Save for Web..." menu command within Photoshop, if ImageReady is installed.

== See Also ==
* [[Create]]
* [[Art Tutorials]]

[[Category: Art Tutorials]]