Kitty's WSAS Project

Basics

1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.

My name is Kathrin Polikeit, I'm 24 years old and from Germany. I'm a graphic design student focusing on typography and illustration. I've been a Wesnoth Art Contributor for about 1,5 years and am the current Portrait Director.

1.2) State your preferred email address.

kpolikeit (at) web (dot) de

1.3) If you have chosen a nick for IRC and Wesnoth forums, what is it?

kitty on the forums and kitty_ on IRC.

1.4) Why do you want to participate in WSAS?

By participating in WSAS I want to increase the time I work for Battle of Wesnoth significantly. I want to be able to focus on a project and not just squeeze it in in my spare time.

1.5) What are you studying, subject, level and school?

I study Visual Communication at the Academy for Art and Design Offenbach am Main, Germany. I'm in my fourth year.

1.6) If you have contributed to Wesnoth, please list what you contributed below.

I've contributed mainly portrait art, a total of 46 mainline portraits, 17 for mainline campaigns, a handful for UMC and a couple of generic story screens.

Experience

2.1/2.2) What art projects have you worked on before? Have you developed art in a team environment before?

Apart from my involvement in Wesnoth I'm used to working on single or team based art projects at my university. Those are mostly done in teams of about two to three students and apart from that I do freelance illustration which also means incorporating team based decisions and customer requests.

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

I'm only involved in Wesnoth up to now.

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.

I think my written English is ok, I'm able to convey my thoughts most of the time.

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?

No, quite the contrary. I know that critique is basical to improving and I am happy to incorporate all kinds of helpfull comments in my work.

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

Yes. It may be strenous at times, as I know, since the non-art Wesnoth community tends to get caught up in irrelevant technical discussions but I have learned that most of the time there is simply something wrong if more than two people find something strange. I think the overall critique culture on the wesnoth forums works well for me.

Project

4.1) Project

I'm working on a set of generic portrait art for over a year, unit portraits are used in the help files to familiarize the player with the unit and for dialogues in campaigns. Wesnoth uses about 190 units warranting a portrait, by sharing portraits between similar levels of a unit that can be boiled down to about 150 (of which 88 are done). I want to work on the smaller species/races for this summer, I propose doing 25 portraits. Those would include the goblin wolf rider line, the missing outlaws, mermen, nagas, ghosts and the bat.

4.2) Why did you choose this project?

Because I like things to be complete. The more the graphical aspects of Wesnoth are without gap the more polished and professional the game will look. And for me taking care of lots of little groups of portraits is more interesting than doing 20 elves in a row - variety is fun!

4.3) Include an estimated timeline for your work on the project.

• The first milestone, 13th of July, includes footpad m, footpad f, outlaw/fugitive m and outlaw/fugitive f. This is the smallest milestone since I will work on it parallelly to my semester which will end as late as 10th of July.

• The second milestone, 3rd of August, are wolf rider, wolf pillager, mermaid enchantress/siren, mermaid priestess/diviner, merman fighter/warrior, merman hoplite and merman triton.

• The third milestone, 24th of August, will be goblin knight/direwolf rider, ruffian, thug, bandit/highwayman, naga fighter, troll and naga warrior/myrmidon.

• The fourth milestone, 13th of September, includes the final seven portraits: merman hunter, merman netcaster/entangler, merman spearman/javelineer, shadow, nightgaunt, spectre and vampire bat/blood bat/dread bat.

Practical Considerations

5.1) What computer platform do you use?

I use a Mac, 10.4.11

5.2) Do you consider yourself to be good with computers?

I am decent with computers (hence I use a Mac), I have experience with html and java script but I am not really interested in the code side of things and would prefer not to get involved with it to have more time for actually producing art.

5.3) Have you ever used IRC?

Yes.

5.4) At what hours are you awake and available to communicate?

I will be available for communication UTC 15:00 till UTC 22:00 most of the time.