Battle Skirt?

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fate
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Battle Skirt?

Post by fate »

Hi,

the following is meant to represent an armoured `battle skirt'; I used the regular skirt as a template (after extracting all colour impurities in order to facilitate later dyeing).
battle skirt
battle skirt
bskirt-demo.png (20.25 KiB) Viewed 4625 times
Would this (a) meet quality and stylistic standards and (b) be of interest (i.e., should I finish it)? (Yes, the outline is alpha'd inconsistently in some places and parts of the old skirt are visible where they ought not to be, but that would be for the final clean-up. And yes, I also agree that trying to wear this without braces is probably a very bad idea.)

-- fate
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Saphy
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by Saphy »

That's really nice. However, it seems like the lighting contast is too high for the 2nd and 3rd frame; otherwise, great job.

By the way, what are braces?
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Black Don
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by Black Don »

I really like that Fate, wow all this great new armor ideas coming out is awesome. :D
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by Shaili (a.k.a. tds) »

It looks like a 'Samurai Hakama'. It's great ;)

With some works on light it should be perfect ;) Maybe I can try some experiments ;)
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fate
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by fate »

Hi,

thank you all for your feedback :-)

Saphy, I tried to have the metal look brighter as it turns towards the light source (and darker as it turns away). As someone who has significantly more experience with such things that than I, would you go for increasing intensity whist retaining contrast, for highlighting the edges a little more, or just leave it as-is? (And, by the way, braces (Queen's English) = suspenders (American English), from what I gather. The armour might slide off easily if worn just with a belt.)

Don, thank you-- the idea was (of course) motivated by Saphy's excellent new armour and your own helmets.

Shaili, I had been wondering where the idea came from, but it seems that you managed to pinpoint it before I figured it out myself ;-) And yes, please do feel free to go ahead and experiment-- we should strive to avoid duplicating work, of course, so for the time being I shall focus on the sitting/lying down/facing north animations (in that order) to give you time to fix the existing ones.

-- fate
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by Saphy »

fate wrote:Hi,

thank you all for your feedback :-)

Saphy, I tried to have the metal look brighter as it turns towards the light source (and darker as it turns away). As someone who has significantly more experience with such things that than I, would you go for increasing intensity whist retaining contrast, for highlighting the edges a little more, or just leave it as-is? (And, by the way, braces (Queen's English) = suspenders (American English), from what I gather. The armour might slide off easily if worn just with a belt.)

-- fate
Instead of incresing intensity or contrast, I believe it is better to think about where the sky will be reflected in the metal plate.

I have drawn an example:

Image

In this picture, even though all sheet has more or less the same intensity, the highlights are different. And with textures and highlight on bumps, you can create a realistic shading.
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by Shaili (a.k.a. tds) »

Thanks Saphy.

Anyway, added some details: feedbacks are welcome (I'm not a pixel artist, as you can see).
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bskirt-demo-someediting.png
bskirt-demo-someediting.png (22.42 KiB) Viewed 4409 times
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Saphy
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by Saphy »

Hmm... the skirt on the dead frame seems a little blurry, are you using the paintbrush tool. It is better to use the pencil tool in GIMP instead.

On the other hand, the skirt on the sitting frame seems too different from the rest - it shouldn't blend like that.
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by fate »

Hi,

Saphy, thank you very much for your sketches-- this makes good sense, and I will try to incorporate it into the next revision :-)

Shaili, thank you for your help, though the sitting and lying image don't entirely agree with what I had in mind.

Here is an early version of the sitting/lying images I drew yesterday:
bskirt-a.png
bskirt-a.png (3.64 KiB) Viewed 4356 times
I decided to assume that the armour panels are separate but individually rigid, which is why the armour folds up when sitting down (honestly, you probably don't want to sit down with this in real life...). As for lying down, the belt buckle goes up but the metal segments slide a little alongside the belt. The idea of having them slide a little also helped with the following:
bskirt-sitting-sideways-x0.png
bskirt-sitting-sideways-x0.png (1.7 KiB) Viewed 4358 times
For the sideways view, having the armour going up looked as it it would have the metal parts cutting into the wearer's legs in a very uncomfortable way (which is probably quite true) to I opted to allow them to slide sideways a little here, too. The image above is unshaded and unalpha'd but illustrates the idea. I am not entirely happy with it, as it still looks unnatural... maybe shading will take care of it, but maybe not; I will consider any suggestions you care to offer!

-- fate
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by Shaili (a.k.a. tds) »

Well, at least I tried ^^
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by Saphy »

I really like your sitting positions, fate. It looks nice.
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by Dawn »

Well improved I say. :)
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i
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by i »

sorry for OT
Dawn300387 wrote:Well improved I say. :)
Dawn - did you noticed that your posts are usually no longer that one sentence? Also they are without any constructive opinion.

"Back to the topic"
Overall conception is nice, it's similar to lower part of samurai armour. It lacks of shadings a bit. Anyway It's nice start.
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by Superkoop »

I'm not quite sure I understand how the sitting positions work, since in the front position the plates look like they are going at an almost 80 degree angle to the person. But the side position looks like it's going almost completely forward.
I will diagram from the top how I understand you have made them,
Front sitting view:
top_example_front.png
top_example_front.png (1.01 KiB) Viewed 4191 times
Side sitting view:
top_example_side.png
top_example_side.png (814 Bytes) Viewed 4186 times
So the two look very different, maybe this will be solved from shading, but I'm not sure if it can be entirely solved. I think the front sitting view is the most accurate to how the plates would part when sitting.
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fate
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Re: Battle Skirt?

Post by fate »

Superkoop,

your observation is correct. I drew the two views differently based on the fact that the first one-- while initially more appealing-- looked very painful to the character in question when I tried to apply it to her. I suppose that the only way that sitting down could be plausible would be if the plates are only attached to the belt in their centre, and not for the entire edge... I will see if I can give this another shot this weekend.

-- fate
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