Ye Olde Pencil and Parchment

Its been a while since I posted, partly due to working on the games location tiles and backgrounds.  I have however had an opportunity to begin pulling together the various ideas we have for the Paladin King character into a sketch.

With some of the character designs I have a clear picture in my head which has allowed me to work them straight up into a graphic, with others I have turned to good old paper and pencil and thrashed it out there. 

To be identifiable The Paladin King needed to be  far more grandly attired than the Knight so his armour is comparatively more elaborate, full plate and with a cape. Being a King it was important his face was exposed (again a differentiator from the helmeted visor of the Knight) and I worked in a crown over his helm. In terms of game play he utilizes the Paladin tropes - words of power and righteousness and melee attacks so he clutches a rather sizeable tome in one hand and...nothing in the other :/ Okay so here is where a large mace (or 'Battle-Sceptre' as I'm calling it ;) will go, I just need to sketch that up too, and adjust the size and position of that gauntlet...

So being a sketch its a rough idea of where I want to go with character, it will undergo some minor changes once I move it into the vector graphic stage, most notably I need to spend some time adjusting the scale of the various elements to fit with the style. Once he's complete I'll post him up! :)

Dem Bones...

Hot on the tails of the last is another character update, here is the Skeleton Orc Healer. 

As the 'pure of soul and benevolent' style Healer used on the Hero sat ill with the enemy races I styled them on archetypes more associated with Shamans or Witch Doctors, incorporating elements such as animal feathers, beads, bones and skulls.

I aged the 'White' key colour and corrupted the symbolism used on the Hero Healer, the 4 point cross and jewel atop her staff is parodied by the skull and crossbones and the same symbol marked on her forehead is a desecrated version daubed in some unmentionable substance across the skull - grim!

A range of Rangers...

In a break from tradition I thought I would post up three character designs in one post (the horror!).

Here are the three varieties of Ranger class, from left to right: Hero, Orc & Skeleton Orc - hopefully this provides an example with regard to cohesive single class visual design across races mentioned in previous posts. 

Green clothing over green skin for the Orc Ranger would not be my first choice of combinations but was a necessity due to the above (it was gonna happen with one of the classes! ;), I worked around the issue by grading the cloak lighter near the shadowed skin and darker near the lighter chin, I also exchanged the green body glove of the Hero Rogue for tan body armour for the Orc version. 

The Ranger was particularly challenging with regard to the inclusion of a strung and posed bow and arrow due to the proportions of the character and space available on the tile. Initially I wanted to have the bow pointed downward in a ready but relaxed position, but the distance from upper hand to floor made the pose unworkable, after some reworking I succeeded in a pose that fits the proportions of both character and tile and manages to emphasise the head of the arrow which assists in speed of class recognition - phew!