Day Three: Horse-struck

The first two days starting on the Darklands faction appears to have started with a bang, but since my projects have a tendancy to ground themselves into a halt if I don't make regular forward progress, I'm starting this blog to record my journey as I build the Darklands faction for Wesnoth.

The first two days have been surprisingly rewarding given my lack of sprite knowledge. I've focused on art for the first time in my life and was able to produce a passable vampire lord and a much more satisfying spearman that I've decided to use as the unit sprite for the Nightguard in the faction. I'm still proud of how well he turned out:



Even the shadow turned out to be cooperative, though that probably is the result of my creative intepretation. It looks like now that he's holding his spear a bit backward, as if defending himself from an attack. It could easily fit in a defense frame.

Today, though, I find that my lack of artistic knowledge is becoming a serious problem. While creative borrowing from other unit artwork(known as frakensteining), lots of color scheme changes and the occasional bit of lineart has allowed my Nightguard and Vampire Prince to stand out as unique, such as not been so with my Heavy Cavalry. No amount of image manipulatory magick is going to excuse my inability to draw anything unique for it.

Here's what I have so far.



More or less unshaded, of course, thus the horrible lack of texturing. The horse itself is borrowed from the committed in-game artwork for the Lancer itself, being an excellent image for a charger.



Some brutal butchery later(both artworkwise and against the poor Lancer himself, har, har), the rider was removed and left me with the hindquarters and front of horse. So about an hour of experimentation on shadowy and equine shapes(and heavily relying on Shadow/Wayfarer's excellent equine examples here), I managed my initial riderless horse with a horrible bit of shading.



Clearly during some point in my editing, the horse became a dark grey. That fits into my Darkland theme, so no major complaints. Now since this is supposed to be heavy cavalry, the horse needs horse-armor, or barding. Medieval equine protection not being my baliff, I turn to my eternal ally in Google and find a few examples immediately.



From History of Horse Bards and Tacks, this is supposed a very famous example of a horse bard. Its not too far from what I am looking for. Its very, very stylized, but it have some very cool aspects if I could pull it off(especially the armor's device over the horse's head) and gives me some basic specifications for the horse's facial armor(the champron, I would learn). It certainly helps that the barding is dark in color, fitting in neatly with my general color scheme.

So, now applying my very limited drawing skills, I manage a basic covering with brushed metal. I grimance and remind myself that it'll look better when I get to shading it.



My horse is now blind, but still not very protected. The entire neck and chest is exposed and incredibly vulnerable. Since I've managed to mock up a chain mail appearance for my Nightguard, I try the same for my horse. So after another hour of pixeling and Australian pop girls blaring into my headset...



Of course, I learn now from Wikipedia: Barding that a horse's neck armor(also known as "criniere") was actually made of segmented plate. Well, that's just too bad, since I don't feel capable of drawing plate. I imagine that since my chainmail is unshaded, I can always do the segmented plates later on and layer them on top of the chainmail.

I'm still not sure what to do about the horse's hindquarters, so I decide to do a frakenstein from the commited in-game unit, the Grand Knight, and take part of the drapery over the horse. Its apparently called a caparison, proving that everything I ever need to learn in life comes from wikipedia. And kindergarden.

This is what I get.



Well, horrible since its a cut & paste job, but it does have potential if I radically remake the caparison into another color and probably another design. Perhaps bone-white with stylized designs? I'm not sure that I'm good enough to actually draw it, but at least there's something for me to work toward.

Anyway, I'm pretty much stuck for the moment. I either need to develop better artistic skills, or work on the rider instead. Since sudden improvement isn't yet appearing on the horizon, I think I'll bang my head against the rider tomorrow.