New Avatars - Age of Wonders

Post by **Edi** » 2006-09-18 02:42pm

Time for some new avatars for those who want them. I spent a few days producing a batch of new avatars from imagery in the old turn based fantasy strategy game Age of Wonders. I've sent the batch to Mike so he can add it to the board galleries, but he seems to have a lot of sruff going on so I don't know when he will get around to it.

So I figured I might as well open a new thread to intriduce them to everyone. Feedback is very welcome.

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This first batch is the five different AI levels from the game, in order: Squire, Knight, Lord, King and Emperor

The next batch contains the icons for different types of magic in the game, in the following order: Life, Air, Water, Death, Earth, Fire

Next up, the heraldry of the different factions in the game:

The Good

Elves

Halflings

Dwarves

Archons (went by the name of High Men in the first game)

The Bad

Dark Elves

Orcs

Goblins

Undead

The Ugly (neutrals)

Humans

Azracs (basically nomadic humans who live in deserts)

Lizardmen

Frostlings

Then we get to the actual units:

War machines and other machines: Battering Ram, Ballista, Catapult, Cannon, Flame Thrower, Builder, Drill

Ships and other transport vehicles: Balloon, Air Galley, Transport ship, Dragonship, Galley, Galleon

Elementals and other units:

Air, Earth, Fire and Water Elementals, Syron, Magic Servant, Fire Sprite and Mermaid

Dragonish creatures: Red Dragon, Black Dragon, Green Wyvern, Sea Serpent, Ice Drake, Silver Dragon (not in the game, but appears in Warlock's mod), Wyvern, Goblin Wyvern Rider

Animals and monsters: Boar, Wolf, Giant Eagle, Dire Penguin, Black Spider, Giant Frog, Lurker, Basilisk, Giant Slug, Spider Queen, Elephant, Giant Scorpion, Fire Worm, Beholder, Doombat

Undead units: Bone Ram, Skull Thrower, Bone Horror, Mummy, Wraith, Shadow

Sylvan creatures: Halfling Eagle Rider, Nymph, Unicorn, Druid, Satyr, Giant, Leprechaun, Centaur, Elven Scout, Nature Spirit, Fairy

Goblins, orcs & dark elves: Kobold, Goblin (suicide) Bomber, Goblin Wolf Raider, Lady of Pain, Orc Warlord, Troll, Karagh, Incarnate (possessing spirit)

Azracs, Lizardmen, Frostlings & humans: Djinn, Yaka Avatar Salamander, Turtle Ballista, Turtle Catapult, Frostling Wold Rider, Yeti, Frost Queen, Northern Glow, Charlatan

Archons & Dwarves: Angel, Valkyrie, Titan, Dwarf Berserker, Dwarven Firstborn

Dartzap · Post by **Dartzap** » 2006-09-18 02:46pm

Wrong forum, Edi

theski · Post by **theski** » 2006-09-18 02:47pm

Damm mods.. flaunting their power..

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-09-18 02:56pm

Oh, what's this? Unworthy people posting in the mods forum? Mike! MIKE! We're being invaded!

Yeah, I moved your thread, Edi. I assume it was here you wanted it, mate.

Post by **Edi** » 2006-09-18 03:10pm

No, actually, I intended to post this in AMP but apparently I fucked up and posted it in N&P instead. As it is, I didn't just spend two and half hours putting this thread post together to make it as visually good as possible and grouping the avatars thematically. As Mike said in the other thread, he's had a lot to do and hasn'thad time to put the gallery up yet, so I figured I'd let people see the pics in this thread and he can add them at his leisure when he's not quite as busy. Besides, this way I can use this thread to add the other public Age of Wonders avatars I'm going to make in the future. Keep them all in the same place, so to speak.

So I'm moving this thing to AMP where it should be.

Edi

Ravencrow · Post by **Ravencrow** » 2006-09-19 08:48am

AOW really had some great artwork. If I'm not mistaken, Danc did most of the artwork for the in-game portraits.

That's a lot of work going through them and extracting them from the game, Edi.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-09-19 09:22am

*note to self: Buy AoW*

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2006-09-19 11:06am

Very nicely done Edi.

They all look great.

Post by **Edi** » 2006-09-20 05:43am

Ravencrow wrote:AOW really had some great artwork. If I'm not mistaken, Danc did most of the artwork for the in-game portraits.

He painted those? I thought it was Lennart Sas, because he did the art for the map features and iirc also for the title screen. Wasn't Danc also the one who got that special hero in the game, Sir Danc the Changed? I guess now I know why...

Ravencrow wrote:That's a lot of work going through them and extracting them from the game, Edi.

Not as much as you would think, Blue. I found this nifty little tool at AoW Heaven that extracts the pics from the image libraries and makes gifs out of them. So I didn't need to do screencaps of everything. I did just my own avatar, the AI logos, the magic spheres and the shields plus a few portraits I gave to Zaia that way. For the rest I used the ILB extractor program, which did what would have taken several hours by screencaps in less than a minute. The blasted thing doesn't work on AoW:SM, though, so I guess I'll have to reinstall AoW2 and see if it works on those libraries because there are some portraits there that I really want to make avatars out of. If it doesn't, it's back to doing screencaps but at least I can get the hero faces from the map editor.

Changing things from 103x128 to 128x128 and then shrinking to 100x100 to get the avatars was a bitch and half, though. I needed to fill the sides of the pictures, essentially continue the drawing outside the original frame and do it so that the manipulation was not obvious. Some of the pics were really offensive that way and refused to cooperate. The most difficult ones in were the Goblin Bomber, the Titan, the Green Wyvern and the Flame Thrower. There's a couple more that aren't in the public gallery and some of those were the really hard ones.

By the way, did you have a particular favorite hero portrait that you might want to use as an avatar? Because I can easily make you one.

Ace Pace wrote:*note to self: Buy AoW*

It'll be a bargain bin game if it's available. I talked with DEATH when I changed to my current avatar and he said he couldn't find it anywhere in Israel. I know AoW has been rereleased twice, once under the Best Buy brand and once under the Play4Less one. If you can't find it anywhere, PM me and we'll see what we can do.

Tsyroc wrote:Very nicely done Edi.

They all look great.

Thanks, Tsyroc!

Edi

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2006-09-20 06:55am

You could just shrink them to 81x100. No rules against that.

Ravencrow · Post by **Ravencrow** » 2006-09-20 07:26am

No worries, Edi. I have my favorites, but hero portraits are poor in representing me. I like the unit portraits better. The spellbook icons are nice too.

(edit: typo)

Post by **Edi** » 2006-09-20 08:30am

Alan Bolte wrote:You could just shrink them to 81x100. No rules against that.

I know, but that would have resulted in a lot of different sized avatars. Some of them could be fixed just by cropping extra background away from them to get a direct 100x100 pic (the cannon, catapult, ballista and air elemental, for example) while others would have been 81x100 or something different. It offended my sense of consistency. This way I'm satisfied with the end result and it's uniform except for the icons and logos, because there I was constrained by file size, not dimensions.

Ravencrow wrote:No worries, Edi. I have my favorites, but hero portraits are poor in representing me. I like the unit portraits better. The spellbook icons are nice too.

Should have known, but yeah, the hero portraits just don't seem to fit you. Thank you for the compliment. I also see you have chosen a new avatar already.

Edi

Pick · Post by **Pick** » 2006-09-20 10:26am

That Turtle Ballista is incredibly cute. What a kickass looking adorable unit!