Thanks! And, cool, lots of those unreleased ones look awesome! I particularly like the slimes to trying to masquerade as people, especially the dwarf priest and elf wizard. Those are adorable. The REAL Kee-tanh elf priest is very cool. I didn't think of the pseudo-Egyptian angle, but that makes perfect sense for a cat priest. And, as Jon pointed out, that variety of cat also allows for the pointy ears, which is a detail I hadn't considered as mandatory elf-identifying.
Thank you! And I do appreciate the feedback. I did think it might be fun to make some more, so a better idea of the guidelines is good to have, too. It seems like the shield rule is the one with the most wiggle room, but going forward I'll be sure to have them facing forward or backward. I admit it hadn't registered that even elves wearing helmets always had their pointy ears visible, so that would be good to keep in mind as well.
Previously on Card Hunter Fan Art, I made a Kee-Tanh elf wizard because I was under the mistaken impression that there wasn't one already. Oops! After being directed to the Vault of Costumes That Are, Were, and Shall Be, I learned that there are all kinds of awesome things in store for the future. But, once again, I think I've noticed a conspicuous absence. Lots of people like cats, of course, but just as there are many cat people there are also a lot of dog people. Personally, I'm more of a pangolin, jellyfish, or octopus person myself, but that might be too narrow an audience. Anyway, for the dog people out there, I say Release the Hounds!
Great illustrations, Hwango! I like your sense of design a lot! The linework is not quite bold enough for game use yet, though. You should use a thicker line and leave out the smallest details, feathering etc. Your designs are plenty strong enough to stand on their own without any rendering effects. It might help if you drew the originals at a smaller size to force yourself to leave out details that are too small to reproduce at game size. They're already dropping out at the size here and the in-game sprites are even smaller and viewed at an angle which smashes the lines together and drops out details even more. Compare your work with this illustration by Ben to see the line thickness difference: Clean, bold lines which clearly delineate the form of the figure and stand out from the background and figure colouring. You're almost there, I wouldn't bother with this much feedback if I didn't think your work was of almost commercially-usable quality already. (I'm not an artist myself so I bow before your skills in any case, I'm just a connoisseur of illustration, especially of the pen and ink style.)
Thanks! I admit, I'm having real trouble with the line thickness. It's always too thin or too bold, and I can't seem to get it exactly Card Hunter Thickness without it being blurry. Some arcane secret of Ben's is eluding me. I shall keep trying. As for tiny details, it's hard to tell which ones will translate okay. Some existing characters have these tiny rivets on their armor, of discernable toenails, or even that simulated hologram texture on some unreleased figures. So far with all of these I've tried for simple, large shapes, but they always end up looking painfully dull, and I end up adding back in fiddly details, justifying it by mentally pointing at existing things like the symbols on the cloth parts of the samurai, or the leopard spots on the female human aztec-ish priest. This is also something I shall keep trying to overcome. I'm more of a painter than an illustrator, so there's some internal struggles going on.
Interestingly, Ben actually draws these at a larger resolution first and downscales them. I suspect he's using larger brushes, but really I have no idea.
I wanted to see how much detail would be lost if I shrunk and distorted my dog figures as they would be in the actual game, so I took a screen shot of the game and inserted them onto the board. That much, I think, was reasonable. Then I thought it would be nice to clean the image up by editing out the original figures to see what it would really look like, which is probably going a bit far. Then I'm afraid I went rather mad and decided to edit in the full images of the costumes at the bottom and give them representative hands of cards and thereby live the dream to its logical conclusion. Link instead of direct insert because it's a full screenshot: http://alum.wpi.edu/~wes/images/card_hunter_dogs_vs_slub.png
Not in the near future from me, I'm afraid. These were fun, but I need to devote some time to real work for a while.
My contribution, smiley face traffic light... and I would say about how I feel regarding each light while driving:
I really dig these. But for constructive criticism, the middle dog which I assume is a Chihuahua based drawing should be slighter and possibly shorter. You are trying to convey and hominid dog and the body is just too big for it's head. I am no artist (see my contribution above for the level and skill I am coming from) but I think if you made the head 10% larger and then make the whole figure 10% smaller it would lend better proportions. Or you can just be happy with what are both creative and aesthetically pleasing images.
A jackal?... From Family Guy: Jim: A jackal! Jackal! It's a jackal! It looks like a jackal! Jackal? Jackal! It's a jackal! Jackal? Abby: Time! Stewie: It wasn't right the first time you said it, why the hell would it be right the next ten times?! God! This has no reflection upon your jackal which is much better than a Chihuahua. Jackal?