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Post by tommyg on Dec 31, 2022 9:58:20 GMT -6
One feature of Lords of Magic that I have always appreciated was the handrawn portrait sketches, they add so much character to the champion units and in my opinion, are much better than the 3D portraits we usually get in similar modern games, like Bannerlord of Total War Warhammer.
Therefore, I’d like to share some sketches from a project I made, in which I aim to sketch at least one variant for every champion from the game, in an attempt to combine my own style with that of the artists from Lords of Magic.
All of these have been sketched pencil on paper, then digitalized onto a parchment texture background on photoshop. I hope people enjoy these!
EARTH: Dwarven Warrior
EARTH: Gnome Magician
CHAOS: Huntress
CHAOS: Beast Rider
AIR: Storm Giant Variation 1
AIR: Storm Giant Variation 2
AIR: Faerie Thief Variation 1
AIR: Faerie Thief Variation 2
LIFE: Elven Thief
LIFE: Enchantress
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Post by Boaster on Dec 31, 2022 10:11:39 GMT -6
Nicely done! All looks great to me! I'm sure others will say the same.
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Post by lemminkainen on Jan 1, 2023 8:31:48 GMT -6
Happy new year guys, I'm proud to be following this forum through ages.  |
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Post by tommyg on Jan 2, 2023 6:45:10 GMT -6
Thanks both for the feedback and happy 2023!
I think some of the portraits definitely came out better than others, when you look back at them, I start notice things I could have done better.
I'd of course love for some of these to be included in the next LOMSE Mantera Mod, if they are deemed good enough!
I ran a test with the 2 faerie portraits in lower, LOM scale resolution. They hold up quite well I think despite the extreme low scaling this old game requires, so I think they could work.
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Post by Boaster on Jan 2, 2023 18:12:49 GMT -6
Thanks both for the feedback and happy 2023!
I think some of the portraits definitely came out better than others, when you look back at them, I start notice things I could have done better. I'd of course love for some of these to be included in the next LOMSE Mantera Mod, if they are deemed good enough! I ran a test with the 2 faerie portraits in lower, LOM scale resolution. They hold up quite well I think despite the extreme low scaling this old game requires, so I think they could work.
I would surely like to add them to the mod. However, the PIC5R3 is an undertaking. I mean, it is, but it isn't: I know, makes a lot of sense. If these get added, they would serve best to replace existing portraits. I would definitely like to add these if I ever get a newer version of the mod out. A lot of all of what I did was before being married, and before having a kid, and school or work. But I would definitely like to add these, down the line. Keep making more between now and that time later. |
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eyesodilated
Member LVL 7
May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out
Posts: 113 
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Post by eyesodilated on Jan 7, 2023 10:53:29 GMT -6
These are jaw dropping beautiful! They really speak for themselves; my daughter loves them too. You really captured the look and feel of the portraits while greatly improving them with an updated look. Bravo!
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Post by tommyg on Jan 9, 2023 16:04:29 GMT -6
I would surely like to add them to the mod. However, the PIC5R3 is an undertaking. I mean, it is, but it isn't: I know, makes a lot of sense. If these get added, they would serve best to replace existing portraits. I would definitely like to add these if I ever get a newer version of the mod out. A lot of all of what I did was before being married, and before having a kid, and school or work. But I would definitely like to add these, down the line. Keep making more between now and that time later.
As a fellow modder of classic games, in my case Warcraft 3, I completely understand where you're coming from, modding takes a lot of time and rarely grants any financial rewards. So work and modern life have to come first.
It would be great if some of them could be added, but some people may not like them replacing original LOM Portraits, as people quite rightly get attached to the nostalgia their favorite character portraits conjure up. I would stay clear of replacing any original Lord portraits, as these are highly nostalgic for long term fans of the game. But perhaps some of the standard champion portraits could be replaced. Some of these are objectively bad, in particular the Order non-lord portraits look pretty bad quality to me. Some of the Order Wizard portraits are just bizarre and look like the artist had no communication with the 3D art designers during development, which is ironic because the Wizard with his pointy hat is the most generic fantasy unit in the whole game.
Having said that, there are many original LOM portraits that are just perfect and far better than my drawings.
But anyway, hopefully someday, when you have the spare time, these make the cut.
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Post by tommyg on Jan 9, 2023 16:04:45 GMT -6
These are jaw dropping beautiful! They really speak for themselves; my daughter loves them too. You really captured the look and feel of the portraits while greatly improving them with an updated look. Bravo! Thank you so much, I put a lot of work into them, so I'm glad you both like them!
I could have drawn them photoshop but in my opinion nothing beats the original feel of pencil on paper which the original LOM arts did so well. I actually used to try and copy some of the old LOM portraits back when I was a kid, so it's nice to revisit this again as an adult |
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Post by Boaster on Jan 9, 2023 19:42:13 GMT -6
These are jaw dropping beautiful! They really speak for themselves; my daughter loves them too. You really captured the look and feel of the portraits while greatly improving them with an updated look. Bravo! Thank you so much, I put a lot of work into them, so I'm glad you both like them!
I could have drawn them photoshop but in my opinion nothing beats the original feel of pencil on paper which the original LOM arts did so well. I actually used to try and copy some of the old LOM portraits back when I was a kid, so it's nice to revisit this again as an adult Keep making them. Front load it. It can happen. |
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Post by merlin on Jan 23, 2023 14:50:50 GMT -6
Stunning!
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Post by Boaster on Jan 23, 2023 19:33:20 GMT -6
I would surely like to add them to the mod. However, the PIC5R3 is an undertaking. I mean, it is, but it isn't: I know, makes a lot of sense. If these get added, they would serve best to replace existing portraits. I would definitely like to add these if I ever get a newer version of the mod out. A lot of all of what I did was before being married, and before having a kid, and school or work. But I would definitely like to add these, down the line. Keep making more between now and that time later. As a fellow modder of classic games, in my case Warcraft 3, I completely understand where you're coming from, modding takes a lot of time and rarely grants any financial rewards. So work and modern life have to come first. It would be great if some of them could be added, but some people may not like them replacing original LOM Portraits, as people quite rightly get attached to the nostalgia their favorite character portraits conjure up. I would stay clear of replacing any original Lord portraits, as these are highly nostalgic for long term fans of the game. But perhaps some of the standard champion portraits could be replaced. Some of these are objectively bad, in particular the Order non-lord portraits look pretty bad quality to me. Some of the Order Wizard portraits are just bizarre and look like the artist had no communication with the 3D art designers during development, which is ironic because the Wizard with his pointy hat is the most generic fantasy unit in the whole game. Having said that, there are many original LOM portraits that are just perfect and far better than my drawings.
But anyway, hopefully someday, when you have the spare time, these make the cut.
Let me clarify: the quick fix to add them NOW would be to replace existing portraits. A second option is for individual modding: add the portraits to your PIC.mpq, then modify 'gs/PORTRAITS5.gs' by adding the portrait there. The latter may happen: getting all the new portraits added to the pic5 or pic6. |
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eyesodilated
Member LVL 7
May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out
Posts: 113
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Post by eyesodilated on Feb 14, 2023 12:54:01 GMT -6
Hey, I have been following this thread since the beginning and right now im down the rabbit hole when it comes to everything portraits. I have been practicing making some portraits and I may post a thread about my experiences. That said I did Boaster's method of adding brand new portaits to the exsisting pics.mpq. Then I added the file names I added to the POTRAIT5.gs So now it works as an alternate portrait, I can randomly get it assigned or manually change portraits until I find the new ones. For this example I took your life enchantress and chaos thief for starters. I named the Life portrait liwizp09.png and the chaos cathfp09.png. These were natural step progressions from the p08's. I then did the following: - resampled your image to 70 X 68 pixels
- reduced it to 256 colors
- used LOMUT to convert the .pcx files into .lbm file types
Then I added liwizp09.lbm and chthfp09.lbm to the pic.mpq in the folder PORTRAITS. With that and the changes made to the PORTRAIT5.gs in the gs.mpq your portraits are now available in game. I did not add the normal portrait palette colors that come in the game and just let your art express itself naturally. By compressing to 256 colors the change is not noticeable and it allows it to be used in the game. There are variety of palette techniques you can use to tweak your final image. Because I did not change the palette your portraits appear lighter and even brighter than normal portraits. I think it looks good I will definitely keep in my game.  Here are the portraits as .lbms, you can either rename it to an existing portrait filename and replace it or mod the gs a little and have them as new portraits in game: chthfp09.lbm (9.86 KB) Attachments:liwizp09.lbm (9.87 KB)
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Post by tommyg on Feb 19, 2023 17:08:03 GMT -6
Oh wow so nice to see my drawings ingame!
When you say this is an alternate portrait, does that mean it replaces an existing portrait in game? I had a quick look in the pic MPQ archive but haven't got round to converting the LBM images, as you say it seemed like I'd be going down a rabbit hole so decided against it. I’ve downloaded your LifeWiz LBM file, so will have a go at using it ingame.
I'm actually really surprised at how well the portraits hold up at such low resolution, without any additional editing. They certainly look paler and less saturated than the standard LOM portraits, so might look odd when compared directly with them, but I agree that they look ok as they are.
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Post by Gaznak on Feb 24, 2023 13:28:11 GMT -6
Wow, they are beautiful! Any chance to see my favorite portrait remade sometimes, namely Death wizard champion?  |
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eyesodilated
Member LVL 7
May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out
Posts: 113
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Post by eyesodilated on Mar 5, 2023 19:31:54 GMT -6
Oh wow so nice to see my drawings ingame!
When you say this is an alternate portrait, does that mean it replaces an existing portrait in game? I had a quick look in the pic MPQ archive but haven't got round to converting the LBM images, as you say it seemed like I'd be going down a rabbit hole so decided against it. I’ve downloaded your LifeWiz LBM file, so will have a go at using it ingame.
I'm actually really surprised at how well the portraits hold up at such low resolution, without any additional editing. They certainly look paler and less saturated than the standard LOM portraits, so might look odd when compared directly with them, but I agree that they look ok as they are.
Alternate means you keep the original portrait, and you add in a new one. This requires some GS editing. Replacement means you permanently change out the original in game portrait for a new one. This requires no GS editing because in order to work they will have the same name. I found out portrait LBM files can take on almost any 256-color palette, so once I resized/resampled your drawings I lowered the color depth to 8 BIT RLE (256). Because I have always interpreted the character portraits to be single pages of the original book from the opening video sequence- it makes sense that some pages look different than others. Indeed in-game the portraits have slightly different "borders". There are certain index and color values that are special, but I haven't figured them all out yet. Some colors like black act transparent. So, when you are at the normal interface screen (iface in MPQ) the transparent pixels will show up as yellow or white but with a glowing effect, white and yellow being the color of the portrait background. But sometimes the transparent pixels show as the "stone panel" color that is behind the portrait but not normally visible. Other color and palette index colors can make a black leathery looking color show up, kind of like the cover of the book from the game. It could be a false memory, but I thought I remembered on certain Legends of Urak quests the portrait picture could show a "Lords of Magic" logo on the cover of a book style? So, besides the transparent, glowing white, yellow and black pixels hard wired into the game it is open season for how you want the portrait to look. I could try using the color pallet of the original Life Enchantress for example and it might match up better and fix the paleness/saturation issues. I you wanted to use that liwizp09 file right now without GS editing, open up WinMPQ and find the original liwizp01 or even the leader lildwp01 portrait and copy the name so you can rename the file I uploaded. When you hit ADD in WINMPQ select the newly renamed file and it will bring up the file path prompt. Carefully type in PORTRAIT\ or portrait\ depending on the file you are replacing. WINMPQ automatically overwrites existing files with the same name so you don't have to delete the original. In fact, I recommend keeping a copy of the original anyways. If you have any questions or ideas let me know! |
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eyesodilated
Member LVL 7
May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out
Posts: 113
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Post by eyesodilated on Mar 5, 2023 19:37:20 GMT -6
Wow, they are beautiful! Any chance to see my favorite portrait remade sometimes, namely Death wizard champion? Hey! Do you want the portrait to look like the original necromancer? Or do you want it to look like Balkoth Arch Demon mode? Do you want original style or do you want it colorized? Let me know! |
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Post by Boaster on Mar 6, 2023 6:37:39 GMT -6
In palettes of LBM files, the first two colors are for transparency and translucency, which are normally 00FF00 (pure green) and FF0000 (pure red).
I think there may be some colorized artifact portraits left over where I didn't catch them having these issues. One of them I think is the earth helmet.
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Post by Gaznak on Mar 14, 2023 13:30:38 GMT -6
Hey! Do you want the portrait to look like the original necromancer? Or do you want it to look like Balkoth Arch Demon mode? Do you want original style or do you want it colorized? Let me know! Oh, sorry for a late reply, I just saw your post. Thanks for your alacrity to accept such kind of 'commission', if you will  . Yes, I would want to see it look like the original necromancer, just like on the screenshot, this malicious old warlock clad in some grotesque skull cap, with beard and ponytail, and it would be very cool if it would keep the original sepia style, just in bigger size and resolution, like your previous portraits. They bring so much personality! And the necromancer seems made just for your remake, he has already very distinctive character, and he must become even cooler under your style! I would be very happy to have an avatar like this  . |
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eyesodilated
Member LVL 7
May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out
Posts: 113
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Post by eyesodilated on Mar 28, 2023 10:42:20 GMT -6
Hey! Actually tommyg is the one who created the portraits I just converted them to be ready for the game. So my artstyle would be different than his but I will gladly convert anything he makes, you make or I make or anyone makes into a usable portrait. I'll use some of your ideas and make my own, I will also use some AI tools to also create art in this style just for diversity, then we can pick the ones you like and make final changes you want. I will post some examples soon! |
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Post by Gaznak on Mar 28, 2023 13:32:31 GMT -6
Hey! Actually tommyg is the one who created the portraits Yes, I realized it as soon as I pressed the button "Post" that time Hope he still visit the forum from time to time, and will see my post. Nevertheless it would be very cool to see your own art, if you please. |
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