Mercenaries Art Thread

[Keith Kuruzu]

Good sir I believe I found you your male Arabolist, and Female Cantor. Well I mean...I hope I did, hope these help <3. I know the cantor may be a little off due to the fact that she resembles the already exsisting white mage, but I believe my Arabolist is dead on :3. From what I gathered you Arabolists seem a lot like hunters, but meh it isn't my place to question. Hope these help your production. (i.e. my cellphone is now d.e.a.d. sooo I can't get you more photos of what I have or draw until monday when I go back to college...again sorry :/)

Ooo, I am loving this a lot!  Sorry for having been silent for a while.  I'm not in town because of Thanksgiving so I'll be heading back in the next day or so.  The Arbalist/Archers are awesome looking and the Female Cantor as well!

If LD gives those designs the OK, I don't suppose you'd mind if I did FFT-style mock-ups of your concept art for the Arbalist/Archers/Female Cantor (even any of the various Knights on the preceding page)?

[LastingDawn]

Though no, I don't have a complete Funeral sprite... Zozma was working on one and I believe he did complete it, but the game does something odd for Funeral's sprite, he looks a bit different in all of his... well unused animation.

Also your first pictures are great! I personally love that final drawing (one on the bottom right), for a female Archer base.


Great work on your Arbalist/Cantor mockup! But one thing for the male Arbalist... I always pictured him as having a rather large cape (very similar to Dalton from Chrono Trigger), I really like that bottom design for the normal archer, it looks like a great mix. Also that Female Cantor looks great! I really like her expression most of all, nothing in Mercenaries is really "good" or "evil" a lot of Mercenaries' story is told through ambiguity of right and wrong. So her rather devious looking expression fits the overall theme very well. And indeed Keith, you have my permission (for all that matters, still need Static Lynx's, heh...) to Yoshida-ize his concept art. Also keep in mind, if you'd like some advice on anything please PM Winshmo, who is technically the Art Director. Odds are, he will be the one to finalize the concept on everything.

Dalton Reference:

[mav]

Wait, so would both the Archer and the Arbalist have capes?

[LastingDawn]

Only the Female Archer and Male Arbalist.

[StaticLynx]

Anyways, sorry about the delays guys, but...if you want to use these than Keith has my go ahead to Fushido-ize my characters, just have him e-mail me copies orrrr...something just because I'm really interest in seeing my artwork re-done, its never happened to me before. So, i'm really curious to see my art in a whole new style, thanks and much appreciated. The archers I posted earlier were males, but I have plenty of females if you need them ^.^.

[Keith Kuruzu]

Sorry for the lack of updates lately.  I caught the flu shortly after I came back to town after Thanksgiving and it took me out for most of last week and this week.  DX

I'll be working on the Yoshida-style rendition of the Male Arbalist based on StaticLynx's design with LD's Dalton reference being used for the cape.

I might have to make several mock-ups of the Male Arbalist, though, since I'm going to toy around with different cape lengths with a full body design.  I just can't seem to picture an Arbalist to be wearing a heavy cape like that while dual wielding crossbows.  Maybe I'll prove myself wrong while working on this.  >.<

[mav]

Whoa. Stay healthy man, and good luck with the art. This will definitely be interesting.

[LastingDawn]

As always, feel free to take your time, and don't overwork yourself on our account.

[StaticLynx]

Weee . I too am looking forward to the presentation that is the "Fusido Male Arabalist" b-but as always health comes first. *Bobbles* I can't wait though...this seems so excitinggg. By the way Sir LD, I've done a few more random designs let me know if you need them. Some of the drawing I've done recently seem impartially useless, but who knows you might need em'. XD

[LastingDawn]

Certainly, you never know when inspiration will strike.

[mav]

I may be the only one who feels this way, but I honestly think that every artist here should just post any image they think is relevant. Whether it's a custom character, a monster design, a potential job design, etc, etc. Worst case scenario, we ogle your art but tell you it won't make it into the game...

Keep up the great work, you guys; your art is inspirational, to say the least.

[LastingDawn]

Yes, I agree with Mav, it's definitely the best way to do things.

[Keith Kuruzu]

Sorry about the lack of updates.  The Male Arbalist was a tricky beast to finish, mainly because:
1) I tried really hard to find a suitable pose for him to stand in that also adequately showcased his crossbow (one of them, anyway).

2) I tried really hard to stick with StaticLynx's original design.  It wasn't too hard since it was a simple design originally but I made a few changes here and there.  Hopefully they weren't too much to take away from StaticLynx's original intent.

3) I was trying to find a decent looking design for a crossbow.  For this, I finally settled upon the Belgian crossbow design, just because it looked to be the most dual-wieldable (look up Belgian Crossbow under Google Images to see what I mean ^_^).

Try to guess just where I got some of my character inspiration from in making the Male Arbalist.  I took something from an existing FFT character in the Vanilla version as well as another character design from one other FF game.

Oh, and LD, please let me know if the cape design is to your liking.

spoiler

[LastingDawn]

Oh, I like that! the cape is perfect! Well worth the wait! I would love to see some of these colored in, keep up the good work, Keith!

[jimmyjw88]

Amazing. I really like the cape. The crossbow's details are perfect. Well done, and yes, worth to wait.

[Kagebunji]

Try to color it and I will begin work on sprite

Great job Keith!

[mav]

Awesome! I like the design a lot. I wonder if I could take this image and make a portrait out of it directly...

[Cheetah]

The design is great. The proportions seem a bit off and the face isn't quite spot on, but it is still really good and a great design for a sprite. If you just did some vague coloring maybe some spriters could take a crack at it.

[Keith Kuruzu]

The design is great. The proportions seem a bit off and the face isn't quite spot on, but it is still really good and a great design for a sprite. If you just did some vague coloring maybe some spriters could take a crack at it.

I was trying to make the Arbalist look as if he were walking towards you with only the front of his right foot on the ground with the whole of his left foot firmly planted.  The laces on his right foot were also supposed to indicate that but I guess it didn't come off the way I wanted it too.

So yeah, the off proportions were a result of me trying to give a 3-Dimensional feel to a 2-Dimensional picture and doing badly.  >.<

I've put up a roughly colored version of the Arbalist since it's been asked of me by our wonderful spriters.  I do have to warn you all now that it's not going to be pretty but it should give you all something to work on for now.  I do apologize if the color scheme I picked isn't so good.  I'm bad at those kinds of things.  >.<

spoiler

[jimmyjw88]

To me, the colour is right on track. However, shadings are required instead of dumping colours with the paint, like cartoons ^^
Perhaps some great spriters may try on it. Still, great job Keith.