This blog contains art by me - Jan Pospíšil and all kinds of other things I find interesting and worth writing about.
Here's my portfolio:
http://janpospisil.daportfolio.com/
and my DeviantArt:
http://merlkir.deviantart.com/
A comment on the potential historical influences of one of my older paintings for "The One Ring" made me think about how I came up with the objects depicted in it.
Here's an expanded version of my reply:
The helmet is a composite - the lower/face part is somewhat ancient Greek, but could also be late Roman. The bowl is lamellar, which is more of an eastern construction. The intent was something like a mythical eastern Goth style. (there wasn't a set fictional culture for these artifacts in the art brief so I went with a general "dark ages heroic" style made up of various bits and pieces)
In hindsight, I only wish I did the tail crest better, the way it's attached to the top ridge is quite unclear and lazy.
Here's a compilation of some of the inspiration pieces mentioned:
The sword is quite Celtic, yes - the hilt looks mostly LaTene, but the pommel is inspired by bronze age Persian (Luristan) lobed daggers.
La Tene hilts are mostly reconstructed as horn, bone and wood, the bronze/gold and turqoise stone decorations are inspired by early Sarmatian/Yuezhi stuff. (Afghanistan, cca 1st century CE)
Also I think La Tene scabbards had an attached scabbard slide, whereas I used a sepearate piece slide, which is more fitting for migration period spathas. (and was adopted from the East, all the way from China)
If I were to change anything now, I'd make the wrapping around the scabbard slide better, some kind of twine or string rather than cloth. (or whatever that was supposed to be) Also maybe the slide itself is too clearly antropomorphic.
Here's a compilation of the sword bits I used as inspiration:
I really like this approach to design, it's enjoyable if a sword or another object isn't immediately identifiable as from a specific place and era. It's important that it still fits the general level of technology and mood of the project though!
Just reading about swords a lot helps, seeing what was used throughout the ages. The various designs become building blocks in your mental library that you can eventually pick and piece together quite quickly as they make sense functionally and aesthetically.
It's been a while! Months even. I'm still working on Six Ages, so I don't have anything not under the death spell of an NDA I could show.
That said, two supplements for The One Ring RPG have been released fairly recently (Horse Lords of Rohan and Erebor) and I did a few pieces for them:
(goblin man and half-orc)
(Angrenithil - "Moon Iron", a sword made by both dwarven and elven smiths)
I've had a bit of a break from work on OaT. (a couple of months. I've done concept art and illustration, both set in Glorantha in the meantime. Lots of cool stuff I won't be able to show for quite some time, sadly.)
I still thought about it a lot, but haven't done any writing or drawing. The reason is simple - I realized I didn't know enough to be making it properly.
Yesterday I finished "Language of the Night", a book of essays by Ursula Le Guin.
(a great book by the way, I really recommend it. It's not a light read and not all the essays are equally interesting, but it's worth buying a used copy even.)
It named an issue in my current script for Oak and Thunder and in other works of art where I noticed it, but couldn't quite name it before - inconsistency of tone.
In my case, I didn't realize I was writing two or three different projects into one, not quite knowing what exactly it was I wanted to achieve.
And then it dawned on me - I want to play it straight. All that I appreciate about Tolkien's writing, about old fairytales and heroic epics - the style, the language, the "setting", I want to do that.
Not a clever twist, not a play on the themes! Everything these days is (seems to me) a mashup of genres, a spin on something, a cliche or a trope reversal. It's cynical, ironic or goofily nonsensical.
I've been playing Dragon Age Inquisition and it's a great example of tonal dissonance (in more ways than one) - the overarching narrative is written straight - epic and classically heroic, while many of the dialogs and banter are contrastingly mundane and out-of-place "current". I'm not at all asking for ye olde speak, especially in American-voiced games it always sounds silly. Just more of a vocabulary and topical consistency.
The game uses well-tested and familiar ways to tell its story, set up its characters etc., but the world and characters themselves (the gameplay as well at times) don't always fit, don't mesh, the gears grind.
I cringed when SPOILER FOR DA:I
in a moment of desperation and disorder, everyone started to sing. They sang to get their spirits up, to unite, to honor the player as their savior. And I'm angry at myself I cringed, because that was a moment which the game attempted to play straight, without Sera laughing, making silly faces and throwing innuendos around, without penis jokes, or talk about "riding the Bull". And I recognize it was partly my fault I couldn't take it seriously./SPOILER
The Witcher series, for instance, tried to play with tone on purpose, the contrast is there to say something, not as a jarring byproduct.
It's mainly a writing challenge, I'll definitely need help with this. Reading through the long script I wrote, it's too much like people talking on Facebook, or at best roleplaying on a forum. That's the English I know, the one I speak and write online. But it's not the right tone. I can't have Wala and Wape making pop culture references to each other, or drawing cat memes with their enemies' blood.
(those are the current up to date versions of the main characters' names, btw. I'm learning a lot about proto-languages)
I don't mean to write entirely straight, humorless and dry, a boring saga of head-chopping murder heroes! There need to be light and funny parts just as there need to be serious and dark parts, a balance. But I need to strive for a unity of language and themes. Tolkien is a big inspiration in this aspect, a wrong word in the wrong place is just wrong, there's no way around it.
Finding the right words! How easy! :)
I also realized I didn't quite have the characters yet. I know what they do throughout the story, sure. I mostly know what they look and dress like, but I don't fully know what they "are", I can't see their faces and their emotions.
A solution, for now, is to focus on research for the big story and script and draw up short stories. Quick ones, with minimum of writing, just to get a feel for the tone, where I want to go with characters and the art style. (I already have two stories reworked, an action one and a...different one.)
Research is also back on track, I'm reading a lot about religion and linguistincs. Definitely discovering more of the themes and philosophy than every day details about the life in that place and time.
I hope everyone had good holidays! All the best in the new year, friends!
I've painted and drawn a few pieces for the book. And they were great scenes and objects - battles, armies, swords and helmets, but I can't help but think the resulting illustrations could've been better.
I don't mean to blame the circumstances in which they were made (the last few months my mum was still with us), but it's true my mind was not focused on the work as it should've been.
"Armies of Arnor and Lindon are coming down from the Misty Mountains."
(This one was a struggle. I drew this at my parents' house, so I had to do it on paper instead of the usual "digital pencil". And by accident, I used a piece of watercolour paper, which is very bumpy and hard to draw on. At least for me.)
The only original piece of the bunch, I already gave away as a thank you to a fan who bought several other paintings of mine.
"Witch King flees from lord Glorfindel after the battle of Fornost"
This one's alright. Glorfindel came out fine, but I wish I spent more time fiddling with Witch King's design. The colour scheme is odd, but works, more or less. I originally wanted to show more of the battle in the background, but ended up focusing on the front figures.
"Glorfindel in Rivendell"
Glorfindel is one of those characters almost impossible to depict as you imagine them. (primarily because I don't have a concrete singular image of them in my mind. So I pretended to be Victor Ambrus and also started experimenting with the tools in ArtRage in the middle of the drawing. Came out sort of ok.
"And so, the game of golf was invented..."
Golfimbul's death at the hands of Bullroarer Took was a super fun scene to do. Unfortunately, I drew it at my absolute physical and psychological low at the time. Still, I think both comedy and action of the scene came through.
"Helmet and sword from the times of old"
Yeah, this was the safest one. I just switched my brain off and painted what I knew. Now I wish I did the helmet even more like Tolkien's karma, but it might've been too weird. The sword is an odd mix of elements, really! Quasi-Migration/early medieval period fittings and handle, Tibetan/Chinese influence on the hilt decorations and a pommel that's half yataghan and half ancient bronze Persian dagger.
That's all! Jon and I were joined by Jeremy McHugh for this one. And trust me, he's done a great job. So go now, go buy the PDF and/or preorder the book!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The One Ring, Middle-earth, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the characters, items, events and places therein are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Middle-earth Enterprises and are used under license by Sophisticated Games Ltd and their licensees."
If you don't have a clue what "modding" is and still want to read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mod_(video_gaming) Mount&Blade and M&B:Warband are sandbox computer RPGs set in a pseudo-medieval world. http://www.taleworlds.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: this post is inspired by the discussion about the differences between two LOTR mods. The Veiled Stars is a relatively new project in progress headed by Jarvisimo: http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-veiled-stars The Last Days of the Third Age is a mod originally for the older M&B, now also ported for Warband. I've been a member on the TLD team for quite a few years now, contributing everything from concept art and lore knowledge to writing and sound design. http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-last-days Understandably, there's a certain level of animosity between fans of these mods, as LOTR total conversions are hard to find and discussions online usually get quite heated. This is not meant to pour oil into the flames, rather I'm using the situation as a setup for an article I've been meaning to write for a while. PS: Guys, remember your forums are public and anyone can stumble upon your bitter put-down posts about TLD. I understand where you're coming from, but it's still a bit rude. When we talk shit about you, we at least have the sense to do it in our hidden dev forum. ;P -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The background of The Last Days
TLD is actually three different mods. There are layers in both assets (visual/sound/writing..) and scripted gameplay features. This could be quite the history lesson, so I'll summarize in short:
1.) The good old TLD from when our leader Ancientwanker was still around. (2007-2009) For M&B 0.808, the mod became a real total conversion and not just the basic game with a few models swapped for orcs and Gondorian soldiers. (which is what it all began as, in the ancient beta days)
AW (Ancientwanker) had big plans for a whole system of quests, for the War of the Ring and other features we sadly never learnt about. (due to him disappearing without a trace, it's quite likely he passed away) This layer survives in some of the assets (bits of orc equipment, lots of Harad's design, Rhun's entire style laced with Conan the Barbarian etc.) and in some features (the "Sorcerer of Mirkwood" quest is a remnant of a stealth system coded by Yoshiboy, which we sadly dropped in rest of the mod), but more importantly - in the idea of a design plan. Only when AW was gone, I realized we had little idea where to go from there. Or rather, everyone had their own ideas and no clue what AW's TLD was supposed to be as a whole.
Here's an interesting video for comparison, someone playing the 0.808 version in 2011. :)
2.) TLD up to version 3.0 released for M&B 1.011. (2009-2011) This was the silver age. We mourned the loss of our glorious leader, wondered what his vision was and tried to reach it by running blindly into several directions. We had absolutely wonderful people on the team and what the mod is today stands on what they've done then. The war system, the quest writing, the companions, all the visuals and settlement scenes, all the custom sound work, animations and even entire pieces of development software created to make TLD.
Lots of talented people also meant lots of arguing and design disputes. I like to believe it was necessary to distill TLD into greatness, but it wasn't always pleasant. Still, we agreed on the large concept, TLD was supposed to be a total conversion with emphasis on player immersion and focus on the War of the Ring, with occasional emergent lore-friendly roleplaying and exploration.
Mostly due to burnout, frustration caused by engine limitation and personal conflicts, the team fell apart after patching up the initial release. This is the TLD we've had and played for a few years.
3.) TLD up till now. Only a few people remain of the original team, active here and there when they feel like it. We've gotten a new programmer who's done great work in balancing the mod and adding a few new features (CppCoder). It's been mostly me posing as the voice of TLD for some time now, and I've been the annoying bugger who can't quite let go of this thing. Pushing and pulling everyone I could muster into working on the mod at least a bit. A few graphics assets have been redone, big plans were had in regards to finishing incomplete quests etc.
Then Swyter (of Star Wars: Conquest fame) decided to port the mod to Warband. I happily stayed out of his way and helped wherever my limited skills allowed it.
Keeping your core tight
I think the two major reasons why TLD is popular with players are:
1.) It's a LOTR mod. Hands down, this is the reason why people download it. There's a great hunger for LOTR inspired games, probably because there are so few actually good ones. Mods help fill this niche.
2.) It's designed like a game, (one that plays different enough to M&B itself) with a clear focus on a specific type of gameplay and player experience.
TLD's focus on the War originated in the very first of the three ages (Three ages of The Last Days of the Third Age...get it? ;-P). The native game at the time didn't have a real war system, you couldn't win. All you could do was fight the never ending line of respawning enemy parties. To have sides in the war with the possibility of losing/winning the war by defeating enemies who can actually die was a new concept, so we built on it a lot in the future.
M&B later expanded on the sandbox element of the game, with owning villages and having obligations as a vassal of a lord etc.
During the silver age, we discussed this and decided to keep everything like marriage and fief management out. As we say in the Manual, the mod is set during the War of the Ring and to settle down with a wife, to manage building of a church and fences and whatnot, it just doesn't make sense.
Content and features making sense in the setting is key, when introducing new stuff we always asked if it's based on anything in Tolkien's books. If not, does it seem like something that would plausibly happen in Middle Earth? The resource/rank/influence points system replacing native dinar currency is a result of this process. Not many characters in the books actually ever talk about money and if they do, it's presented as a negative thing. When military tactics are discussed, nobody asks about costs and supplies. They know the stakes, it's all or nothing.
So you're not being paid money, you don't "buy" items. Instead you're supplied by your faction, you requisition items from the armoury based on how much your faction appreciates you. Many heated discussions were had, some of our coders still disagree with the decision, but the system seems to get about an equal amount of positive and negative opinions from players, so I take it as a matter of taste and not a gamebreaking annoyance.
Last Level Press - a review and a great analysis of TLD
Setting is king, especially if you're doing LOTR. There are so many Tolkien nerds who will understand easter eggs, tiny references and nods. Who will spot the tiniest of inaccuracies. So we agreed to change as much writing to be setting appropriate as possible, we've added little touches like an ingame elven calendar, or messages telling you which microregion of Middle Earth you're entering. Which brings me to another aspect we tried to keep tight - the map. Comments about our map being too small amuse me. We still get questions if Eriador and other western areas will become available later. Nope, they won't. We actually downsized the map during development, because it felt too empty and we couldn't populate it with more moving entities for performance reasons. Besides "being able to go there", there wasn't any benefit in mapping the entirety of Middle Earth.
If The Veiled Stars map ends up a lot bigger (which previews indicate), I have to wonder - what are they going to fill it with? Unlike TLD, TVS keeps the town+villages model of Warband, so that's content we couldn't use. Will it be fun content? Enjoy making a bajillion custom scenes! Ask Triglav how fun it was making all our scenes by himself and how long it took. And thinking of ways to fill the map with fun and interesting content is important for TVS, as it's (so far) presented as a sandboxy roleplaying experience, not a wargame with a bit of exploration/roleplaying.
In conclusion - nobody's saying you need to read books on game design and write down pages and pages of design docs. Just sit down and write a page or two. Start with one or two sentences, summarizing what the mod's about and why anyone who's played hundreds of other mods should play it. Don't list features, write down what kind of an experience you want it to be.
When you have the essence, set limits of what's currently possible and add a pile of features you'd like to have. Then prune the pile and throw out the most difficult or labour intensive features. (or keep them for later) The pile will only grow taller in development, so being honest to yourself about what you're capable of is definitely an advantage.
When mods pretend to be games
Total conversions are extremely difficult to make and there are good reasons why most of them inevitably fail to deliver a playable version. There's a very quick turnover of people contributing, one has to be prepared to lose members all the time, due to a host of reasons. They come in wishing to help and leave a week to a few months later.
With a mod like TLD or TVS, you're building a library of assets (graphics, sounds, music, animations) and an underlying set of systems that make the game work. (programming) TLD started with AW doing the coding and contributors working on assets at the same time - this is a pretty great way to do things. You're not wasting time and you have something that works as a game and already looks like one too.
This is not the case with most mods though, many beginners start by learning 3D and making assets. They model a few items, put them in game and call it a mod. This kind of item swap is still useful, because pretty screenshots might lead supporters and contributors to you, even if the gameplay is just the same as the native game.
Pretty visuals are often the first goal of a mod. It's not wrong, we definitely wanted TLD to be as pretty as it possibly could. It's equally important to create graphics assets with optimization in mind. Especially if you're not making a game where you can adjust how the engine handles assets, keeping stuff tidy, clean and lean is essential. Often it's a performance-driven choice between a handful of beautiful items and a variety of lower resolution ones. It's about the time it takes to create them and also the final combined effect they have in game. TLD (while being made by many contributors) tried to keep a unified style to the graphics. The models are low poly, the textures are small and we don't use normal maps. I still maintain that they look good, even nicer now, in Warband's superior rendering engine.
I suppose there are different kinds of modders and different kinds of players. We aimed for player immersion and a powerful roleplaying experience. On the other hand, mods for Skyrim adding incredibly pretty items are very popular. Some players simply want to admire their own character, take pretty screenshots and dick around in the sandbox.
The Veiled Stars: Gorgeous Isengard
Eventually, you want to release something people could play. All too often, mods with ambitious plans try to embrace the development model of actual games. They publish previews, go into alpha and beta releases and keep patching after the actual release. TLD did this as well, but we've been always quite good at keeping development details to ourselves until it was time to release.
With TLD being open source since last year, I expected TVS to use our graphics assets at first while building their own code systems and implementing various features. And replacing them with their nicer Warband-specific assets in the process. This is after all how game development usually goes - you build a prototype first and start expanding and polishing it later.
If Jarvisimo isn't too mad at me at this point, I'd offer this as a suggestion. Spend more time planning, designing systems and coding, leave assets for later or have someone else make them. Since you're already releasing alpha versions, you'd benefit from having something fun to play, something different and new and interesting. Warband in a different map with a bunch of pretty models won't hold interest for long.
That said, player responses and feedback are a difficult aspect of modding. I'm infamous for being a horrible prick to everyone on our forums. Answering the same ignorant questions over and over and dealing with lazy anonymous internet entities can be very tiresome, so beware! If you can, get a PR person to do it for you. Your mental health will thank you years from now.
Almost the end
We're fully aware that Swyter's port of TLD put Jarvi and TVS into a difficult position, I've actually read your disappointed post on your forums. Still, us talking about it is not just empty words. There truly is no reason why there should be space for only one LOTR mod for Warband, or why we should measure their worth by pretty graphics or size of the map. If you have a vision, if you design with that vision in mind and if you keep hammering at it, it'll end up as something you and others will want to play. That (not praise or ratings), to me, is the ultimate goal of modding.
I've been meaning to write about the history of TLD for a while, a bit of a post mortem. What it was like with AW, after he left, to spill a bit of the behind the scenes gossip and so on. If there's any interest in that, I'll do it. Or I could record another podcast. We'll see if any fans read this far. ;)
"In Hobbit Tales players are Hobbits telling tales in front of a mug of beer at their favourite inn in the Shire. Silent woods and remote mountains, Elves, Goblins and Giants populate their stories.During the game, players take turns as the Narrator and improvise a story using a hand of illustrated cards. The other players try to twist the tale, playing hazards and fearsome monsters. Drinks are served, smoke-rings are blown, and the best narrator is cheered by everyone present."
"The One Ring, Middle-earth, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the characters, items, events and places therein are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Middle-earth Enterprises and are used under license by Sophisticated Games Ltd and their licensees."
If you're a Tolkien fan, you've probably watched the Production Vlog 1 that Peter Jackson posted today on his Facebook page.
Here's a little analysis of the video shot by shot, picking out things that interest me.
I've focused on costume, armour and weapon design.
Comment: This is a snapshot from the hatmaker's room, behind Gandalf's hat (and a funny "peasant" hat) you can see a bunch of photos pinned possibly for reference. The men in them appear to be Asian. Any experts on Asian clothing here? They look Siberian to me, but I know very little about this. Who could they be reference for? I doubt we'll get to see any Easterlings. Will the dwarven hats be this interestingly inspired?!
Comment: Weapons. Oh boy.
1. Axes. Look very axe like. And large. But hey, it's dwarves.
2. I was afraid this might happen. *sigh* Somehow dwarves must always use mauls.
3. Bow looks nice. I wonder if it's the "bow of horn" Thorin uses in the book.
4. What this thing is I don't even...I call it the "cleaver" for now. Looking at the blocky angular design, it's probably dwarven. Like an axe sword, maybe a "fun" play on the curved elven two handed swords from LOTR. The handle is long, so it's almost like a polearm. Eh, not a big fan of it yet.
Could I have some nice shorter swords for my dwarves, please?! :(
Comment: Beards. Hair. Curly! Braided! I like the variety.
Comment: This is interesting! Is it a goblin? A troll? It seems more beastlike than the LOTR orcs. And it has an animatronic face! O_O Weird stuff. Any ideas?
Comment: A dwarven shirt I presume. Nice design.
Comment: What I like about the dwarves (what we've seen so far) is that they're colourful (as described in the book) and I'm getting the vague jewish vibe Tolkien hinted at. (also check out Donato Giancola's painting of the dwarves, they're quite similar) Notice the earring!
The only concern is the hair! What?! I like braids on my dwarves, but why so...knotted? Remember the hairdo Elrond had in his hair tests, that they had to change, because it looked incredibly girly? This is a lot like that! I hope it's just put up to allow for quick costume changes. :/
Comment: Here we can see Fili walking around with two swords during the "scene blocking". Yup, dualwielding weeaboos will be pleased I guess. -_-
I've been showing stuff I'm quite proud of mostly. It might be fair to show the rest - the doodles, the scraps, the crappy drawings in my school notebooks.
And thumbnails. :) I actually do them once in a while, especially when I'm trying to come up with a good pose for a character, or an interesting composition in an awkward format. Like these DrD illustrations - all so lean and tall, my characters start to fall into similar positions.
I'm sketching for the next one and these are the thumbs I came up with yesterday. (if you can't tell, it's a girl...ehm..witcher (yes, like that game) slaughtering some zombies or other undead.)
The other one is a compilation of notebook drawings I did at school, concepts for TLD.
From left to right:
1) wicker frame covered in rawhide, raven wing on top - raven raider helmet for the Dunnish.
2) ornate helmet for the Gold-Blood Dragons - a Harad troop.
3) another raven raider helmet, this time leather with a bronze animal plate.
That's all you can take for now, I'm sure. ;) Byeee. \o
