Art - Resources and Work

I will update this first post when I have completed work. Right now I'm going to post some pics of the original game and anything else I can find on the subject. Please let me know if you think we should use any of it, or aspects of something. Like the UI from the og game, I noticed they use pictures of characters in a round icon. Are we thinking of using something like that for faction symbols? Whatever comes to mind looking at these pics let me know what you are looking for T and anyone else that happens to check in. Also if anyone has some good references please post.

If anyone know the font used in the first pic let me know. I'm going to see if I can figure it out now.

Also found a later release of the game for PC. Going to download the trial and see if I can extract some work from it just to get a feel for the UI and stuff. Don't know if I could get it to work on my 64-bit machine.
http://www.bumarcade.com/defender-of.../download.html

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Event Image? (My kind of event )

Faction Symbols.
faction symbols will be in the style of portraits, as factions are lords and barons.
first, a list of the factions currenlty planned:

King Richard (emergent faction) - Norman (but on the side of the saxons)
Cedric of Rotherwood - Saxon
Wolfric the Wild - saxon
Geoffrey Longsword - Saxon
Prince John - Norman
Reginald Front-de-Boeuf - Norman
Edmund the Grim - Norman
Philip de Malvoisin - Norman
Roger falconbridge - Norman
A Scottish faction - William the Lion
A welsh faction A - Llywelyn the Great
A welsh faction B - Rhys ap Gruffydd
Slave A
Slave B
Slave C

King Richard


Prince John


Cedric of Rotherwood, Wolfric the Wild and Geoffrey Longsword.
I believe u have the same pic in ur post of better quality. Do not worry about Wilfred of Ivanhoe, as he is a general spawned for one of the Saxon lords through gameplay.


For Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, Edmund the Grim, Philip de Malvoisin and Roger falconbridge - I am not sure. Possibly similar to the Saxon Lords...

the Scottish faction at the time was ruled by William the Lion.


Welsh factions -
Llywelyn the Great
Will rule over the north of wales


Rhys ap Gruffydd
Will rule over the southern part of Wales


the slave factions... There will be 3 slave factions, possibly a fourth. One will be treated as a regular slave faction, the rebels (representing peasants and commoners not aligned to saxon or norman lords). The other 2-3 slave factions will be Barons that are loyal only to king richard, but dont act against prince john for fear of treason. these Baron factions i am thinking we can give them some kind of english symbol which is slightly different. But i dont know...

Doing a search for the scottish and welsh names listed you can easily find some coat of arms etc aswell. Which we could use for thier ingame banners i guess.

What you think?

I took a video and chopped it up and took screen shots to gain some pics that could be used for events... I was going to edit the video and cut it up to create movie scenes, but every video i found just wasnt good enough for that, the scenes i wanted had someone talking or something. Ohwell... I did get some decent pictures from it though...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Victory Scene

Victory Scene 2

Princess Rescued

Princess Rescued 2

Princess

Tournament Called

Tournament Winner

Norman Rogues

Jousting Lists

Meeting Robin

Just messing around.... adding some color to a pic. I also started fleshing out an icon but its not ready to be seen.

That looks good. Quite an improvement from the black and white

Indeed, this would make a good portrait or event card.

The pics are not working real good for faction icons. I'm thinking about getting someone to create me some models to use for the faction icons. I think a model of a head would be a lot better than what I'm trying to do with what I have above. I will see if I can get a bit of help.

- Ihave done a few more, without the frame.....

The icon looks bad when trying to use something like below, but I think a modeled head would work really well.

Yeah that's cool. Using any faces would be fine, it does not have to be artwork from the DotC series. I'm thinking it would be cool with just faces in general as the factions icons. Make it feel more 'personal'.

Whatever you come up with will be great, i'm just excited its all falling into place

Well I guess this wont work as it doesn't have an I for Ivanhoe, unless you want to change the name. lol Will get rid of the TW and add Ivanhoe TW in another style below this I guess.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

That does look good tho. nice style. We could leave the Ivanhoe out. I dont really know lol. Ivanhoe is the name of the book ive used as a reference for the character names. The book is told almost entireley in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. It is where the modern view of Robin Hood evolved from. Other than names, and some specific places i have not really used the book. The mod is more about recreating the Defender of the Crown game in a Total War style. Using Ivanhoe as a special playable general along with Aethelstane (who in the book is a direct descendant of the Saxon Kings prior to the Norman invasion). Ivanhoe is also one of the select-able playable characters in the DotC original game along with Geoffrey Longsword, Wolfric the Wild and Cedric of Rotherwood (Cedric is Ivanhoe's father in the novel and he disinherited Ivanhoe cause Ivanhoe joined King Richard on his Crusade).

So yeah, just leave the Ivanhoe out and use what you have there. Will be fine. The book is more or less for inspiration.

Well, it needs to be cleaned up a bit and I think I might add some ruff texture to make it look aged. I will try a few things and see how it looks, who knows I might keep it clean. Defender of the Crown Total War sounds good to me.

What do you think of these?

.
Cedric of Rothwood


Wolfric the Wild

They look great. I really like the style... I'm not to crash hot on Wolfric's choice of hair style, but then, im not a hair stylist so maybe im the one out of the loop?
I would like to point out that Cedric of Rotherwood should be middle aged, like 40 or so. As he is the father of Ivanhoe who will be early 20's or so. Geoffrey Longsword and Wolfric the Wild can be whatever age (id say late 20's early 30's). Rhys ap Gruffyd is 61 according to the history books about the time in question. But that is too old for the game engine and he has been dying off within the first few turns with the play tests i've done, so i've made him 50... The rest of the characters are more or less in their 30's. One last thing regarding Wolfric the Wild, i always envisioned him as a very scruffy burly looking kind of guy, i envision a rough biker looking dude lol...

I think what you have their will look pretty cool in game as faction icons. The picture you have of Cedric of Rotherwood, could we use that for Geoffrey Longsword instead? Cause that pic looks like a chivalrous-sword-wielding kind of guy

Can you get access to enough portraits of the same quality? No need to be historically accurate for the historically accurate characters such as Prince John, King Richard etc, any portrait would work. We could also use the same portraits that you have there for faction icons as the characters icon in the character scroll?

Cheers buddy, looks great!

Thanks T, ya thats what I have been looking for but the Wiki really doesn't say how old the characters are. So anymore info you have about that or suggestions on how you see the characters would be appreciated. I did find that Cedic was Ivanhoe's father in my searches. As long as you like the styles is what I was going for. I will try to do the rest today and then we can decide who is who.

Ok. We have 5 historically accurate characters and 8 fictional.

FICTIONAL
The Fictional characters can be whatever we like, any age. I have given them all preset ages for the mod. Ill try to give you a rough description of each... Just keep in mind these are my own fairy tale visions of how i kind of see them and you are free to change it up...

Saxon...
The Saxons more or less despise the Normans. The fact that they almost accept the Norman King just shows that they are willing to work out their differences to unite the land.
I made the 2 playable factions all the same age.
Wolfric the Wild - 40 yrs old. Doesn't instill much loyalty but is one of the best jousters in the kingdom. I picture him as hairy rough looking kinda guy.
Geoffrey Longsword - 40 yrs old. One of the best swordsman in the land. I picture him as like a knight in shining armor. Kind of how King Richard is portrayed for the Normans.
Cedric of Rotherwood - 40 yrs old. Hates the Normans with a passion. He instills much loyalty among the Saxons. I picture him as a middle-aged/elderly man who is just sick of Norman Rule.

Norman...
I just picture all these guys as working for position and power. whether they have any actual loyalty to Prince John is likely measured in the coin he pays them.
Roger Falconbridge - 30 yrs old. - a pretty boy?
Edmund the Grim - 36 yrs old. - I picture this guy like i do Wolfric the Wild for the Saxons. Rough and scary looking.
Philip de Malvoisin - 35 yrs old. - I picture this guy as a political mastermind...
Reginald Front-de-Boeuf - 22 yrs old. - I picture this guy as a strategist genious. Not the kind of guy you would approach in open battle.

Other...
Rebel Barons (Slaves). - I think for a faction symbol it would be cool to have the exact same kind of portrait, but have many faces in the symbol. to kind of represent the many other sub-factions/families. It might even be fun to spawn major characters for the Rebel factions to add some additional depth to the whole story...

HISTORICAL
The historical characters can also look anyway we choose really. There not very many (or any) portraits that could be used. Below ive just stated a little about each of them, they are all quite interesting in their own right and it would be good if we can bring some of thier character out into the mod. But it doesnt really matter what they look like. I have included each of there ages as of the start of the mod in 1193.

Norman...
King Richard the Lion Heart - Historically, he was 36 years old at the beginning of this mods time line. He spent like a total of like 6 months in England during his reign and was more focused on English/French castles/lands. He has been portrayed as a knight in shining armor but reading up on him you find he has a lot of flaws and he was not anywhere near as perfect as he has been made out to be. But then again, its the legacy you leave behind that you are remembered for or not individual actions you made.
Prince John Lackland - 26 yrs old... According the history books he actually made a lot of progress with the government system in england at the time during his reign. But he also lost a lot of the English/French territories that Richard maintained. and spent crap loads of money on fortifying castles within England. From what i gather he was a good politician, just a dick to his people. He went down in history as one of the worst if not the worst English monarch even though he made more ground in the political system then almost any other English monarch. He was also the only English monarch to be excommunicated by the pope. And the English Barons hated him.
William the Lion - 28 yrs old. I never read up on this guy too much. But apparently he held the Scottish crown for the longest. I think, if my memory serves me, he was a boy King, and held the crown until his death. Scotlands territory during his reign reached into Northumberland and Cumberland.
Rhys ap Gruffydd - 61 yrs old. (i made him 50 in the mod). Was the prince of south wales. He was at peace with King Henry (Richard and Johns Father) and upon Henry's death revolted and gained lands in the welsh marches. His 2 sons, who i have also added in the mod, warred against one another. So id like to have some kind of revolt going on for them. he died in 1197 unexpectedly, so he lived to a ripe old age of 65 which is quite an achievement for the era, i think lol.
Llywelyn the Great - 22 yrs old. Prince of north wales and after Rhys death became defacto ruler over most of wales. From what ive read about him he was quite an interesting guy. He swore fealty to king john, but not until 1200, so past the scope of this mod. He was at war with King Richard.

I am not sure if any of these descriptions are of any use to you. Maybe what i stated will give you some kind of idea of what to work with. As the mod is set in a historical setting it is ultimately, completely fictional. I am allowing castles and fortresses to be built in the space of 7 years which is unrealistic (to a degree, as castles popped up everywhere seemingly overnight). They could raise forts in a matter of weeks but castles took months, and were generally added to over years and years. The cost of castle building at the time was quite high. It is estimated that King John had a yearly salary of about 20,000 and he spent most of it on castle fortification which was for many castles, not just a handful. the castle of dover (i think it was this castle) itself, Apparantly King John spent 7,000 on it in one year, which was kind of ridiculous considering the other investments for other castles rarely reached 1,000. So the mod is unrealistic in that im allowing players to construct many castles and buuildings, but its realistic in that certainly that many castles did pop up. (just not fortresses and huge stone castles or large stone walls around settlements). And its ultimately a game and we have to keep it interesting, and it would be quite boring if we didn't let the player construct anything... im totally off the subject now

So yeah, its completely fictional just set in a historic setting, so the bottom line is we can have the characters look how ever we want...

Here is where I have gotten the "models" I was going to use for the "heads".
http://armstreet.com/news/new-garb-m...of-the-paladin

Pics like the one linked to I plan to use and there are some others that I think will work nicely. Like this young evil little gentlemen.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I'm just going to post the faction icons as I get them done and you can assign them to a faction. the backgroud color can be changed to whatever we decide the faction color will be so don't take that into account when choosing.









I didn't like the grey hair either. lol

Awesome.
In order, we could go with...

1. Roger Falconbridge
2. Philip de malvoisin
3. not sure...
4. Llywelyn the Great or Geoffrey Longsword...

Looks cool. Once you have all of them we can better decide i guess.
And like i said, for the Rebel faction i think a group of people in the same picture would work. Something like, but less viking-ish:


Here is one i think would be pretty good for either Edmund the Grim or Wolfric the Wild:


This one possibly for Reginald Front-de-Boeuf:

Here is a few more T. Do we have enough for the preview as far as art goes?