FINISHED

LINK is now to drift's update of my graphics

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/Alexander.zip

All FLCs, Al_all (diploscren), leaderhead win/loser pcx, civlopedia

all are included in the zip and named like the Firaxis Alex Files. So you can either copy over (back up your original) or place them in the corresponding scenario folder. The example is at the

The latest update post #16 with all eras.

you will have to alter the industrial picture. Otherwise Alexander would be wearing a Prussian Cross! That can't be right..

Whats that on his head? :lol:

It looks like he is wearing a mop on his head.

I guess you could darken his hair a bit, Ekmek... :)

I may try to fix the hair, I must meditate on how to make it more hair like. Now I know why firaxis stayed away from blonds. I think I'll try to thin the strands. I think the face is an improvement though, not so wimpy...

As for the prussian cross...who knows what he'd wear. I'll try and make it like an orthodox cross...

I might give up on trying to create long hair.

Attached is the face of my new Alex onto a fixed head of the Firaxis alex, bringing back the old hairdo, this might be more acceptable (my wife thinks so)


EDIT: jpg removed update below

Hmmm... Something about him just reminds me of George W....

Don't give up the hair. The Alexander tha you made are more real... The Firaxis appears like a french merchant...
The face start nice. Lipps could be more mediterranean...

The hair need to be blond and hircuse. And long...

Maybe if you try to do something less volumous, like Brenus hair?

Keep the good work! Thank you.

BTW: We need another Egyptinan leaderhead...

Ok my next attempt at blond hair, this time shorter and closer to the hairstyle I've seen on a small statue

Bring on the critics...

Originally posted by Ekmek
Bring on the critics...

It looks good! I wasn't a big fan of the earlier 'Alexander with a lion's mane', but this is really good. Just work a bit more on the parts where hair and skin meet on the forehead, they don't feel quite natural yet.

BTW, will he be mood-specific in the future?

Alexander with blonde hair? Correct me if I'm wrong, but as south european, he should have dark hair. Germans, Vikings, and other north europeans have blonde (or red) hair, but south europeans got dark hair... even if that changed in the last few hundret years...

Originally posted by Kenta'arka
Alexander with blonde hair? Correct me if I'm wrong, but as south european, he should have dark hair. Germans, Vikings, and other north europeans have blonde (or red) hair, but south europeans got dark hair... even if that changed in the last few hundret years...

Alexander is commonly thought to have been blonde. Although he has been pictured also with dark hair. Remember that he had Macedonian heritage and his origins were in the north, not in ancient Greece.

Remember that he had Macedonian heritage and his origins were in the north, not in ancient Greece.
Macedonnia is still in greece. With less than 700KM from Athen, it's not really the great north.

1- Excelent job. The hair become very nice. You could try a little more "lion" style, just a little...

2- About Alexander blondness: Greeks were redheads - 50% of population - and there was more brunetes than blonds, but there was blond people...

3- Greeks were a very white people, was about the Roman - Brunetes with green or blue eyes - domination, and late the Turkish - originaly chinese cousins - that they became brunetes.

4- Even Romans were very european, was the invasions that made people more brunete.

5- Alexander was blond, Hefestion too. Was Ptolome the brunete... Seleuco was red...

Thank you folks...

Ok here's for each era.

The Flc wont be animated (unless I think of a way by cutnpasting) but I'll make the Diploscreen one show moods, so you'll know his attitude.

UPDATE: drift is making the flcs animated

Here's each era and comparing it to the old Firaxis one

FINISHED
has Flcs, pcx, F4 screen etc... enjoy

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/Ekmek-Alexander.zip


As for his blondness its mentioned in a variety of sources. Alex was half macedonian and half Epirote. And being "half-barbarian" caused some problems before he took to the throne. Being blond was probably part of it.

Northern greece is fairly light haired still especially because of the slavs. the pictures of alex with dark hair are usually seen in mosics in Italy when a revival of alex popularity during the roman empire a lot of people portayed him as roman looking which was darker than the greeks then.

I was interested in how leaderheads work and got a little carried away. I hope you won't mind Ekmek, but I kind of made my own version out of your Alex. I gave him new moods, touched up his face in some places and in general, studied about how leaderheads function.

When I had the moods finished for all eras, I got interested about him acting mood-specific in diploscreen. So I made flics for each era. They are not animated, but his moods do change.

I still have the foreign affairs bubble and others to finish, but I would like to ask at this point whether you object me releasing my work when I'm finished? (naturally with proper credit to you.) I'm content using this just by myself and working with this has been very educating, but it's always fun to share. :)

Here's a preview of him with all moods and eras.

Drift

I like it! And better than the moods I had showing.

Yeah please post your patch!

How did you get the moods to change in the flc, did you just copy multiple frames until it matches the point of change (I think its some 40 frames in flc broken into thirds but the program picks only select ones). Since you got it working it saves me some headache.

The bubbles should be easy, mainly if you cut and paste the mouth over my bubble.

Thanks for the support!

Originally posted by Ekmek
I like it! And better than the moods I had showing.

:blush: Thank you.

How did you get the moods to change in the flc, did you just copy multiple frames until it matches the point of change (I think its some 40 frames in flc broken into thirds but the program picks only select ones). Since you got it working it saves me some headache.

I'm not 100% certain I got it completely right. Anyway, each flic is 121 frames. That's 40 frames per mood + 1. I figured the extra frame is for the neutral mood to serve as some sort of centerpoint for the animation. I'm not sure really. However, what I did was that in the forward animation, I made frames 1-40 happy, 41-81 neutral and 82-121 angry. In the backwards animation 1-40 angry, 41-81 neutral and 82-121 happy. Each frame of each mood is the same, transitions are not animated.

It has some glitches, For example, Alex may flick into angry for a second and become neutral again, but in general, it seems to work rather well. Choosing Greece as your civ is fun as Alex stares at you for a while with the neutral face and then switches in an instant for a smile.

The bubbles should be easy, mainly if you cut and paste the mouth over my bubble.

Yep, I already finished them and in fact, I finished all the other graphics as well. I'll upload them later today. I'll check them for possible errors and decide if they are ready to be posted.

Great!

If you feel real ambitious maybe you can make the eyes blink in the Flics. If I remember right I used firaxis alex's old eyes, colored them with a dark blue and reduced it to 75% from the flc. I think.

Actually I'd rather see your updates first. I tested my flics in a quick game its definetely better eye-candy. So I figure your anim ones will be cool.

now firaxis just needs to add this to a patch.... ;)

Ekmek, Blinking exceeds my skills, I'm afraid. :)


But, here he is.

Ekmek's Alexander the Great - Drift's version (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/Alexander.zip)

He is era-specific like the original and his moods change in the diplomatic screen, but he isn't animated.

Filenames are the same ones original Alex uses, so a simple scenario is all you need to use him. Readme.txt has further info on that, if you don't know how to do it. edit: I also realised that the readme.txt claims all you need to backup when replacing original Alexander are .flc files in "Flics" folder. This is not true, check what's in the zip and backup corresponding original files.

Preview can be found on page #1.

Awesome! I put a notice in the announcement thread andfeel free to add it to your signature if you wish. Again thanks for the work. Now I can play Alex without cringing.

Originally posted by Ekmek
Awesome! I put a notice in the announcement thread andfeel free to add it to your signature if you wish. Again thanks for the work. Now I can play Alex without cringing.

:) It was fun (and helpful since I learned a bunch about making leaderheads)

I'll let you know if I embark on fixing Caesar...

Believe it or not my Alex was actually just a composite of a resized alex head (increased width) Adding a reduced mouth and eyes. Eyebrows from Bismarck, and actually the new blond hair I made from drawing an outline of major curls on his head and then I took Xerxes hair increased brightness and contrast and took segments of curls from that (sometimes lighter, sometimes darker sometimes resized) then plopped it back on some bodies and backgrounds and abracadabra thats how I did it.

I'm only telling you in case you're thinking of making some heads of your own. Its fun to share :)

Originally posted by Ekmek
Believe it or not my Alex was actually just a composite of a resized alex head (increased width) Adding a reduced mouth and eyes. Eyebrows from Bismarck, and actually the new blond hair I made from drawing an outline of major curls on his head and then I took Xerxes hair increased brightness and contrast and took segments of curls from that (sometimes lighter, sometimes darker sometimes resized) then plopped it back on some bodies and backgrounds and abracadabra thats how I did it.

Sounds a bit like Dr. Frankenstein working. Eyes from here, hair from there... :lol: The bit about Xerxes was ingenious, I was wondering where you got the hair from.

I gotta keep all this in mind if I ever begin constructing leaderheads - existing ones are a goldmine. I did my share of improvements and wonders last spring/summer and I don't feel like going back there. Leaderheads might be a good alternative if I get the urge to create again. :)

Thumbs up for Alex in the race for the front page announcement. :goodjob:

When finishing my Kekkonen leaderhead, I came up with an easy way of softening the image so that it looks more smoother. Civ3's resolution is lower than what most people use for their desktops, so the image seems more grainy in-game than you'd expect. Paint Shop Pro's smoothening tools are too strong so I had to come up with an alternative approach. (basically: save palette, increase colors to 16 million, add 4 pixel borders, resize to 209x249, bring canvas size back to 200x240, load old palette)

I gave Kekkonen this treatment and liked the result. I'm pretty swamped right now with work, but I'll try to do the same for Alex at some point. It's not much work ~15 minutes for smoothing the pictures and making new flics.

Here's a preview of what I'm talking about:

i'll try it out with alex but the computer i'll be on until 18 dec isnt the best for checking resolution differences. it has a low laptop resolution.

what do you mean by 4 pixel borders?

Originally posted by Ekmek
what do you mean by 4 pixel borders?

PSP (and probably all image editing softwares) has an "add borders" tool. 4 pixel borders means simply expanding the canvas 4 pixels to each direction, making the 240x200 image a 248x208.

I'll try it out with Alex and see if the in-game results are as good as they were with Kekkonen. The change isn't very notable, but it's more pronounced in-game.

If Alex the Great was really blonde :hmm: then why would Firaxis make him black-haired? :confused:

Why did Firaxis make him look like a dork too? or ceasear a brunette although he was mostly gray and bald. Firaxis isnt an authority of historical correctness, I think they used a lo of artistic leeway.

Thank you so much for a more historically correct Alexander.

The artist for civ III must have known nothing about Alexander.

The most well known representation of Alexander is from a Roman mosaic dipicting the battle of Issus. In this mosaic Alexander has dark hair and I wager the artist used that image as a guide.

Thanks again this is an important leaderhead.

Alexander Leadehead is cool, but don't appears like Alexander...
The "artistic" work of yours is very good, i will "pray" for someone made this leaderhead animated...

Originally posted by Costa e Silva
Alexander Leadehead is cool, but don't appears like Alexander...
The "artistic" work of yours is very good, i will "pray" for someone made this leaderhead animated...

If Ekmek wants, I'll do simple anims for him.

Drift!
Simple aims would be great. I'm feeling really tempted to try to to the resizing to each animated head frame. but the hair is the one part that makes me keep putting it off. I see with your assyrian that you are getting better experienced at me than this. Any chance you found a way to do a fairly decent head movement yet?

Originally posted by Ekmek
Drift!
Simple aims would be great. I'm feeling really tempted to try to to the resizing to each animated head frame. but the hair is the one part that makes me keep putting it off. I see with your assyrian that you are getting better experienced at me than this. Any chance you found a way to do a fairly decent head movement yet?

Decent looking head movement is impossible/extremely difficult with the animation method I use. The differences are too big for morphing, I believe. I will try it eventually, but I doubt it'll work.

I didn't quite catch the part about resizing each animated head frame... Maybe I should drink some more coffee or something to wake up properly. :)

I'll put Alex next on my to-do list, but it may still take a little while. I've been spending too much time lately sitting in front of my computer. :)

Drift.

Any help would be great help. The resizing head thing, I was talking about, involved taking each flc frame and do the same resizing technique that I(we) do for leaderheads and then change the facial features,. basically making the moving heads the same size as the new alex head. of course the hair would bethe hard part.

drift

I tried your smoot method. it does make things better but I also increased colors and did the smooth option and got a better look that I'll release later. But hair is the hard thing to smooth.

Sincerely , this leaderhead is original , but the Firaxis´s is more really.

Hair can be tricky to smooth without making it look fuzzy. Smudge with 2 pixel brush and ~20% transparency has been useful for hairlines, but blonde hair doesn't work as well with it. Dodge and Burn require some patience, but it seems they are good for adding highlights and shadows to hair.

Have you thought of doing the anims? I still urge you to try them.

Drift I'm "researching" the anims. I'm looking at the different frames in a Flic. What I'm going to do is make a face base and have a series of smiles, eyes (blinking) and eyebrows that change for moods. Head movement is too much work, but face-on anim might not be as hard...

Were these the ones that I sugested?

Just curius


Oops. sorry. mybad

to early to be mine.Didnt relie the date