Quick pre release preview: Spider-rider

[Smoking mirror]

O.K. I've done nearly all the animations for this unit and I'll put them together over the weekend, just thought people would like to see the various animations, You can make suggestions, but I'm fairly happy with it how it is.

Heres the first new animation;

 

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The spider will have two attacks, a poison spitting bombardment, followed by its deadly bite, talking of which;

 

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Of course eventualy even your mighty spiders are going to run in to something they can't beat, so there must be a death;

 

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Oops, problem with the gif, here's the death animation;

 

[Kinboat]

Cool You did say lots of goo and there's lots of goo

 

[Raw is War?]

Awesome!!

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I said it before, and I'll say it again... disgusting...

I got some models of Battle Slugs at Runtime DNA, maybe those would be a good cavalry unit to combat the Spiders...

 

[Nder]

love the goo

 

[Junzi Nicuzn]

Sweet.
Always good to see a spider-rider charging your armies

 

[Smoking mirror]

Hmmm.. Half way through the unit, nearly all the animations done, and some of the story boards. I got a bit worn out, working on the same unit, so I decided to start the next one early, A change is as good as a rest, after all.

I've allways been a fan of the undead, so I'v decided to make a skeleton spearman. Depending on how much work is required, I may also do a skeleton horseman.
Heres a preview;

 

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And heres my progress so far, I've only done the death & fortify animations so far, heres the death;

 

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And just before I finish for the night, the attack animation. I've tried to make him sort of part asian, part middle east, part european, part fantasy, so he would look generic enough to be used in any scenario.
Watch him stab!

 

[embryodead]

and please try the skeletal horseman

 

[ripptide]

beautiful units SM ) that should make the fantasy addicts happy for a bit

 

[mrtn]

What is the green armor?

 

[Kinboat]

That looks cool too I have one question though. Do you render it with the green as your transparent color? Why did you go with green instead of the pink, any particular reason? And won't the green shirt conflict with the green background and get some weird transparency issues? Or maybe that's what you want for a ghostly glow... Ok I know that's more than one question

 

[soccerrules]

those units look really cool! especially the skeleton warrior.

 

[Ossric]

some ideas:

the death anim of the spider should ave juice coming out the "back body" of the spider (to make it more desgusting). I actually haven't seen a spider spitting before, they just seem to use their fangs..

 

[Smoking mirror]

I am thinking of doing the skeleton horseman, its basicaly a choice between the skeleton horseman, A wight (undead hero, heavy armour) or a necromancer/litch.
The litch would be easiest because his attack would be like a death ray or something, so i may make him and one of the others.

With the skeletal spearman the green colour is just suposed to be cloth, perhaps silk. I wanted something to make him a little more substansial, while still letting all his bones show. I started working on him as a wraith or banshee, but I couldn't get the look right, and decided that a skeletal spearman was more usefull. Don't worry, I just use the green background colour for previews Ive actualy rendered him on a magenta background and then done a colour replace operation to turn the magenta green.

On the magenta background the transparent parts just become part of the alpha blending pallete so it looks like hes made partly out of shadow.

And for those who were perhaps thinking that he doesn't have enough civ colours, hes got a big civ star on his shield;

 

[Smoking mirror]

With the spider, I wanted it to have a ranged attack, as a lot of people are using defensive bombardments in their scenarios to emphasise the use of conbined arms (a spearman unit with an archer unit on top providing covering fire). As most people would tend to group thier spider riders together for cavalry rushes the ranged attack would be a usefull bonus. I wanted to make him throw a web, but I couldn't think how to animate it without making him turn all the way around. Perhaps I'll do thet with the smaller riderless spider.