Troll Cat Form Suggestions

[VelkynKarma]

I must be one of the few that never really minded the original troll cat form designs XD Admittedly, a lot of your minor tweaks and edits would help a lot to strengthen it, but if they don't take care of them until after Cata I don't think I'd mind terribly much.

Still really excited about rolling a Troll Druid. I've tried to play both tauren and ne druids for years now, and the highest I get is level 20-ish, every time. I always try so hard to get to cat form that I burn out by the time I get it and lose interest. Hopefully a new race and a new environment to play in will give me the encouragement i need to level one

~VelkynKarma

[Wassa]

Ya, I see the troll cat form currently like the old tauren cat form. *shudders* Low res, and ugly as sin. That old tauren cat form is what got me into model editing in the first place and with the troll cat form... I might start editing again. =/

[erwil]

Ya, I see the troll cat form currently like the old tauren cat form. *shudders* Low res, and ugly as sin. That old tauren cat form is what got me into model editing in the first place and with the troll cat form... I might start editing again. =/

Wouldn't mind playing as a Harkoa 'til 80 again.
Still, I'm not going to mind horribly much if they keep the models as they are. Tusks and the batmon form pay up for it nicely. <3

[Ramsey]

Good evening everyone, I'm Ramani, the creator of those edits, I specially registered here to eventually answer all your questions, about my edits.

Someone on EU forum told me that there is a subject about my works, and I'm incredibly happy that you like it. I'm open for critic, actually those edits had been created after discussions with many players, specially troll players who know and love this race as much as I do. Of course it's not possible to make all people appreciate it - I've seen on American forums that they don't like my edits much, becuase they're not "trollish enough".

Everyone is entilted to thier own opinion, but after playing trolls for 3 years, getting know of thier lore, culture and each aspect of thier personality I'm pretty sure I did my best to change cat forms so they reminds my favourite race.
I'm very grateful that you like and support it, for amateur like me it's a big deal.

Best regards.

[Ariamodasu]

Good evening everyone, I'm Ramani, the creator of those edits, I specially registered here to eventually answer all your questions, about my edits.

Someone on EU forum told me that there is a subject about my works, and I'm incredibly happy that you like it.

That would be me Thought would be worth saying how I found it for your own interest too for mystrey traffic out of nowhere reasons.

[Ramsey]

To me each opinion matters, I've been posting about troll catforms for 3 - soon 4 months.
I received a lot of support, unfortunately I still don't have any blue reply.

My friend have Cataclysm BETA, and I keep harrasing him, and asking if they changed anything. But nope, not even night elf brows removal. (which is the best proof for me that no one actually cared about them).

It's truly saddening since cataclysm was supposed absolutely new quality, they were outdoing themselves when it came to envionment, new textures and animations. I was expecting same neat quality as woren received.

Hope dies last, maybe for last-minute they'll do something about it... brows.. braids... colours....


Anyway Troll hunter for you guys (sorry it's not finished yet, I'm still working on it):

[Rhyela]

WOW. That is incredible!!!

And welcome to the forums!!!

[Fael]

Hello Ramsey, I'm glad you joined us! Your art made me excited and hopeful that Blizz could pay attention and think about the Trolls a little more. I'd be really happy to see some dreadlocks on the tigers, myself, but any change would be good so long as the dangly braid spears go away. >_>

If US players want to show some support or opinions on the forums there is now a thread about it here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 7607508360

I think that for a player character it deserves to have a quality that is at par with the other cats. I know it's better than the Vanilla cats but I don't think that's a good excuse for them to make a nicely polished Worgen cat and yet have so many simple mistakes or lesser details for the Troll cat. It's lazy. The braids are a technical issue, hair in a few places still need transparencies and some fur details on the muzzle and feet would at least bring it up to par. The fact that it could stand to be more Troll-like is certainly a matter of opinion and while I don't expect to see anything big change so close to Cata hitting the shelves it'd be nice to think they would pay attention enough to give Troll cats a look over and consider tweaking a couple of things. If they could do any simple adjustments to anything beforehand well... I especially love the addition of an orange schemed tiger. Seeing that during the event which introduced the first Troll tiger made me excited for them... :\ Shaving the eyebrows and painting Troll eyes would also be welcome quick-fixes. :p

[Ramsey]

Yeah that's the issue I've been working on. The quality. I couldn't belive they put trolls next to worgen without feeling guilty and saying "hope you'll love it". The worgen surely looks neat, the face, the high resolution on fur, smooth textures, people are calling worgen boring and rip-ff from tauren, but to me the face is what matters, and this face sreams worgen, just like tauren and night elf.

When I look at current model I don't feel anything like that. I am like "what the hell is that supposed to be?". The funny thing is - night elves have similar same skin ccolours, and some crazy hair colours too, yet thier catforms got really nice fur colours.
While trollls... ehem, I'm playing wow for 3 years and I hadn't seen that jungle trolls have grey/ black skin.

Ok I wouldn't mind if there was one gry- black-ish option, but 3? And well I found some nice explanation on colours, It's my latest update to somefow support my own ideas:


http://i55.tinypic.com/2z5nnro.jpg
http://i56.tinypic.com/30sk1tg.jpg
http://i55.tinypic.com/211p62r.jpg
http://i54.tinypic.com/egzthz.jpg
http://oi56.tinypic.com/2ag2te1.jpg

It's very far-fetched, I admit, but still... Makes somehow excuse to use this colour combos.

And I noticed the issue on US forums, that guy is kinda right- on legs while colour should be less intensive, but still it's tiger thing to have balck stripes and white underbelly.
And uh.. I gues it's huge success that he didn't figured out anything else in my suggestions.

The last thing I wanted to write is- this kind of edit is taking 1-4 days. Most likely it's just a texture, deleting nelf brows and braids wouldn't also take much time, and I think Necklace would be also very easy to create (look at nelf necklace- it's more complicated).



So to all those people who are worried over polygons- it won't affect model at all, mohawk can be copy+ paste from bear form. Really. It's a job for one man.

Why not improving it then?

[Gimlion]

If people who like the current cat models for Trolls are a scarce I've heard, then I might actually be rarer, as I personally like the Current Cat models/tones better than the designs you have created. I like your models, and think you did a fantastic job, but they're not Vicious enough for my personal taste, as the current Cats for trolls are. I also love the color tones that the cats have, but I don't see the same tones in your models.

Edit: I couldn't quite pick out what Drew me into the Current models so much more than your models, but looking closer, I figured it out. The current models have the War paint on their faces. That just screams 'Troll' and 'Tribal' to me, but your models lack them, which is the real factor for me.

My two cents.

[Ramsey]

Vicious? *scratches head*





Look at it now, from this perspecitve. I was working on troll faces and I'm pretty sure I gave them proper troll expression (angry/ hostile/ glaring). If it's not vicious, then I guess we're using different dictionaries.

[Gimlion]

From here, I'll give you that yours does look more viscous, but I don't ever look at the face of my Characters, the overall composition of your models don't scream "That's FREAKING EPIC, and vicious as hell!" to me, while the regular models do.

One thing I can agree with you on is the Tusks... Current model tusks should, at least imho, look more like the ones you have made.

[SpiritBinder]

Hey Ramsey, so glad you joined our forums, great to have you on board.

1st of all, I love the work and time you have put into pointing out some of the numerous issues that imo, are still lingering with the current troll cat form.

I have been following the comments on both the European and Us boards as well, and it's good to see other peoples concerns for and against your proposed edits. There are even more things that could be addressed, but if one notes too many things people tend to take you less seriously and more of a QQ'er, which is not the case, just pointing out observations.

(Sadly in the wow forum rulebook one is not allowed to Control+X ,Control+V any existing posts or links to them, hence the lock on the US thread I'm guessing. But hey, at least you know a blue had to at least look at the thread to lock it )

I'll try not to cover too much of the threads from the wow forums as there is a lot there and we have enough to cover in this one

Now, as for....

Vicious? *scratches head*





Look at it now, from this perspective. I was working on troll faces and I'm pretty sure I gave them proper troll expression (angry/ hostile/ glaring). If it's not vicious, then I guess we're using different dictionaries.

One such as yourself with a much clearer artistic background must be aware that simple things can actually have a big difference on other's perspective of things. I love the edit that you have done above, but what I believe that Gimlion was trying to explain by "Not Looking Vicious Enough" can simply be put done to the actual removal of the face paint. The current model has tiger stripes on the fur and face paint on the brow, almost emulating a scowl or snarly look on it's face. It's not overly apparent, but it's there a little. If you take that off, as you have it cleans the facial expressions and relaxes the face a lot more. Making it seem less aggressive per-say.

Now if we take the tauren model for example, (which by lore are generally less aggressive in nature than a troll) does actually have these snarly wrinkles across it's brow an down it's nose. These simple furrows make the model look an awful lot more intimidating than if they were not there.



Also if you have a look at a lot of the male and female troll face options, quite a few of them already have a decent "angry brow" art to them making this option not to far removed.



In fact, if you look at all of them together, they all have this graphic making them look more vicious, just not so much on the troll due to the paint and fur.



Now none of this is to negate any of your work because in fact, I really do love your work thus far, just helping explain some of others views and discussions here.

S.b

[Ramsey]

I wrote yesterday whole post about it, but mysteriously it disappeard... on the other hand I was falling asleep back then, so prolly I deleted it myself unfortunately.

Anyway I was posting my previous message before that dwarf hunter's edit, and I was pretty sure he meant face expression, which is not actually scary much, at least to me.

As for the paint face I'm already writing explanation :

Fristly, I removed paint becuase I had to have whole image of face in general, and then I noticed that it actually shares Tauren's features, and so I started to work on it to grant those cat forms unique troll - like face features.

Secondly, Tigers got some special features as we know- stripes and white underbelly, and to me putting colorful stripes on stripes from fur looked kinda messy, as if it was too much. the balck srtipes from fur are already nice, aesthetic addition to face. But around eyes are some white (and one teal) spots to power-up the impression that they're frowning upon something/ glaring.

I also didn't wanted the face paint to dominate the face. On current cat forms it was being use to distract from flaws of model, here I wanted to expose uniquness of absolutely new face. (that's why I also changed the tusks, so they weren't hiding face).

And lastly, I also wanted people to notice that I changed nose and generally whole face. Tigers kinda got flat nose and thse stripes from face paint were optically making nose part of face look shorter, and trolls were supposed to have long nose. But I guess I shoul've tried with wrinkles. Yet, I though the glare expression was good enough.

Hope, that will somehow justificate myself.

[Rawr]

Ramsey, I would gladly take your Troll druid forms in a heart beat any day of the week over the current ones. Keepem coming

[SpiritBinder]

I also wanted people to notice that I changed nose and generally whole face. Tigers kinda got flat nose and thse stripes from face paint were optically making nose part of face look shorter, and trolls were supposed to have long nose. But I guess I shoul've tried with wrinkles. Yet, I though the glare expression was good enough.

Hope, that will somehow justificate myself.

Haha, no justification needed, but your explantion is great.

As for the face, I also thought the cats head/face was a little short concidering trolls faces are rather long and their noses even more so, but then again, the female trolls maybe not so much.

Quite some time ago I did this drawing, clearly not in the same calibre as yours, but funny that alot of it has some very simmlar features.



One thing that I did remember that the tauren druid models did ok, was combine a few female elements in with the male ones. But with the current troll models, especially the cat, there are not so many.

[Raydex-of-the-dawn]

The problem with changes like these is that it is REALLY EASY to use photoshop or PSE or Paint Tool SAI or whatever to make these sorts of images, but they're VERY hard to model. I've tried 3D modeling before, it sucks.

That said, I don't really like the troll druid forms, they just look messy. And I love these edits.

[SpiritBinder]

The problem with changes like these is that it is REALLY EASY to use photoshop or PSE or Paint Tool SAI or whatever to make these sorts of images, but they're VERY hard to model. I've tried 3D modeling before, it sucks.

That said, I don't really like the troll druid forms, they just look messy.

Well while it may be "REALLY EASY to use photoshop or PSE or Paint Tool SAI or whatever" but to use some of them to any degree of skill and actually design/draw somthing that looks simmilar to some of Ramsey's drawings, takes time and skill to do. If it didn't and was easy to do, you would see his calibre of work and a thousand other "troll kitty" versions from everyone else.

That said, your spot on with the 3D modeling in regards to it taking more time than a standard photoshop illustration in most situations. But then someone with an ammount of skill with the program in which they use (ie.. Blizzards designers), it should hopfully not take as much time as you or I to create/edit a 3D model... well maybe not you, but I very clearly suck at them.

[Raydex-of-the-dawn]

The problem with changes like these is that it is REALLY EASY to use photoshop or PSE or Paint Tool SAI or whatever to make these sorts of images, but they're VERY hard to model. I've tried 3D modeling before, it sucks.

That said, I don't really like the troll druid forms, they just look messy.

Well while it may be "REALLY EASY to use photoshop or PSE or Paint Tool SAI or whatever" but to use some of them to any degree of skill and actually design/draw somthing that looks simmilar to some of Ramsey's drawings, takes time and skill to do. If it didn't and was easy to do, you would see his calibre of work and a thousand other "troll kitty" versions from everyone else.

Point taken xD Though it's much easier right now because of vector, clipping layers, and a dozen other tools (oh god you wouldn't believe how awesome it was to switch from GIMP to real art programs xD) it's still hard. I don't do art edits so I couldn't tell you how hard, but...yeah. This guy's a good artist xD

[Ramsey]

The problem with changes like these is that it is REALLY EASY to use photoshop or PSE or Paint Tool SAI or whatever to make these sorts of images, but they're VERY hard to model. I've tried 3D modeling before, it sucks.

That said, I don't really like the troll druid forms, they just look messy. And I love these edits.

Actually model is already ready- yhere is no need of creating new one, as I've posted the image with polygon explanation. The thing I was proposing was general texture redo which is merely cosmetical thing, to do, and doeasn't requires some uber skills, it's just a texture, image which will be glued to existing model, creating texutre for model like that will tae 1 to 2 days for one person.

Other thing is necklace - but it's not a big deal too actually as you probably notices already, current braids under jaw are only half way 3D, when you look at them from the other side they're being cut in half. It's not looking good, but it would be perfect way to do for necklace. Feathers can be 2D, not a big deal too. Hairstyle- ok as a repaint it doeas look too fluffly, but I was thinking about taking hair from bear form, and voila.

This edit shouldn't take more then 4 days for one- 2 people to do. Reallly. I happen to know something about 3D models, and graphics, heck I'm studying atm computer graphic, in next year I'll have 3D models.