Skin: Priestess of the Moon re-skin -> Queen of Beasts

This is the official preview of a texture I processed for the Texturing Competition #2 back at The HiveWorkshop (I know, 181.474 bytes / 177 KB it's quite a size... sorry...):



There are also the skin in TGA (PriestessOfTheMoon.tga), BLP (PriestessOfTheMoon.blp) and the icon for it, in BLP (BTNQueenOfBeasts.blp and DISBTNQueenOfBeasts.blp). The skin is also available in JPG (QoB_skinpreview.jpg), so you are not forced to download it in order to preview it. You have a preview of the icon in the submission preview (above).

Credit is due for the re-skin operation. The icon, as specified in the preview above, is a modification of the original Blizzard icon of the Priestess of the Moon, so I should only be credited for the modding work, not for the original icon. Hope Daelin won't take my head off for this... :) Anyway, point is that you are free to ignore the icon enclosed in this submission. It's meant to be a quick-fix for anyone wanting to use this skin in their maps, that's all.

The BLP files were tested with W3V before upload. Hope nothing will go wrong and the files will also work in your maps.
I do not know which are the proper paths to set for this skin, as I am not familiar with this process... The original name of the skin file is also set on this file. More than this, I can't provide any help...

She is supposed to be an agility-based Hero - notice the Leather pieces of armor, both on her suit and her tamed beast - with a special melee attack - notice the shape of the bow she is carying.

She could have some ablities like:
- "Bone Dread": she learns her tiger to roar, rending her enemies powerless = -30/40/50% armor & -70/85/100% damage as its enemies drops their weapons, for 5/10/15 seconds; mana amount dunno, should be a level-dynamic amount, in order to compensate the low duration & effect in the lower levels of the ability, yet not too high when reaches higher levels, as this is not the "ultimate" ability/spell;
- "Point-blank shot": she uses her bow as a melee weapon, causing a massive damage of 100/150/200 to one given enemy;
- "Summon Cougars/Tamed Cougars/Wild Cougars": she summons 3 Cougars (low to medium HP, medium attack rate & damage, with low Dodge)/ 2 Tamed Cougars (medium to high HP, medium to high attack rate & damage, medium Dodge and low Bash) / 2 Wild Cougars (high HP, high attack rate, medium-high to high damage, high Dodge and moderate Bash, with Rage = modified Frenzy, for a decent duration) for 90/135/180 seconds;
- "Aid of Wilderness": modified Stampede or alike... she is the Queen of Beasts, now, isn't she?

I have been so oftenly suggested to change the way the eyes look. On the Bengal-tiger, that is fairly easy to do, as the region defined on the skin file and the polygons on the model are quite straight-forward when working with. The eyes of the Queen on the other hand, are way tougher. Thing is, a small area on the skin file defines a larger area on the 2 polygons on the model. Her face is, in fact, made of 2 poligons, each having a larger area than that specified on the unwrapped texture. 1 single pixel put on the skin is largely extended on those polygons, so it rends modifying that area a really tricky task.
One more thing is that, when trying to repositionate the pupil/iris, I face the following issue: placing it further away from the nose gives her a sideways look, while placing it closer to the nose, it gives the Queen a stupid crossed look. The only remaining option is a direct frontal look, placing the iris in the middle of the eye region on the skin. This gives her a straight look, nevertheless as stupid as the other ones - as she is always looking into a given direction.

One should notice that you nearly cannot view the eyes while in-game but briefly, while the skin, used on the portrait version of the model, makes nearly no difference. I mean, in the portrait, what you mostly see is the tiger rather than the face of the Queen.

I, for example, would have totally discarded the iris notion on the skin, for both the Queen and her Bengal. But other users of THW told me that this would rend her more Human, so they must be there, one way or the other. This is the best way I managed to come up with.

Cheers everyone!

Looks good. nice conversion of NE Priestess to human.

1. 2. 3. SAY IT WITH ME. RECLOR...

Well relax, man, it's not a recolor. I clearly mentioned in the competition thread wetter I should or should not keep the same marks on the tiger beneath. As I was suggested to keep them, I left them like that. Simply recoloring the original skin won't lead you to my skin here.

Thanks for the feedback, nevertheless...

WMA - thanks!

I would say reclour and freehand but it looks more like an recolour but yet...
But GJ!

-Av3n

Nice idea though.

From the original skin, the same form can be noticed in the tiger skin, pants cloth, over-all cloth contours and the base of the bow. That's it. Does it make it a dull recolor?

Thanks, Will! Your whelp is a very intriguing yet impressive performance! Nice job!

Thanks!

You put a lot of imagination into your skins... or should i say hero, since you pretty much described it as something you'd see in an AoS like AotZ, or ToB (where the heroes all have custom skins).

It does look a lot like a recolour, mainly the armour.

i dont like the face the rest is ok...

Well... I think a recolour means recolouring the original parts of that design. What am I supposed to do, give her Abomination parts just for the sake of being different? There are other textures in those areas - I mean, concerning that armor issue Olof mentioned - and other colours as well.

What can I do more? I could place totally random textures on it, I agree, but it has to make sense in the end. I think this skin fits the original model pretty well.

What do you think?

Well, for the contest you tried to make it human, and taking that into consideration, it seems fine to me. I see nothing making it unworthy of approval.

Thanks, Chriz!

Note though, it's only my opinion, I have no power to approve anything.

Did I say "Thanks Chriz for approving it!"?? Plus, you got a "big" Official Map Reviewer below your user name... how could I miss that???

As I said - thanks!