Unit Pictures

[Robear]

Hey Robear, just curious to know whether the Sc1 Hydralisk sprite of it attacking gives you any further clues as to how the spines are really stored and shot out? Might make for an interesting drawing in itself.

This will definitely be drawn.

So, the overall pose is actually quite simple: the lower body presses itself against the ground, which angles the rear carapace back. The head/neck frill goes almost vertical. The scythe arms tuck themselves back. The pouches appear in the area between the shoulders and the bottom of the back carapace.



You can see that Warcraft 3 got the pose kind of wrong— they didn't angle the back carapace at all, flaps just open up from the back of it, and the head stretches down out of the way, when it should have tilted up. The WC3 pose puts the widest part of the frill below the firing pouches, while the sprite pose puts the widest part above them, allowing the spines to fire on either side.




Really, it's the same pose as the SC2 cinematic hydra firing, only in SC2 the back carapace is only connected at the neck, like a second frill, instead of staying attached to the back so it tilts forward too, instead of back with the body. And, well, the arms are more out to the sides instead of tucked back. But, you get what I mean.




So, the real question is, where do the SC1 pouches come from? Now that we've established that the arms of the sprite hydra are really far forward, the whole side of the "torso" is open for use. The pouches could be flat against the muscles there, and then be inflated/unfolded.

They could also be folded along the hydralisk's shoulders, kind of like... well, the SC2 hydralisk. But, while it does look a little bit like that here,



you can see that the pouch is in front of/on top the arm. Honestly I think it's most likely that the pouch expands from the body and just clips through the shoulder since they really weren't worrying about clipping at all back then, especially for the sprites.

Then the more minor question is, again, is something inflating or filling with liquid, building up pressure to fire the spines? Or is the expanding and green liquid that shoots out just incidental, some lubricating acid-y mucus?

Starcraft: Ghost should have clarified things for us, but instead we got this pouchless rapid fire method, at 50 seconds in. (My god, in all 3 videos of Hydralisks firing, the hydralisk that fires shows up at 50 seconds in.) So, still plenty of mysteries. And there isn't even publicly available SCG concept art of Hydralisks, like there is for Zerglings, to see what other designs they were thinking of.



It would be interesting if the pouches were intended to be shoulder pouches all along, and SC2's design was just returning to that. I wish they'd released a render of the sprite model, like they did for almost all the other Zerg units.

[DefilerRulez]

I had noticed too the pouches on sc1 hydra, but i never understood well how they worked... GJ Robear!
That SC-G rapid fire simply doesn't have sense, i don't even consider it, and it isn't even canonic

[Robear]

Did a bit of recoloring thanks to your SC2 hydra references. Pretty minor changes, but it's much better now, imo.



Maybe I'll do sprite hydra and ling designs today, maybe not. I do actually have some paid art I should be doing... I just love Starcraft too much. :P

Edit: made this:



the sprite zerglings had a ton of kinks in their legs.



On the Hydralisk firing pouches, the Warcraft vs Starcraft mod for WC3 a few years ago actually did a 3D version of them added on to a SC2-style Hydralisk (you can see a low-res video here, at 55 seconds in). I'd like to take a look at where they made them come out of, but, for some reason the map isn't loading on my computer. Anyone else want to give it a try, and take some good screenshots for me? Just curious how they did it.

[DefilerRulez]

Why Hydras on melee has a so poor attack animation? Savage of time? The needles that come out a bit from the head are the new needles emerging??????

[Robear]

I don't know why needles stick out of the head of the in-game SC2 model. I mean, the real-world reason, I think, was that Blizzard wanted to make players understand that hydralisks shoot spikes (I think some casual SC1 players assumed they were just spitting green acid, because of the animation), and that's a good, visible place to put them.

So in his Zerg fan art from before he was hired by Blizzard, Mr. Jack drew them sticking out, and then stopped doing it since. But, in this hydralisk picture of his, the frill does actually have some forward-facing holes in it (and none in the shoulder!), so maybe some hydralisks can shoot from the head/back. imo concept art that contradicts the cinematic/game designs isn't canon, but, you know, it's interesting to think about.

Sprite ling!



Some of you may also remember this sprite-Zergling I did a year ago, but I think we'll all agree that the new one is much better, more accurate and more interesting. I was never satisfied with it, with good reason.




Aaand... sprite hydra!



Pose might have some more little tweaks, but, not bad. In my version, at least, once the frill moves forward and the back carapace moves back there's actually a ton of room for the expanding firing pouches. So, pretty happy with that.

The details are a little bit made up, of course. The head takes a bit of influence from this SC:Ghost design, even though I actually believe it should be a straight copy/paste of the Zergling, but I think it's more interesting this way. I'll clean them up and color them soon.

[Ghostnova]

Love the new Zergling man looks a lot better!

- - - Updated - - -

Love the new Zergling man looks a lot better!

[Visions of Khas]

Haha, looks like the Hydra's head banging. \m/

EDIT So I've been doing some homework and found more needle launchers.

Pictured here is a dorsal organ that appears almost triangular from this perspective. The Hydralisk may be able to orient the shoulder launchers to shoot ahead, but it must assume this posture to use the dorsal launchers. You can see the dorsal launcher in action; as the Hydralisk first attacks, two shots are loosed in rapid succession. The second volley originates from this dorsal organ.



I have highlighted this new, distinct organ below. The blue arrow indicates another potential tube, but is distinct from the shoulder and dorsal launch systems.



Pictured here is the Hydralisk's back. On the left I've highlighted the known launch tubes in the shoulders. To the right is the structure we see highlighted in my first image above. You can tell it is a distinct organ by the way the back musculature pulls it to and fro.




Finally, upon referring to old concept art, we can see this particular organ here, or at least the concept that evolves to become the dorsal launcher. We can compare the belove with the immediate above; the organ in question has six strips of muscle/carapace originating from the vertebrae and inserting into the organ along its right side and top. At this stage in the connceptual development, the "barrel" of the launcher is still small and blends easily with the surrounding carapce.

[DefilerRulez]

I will write about hydra but... http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rgOleu_x1qk (0:05 - 0:12) Mass Devourers??

[Demolij]

Yo guys! Haven't been here awhile because I forgot my password (again).
Anyways, I'd like to give some comments.

- The Leviathan and Behemoth look awesome. Granted, the Behemoth is a giant blob and the Leviathan looks different then the game one, but there isn't much we can really do for that. I do think the Leviathan should be more tentacle-y though.

- I think that you should have two Overlords. The thing is that the BW Overlord could pick up two Ultralisks at a time while the current Overlord can only pick up one, which I think implies that the old Overlords are bigger then the current ones. Besides, they look so different it's only fair.

- The Terran fleet is cool and all but I feel like the SC:G Battlecruiser is redundant, and the superBC needs a ton more differences between the normal Battlecruiser (things like big fins, bigger gatling guns, and those swiveling turrets on the neck (which the normal BC needs too)).

- The Science Vessel needs to be flattened out jest a leetle bit. It's looking goofy with those tall spikes.

- The Tempest looks a little funny. The back side should have upward sloped fins instead of a cone shape (like \ instead of < if that makes sense).

- Initially I though you were going to draw the colonist ship from "The enemy within" HotS mission. Are you not planning on doing that?

- You've heard this 10 times earlier on this thread, but the Dragoon is waaaaay too small. The thing is that it has to be somewhat large in order to handle the machinery and weaponry, and the body at the same time. If you look at this portrait of the Dragoon (Dragoon_SC1_HeadAnim1.gif) then you can see that it is sitting upright and is connected to something via the neck. The same with Fenix's portrait (FenixDragoon_SC1_HeadAnim1.gif), you can very clearly see that he retained his torso and has some space around his head. I think you should scale it so its hind legs are twice as tall as a human.

- Just a little nitpick, but I think you should change the angle of the blue wings on the MSC just a little bit so they face inwards more. The current drawing makes them stick out a ton. Only about 15-25 degrees is all I'm asking.

Lastly, you need to make a way so I can see those tiny pictures easily. Splendid, job, and keep up the good work

[Robear]

Hah, I hope you remember it next time! Thanks for the input, as always. Though I'm afraid I'm gonna disagree with a bunch of what you said. :P

-I actually think the Leviathan looks a lot like the in game model. I can add more long hanging tentacles for next time, I guess.

The thing is that the BW Overlord could pick up two Ultralisks at a time while the current Overlord can only pick up one, which I think implies that the old Overlords are bigger then the current ones.

I think a larger factor in this 2/1 carrying ratio is that the new ultralisks are more than twice as big as the old ones, not that overlords changed much. I'm probably not going to change this just because the overlord drawing that's currently in there is sort of a combination of all 3 designs, and I don't really want to get rid of it and have to do more. :/

-Could add more fins to the superbc. I guess I'd scaled down the gatling guns because I thought having them so huge looked really goofy, but I could bring them back up...

-On science vessels, I guess I could make the side things a bit shorter. They're still pretty tall though. But I guess mine are as tall as the center tower, while these aren't.


-I did do the colonist ship!

I think you should scale it so its hind legs are twice as tall as a human.

So, I dunno, this is what I've got. The newer design has torso space, Fenix's doesn't, and I think their SC1 cinematic size was probably a mistake, but I'm still inclined to stick with it. :/



I can try making it a bit bigger. Once it's at 3.5 m tall, it's basically twice human height?

Again in Starcraft: Ghost, the main body is obviously bigger, the whole thing is bulkier, but it's not even twice as tall as Nova. They only look big enough to fit a human in a fetal position, not a Protoss.



But maybe I'll keep going.

-Yeah, the mothership core drawing kind of sucks, I'll tweak it, but also I'll be scaling it up a bit and moving it to the capital ships chart, so it'll be harder to see how bad it is. :P

I guess I could upload an album of each of the units at like 500x500, just for easier access? Like, for the Tempest, I'd like you to circle or draw little lines on both the real tempest model and my drawing to help explain what you want, but that's a huge pain with the giant image, obviously. Maybe I'll do that.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rgOleu_x1qk (0:05 - 0:12) Mass Devourers??

Heh, yeah, those are definitely devourers, about 70 pages and two years ago that was my main evidence that devourers aren't much bigger than mutas, rather than being capital ship sized. :P


So, sorry everyone for lack of updates, still lots to do. Also for some reason I joined an a cappella group, and competing in that started eating up a lot of my free time lately. I did color the sprite hydra. It's not going in the chart anyway, but it does look cool. :P