I decided to give everyone a sneak peek on the artwork I'll produce for these mods. I'll also shed some light on the methods I use to create these, in the case that someone is intrested.
The first thing to make clear is that I'm no artist. I can figure out how to basic shading (what areas of the picture are lighter/darker depending on where the "light" is coming from), but that's about it. I can't create anything from scratch (I've tried, but the poses are simply crimes versus geometry & anatomy and all proportions are wrong).
My method involves simply recoloring excisting KO's excellent base vanilla sprites and combining them to make new poses for the units. To show this, I've added images of the "base" sprites I used to the preview pic above.
I'll go over these pics one by one.
a) Pilgrim. I really like how he turned out. I just basically recolored the Mictlan Slave pic and widened him a bit to give the expression of wearing a thick robe.
b) Templar Knight. I just basically mixed & matched parts of several vanilla cavalry units and recolored the shield and cape. I originally had the Hospitaller Knight cross in the shield, but I decided not to include any real world symbols in the units. Templars are basically a knightly order dedicated to protecting Pilgrims on their joyrneys.
c) Templar. Well, you can't always win. I used Man's Warden as a base. I don't like the way he seems to be crouching, but it's working well enough. If I try make every pic perfect this mod will never be completed.
d) Crusader. Pretty much the same as Templar Knight.
e) Templar Commander. Ditto.
f) Templar Monk. Here I used a sprite I already made as a base. Just add some blingbling to a regular unit and you have a commander.
g) Templar Abbot. This is basically a recolor of "Augur" in Sombre's Arga Dis mod.
h) Battle Relic. I recolored the wooden telestic animate to marble and drew a simple golden box for it to hold. This unit was originally intented for HW: Divine as construction summon, but the new patch completely broke holy rituals, so I had to scrap it. The idea is that the box holds remains of some long dead saint and thus the statue is possessed by the saint's spirit. Currently I don't really know what to do with this pic. Perhaps a Earth/holy construct summon?
i) Stone Tablet. I basically copy-pasted parts of the monolith and used them to expand the orginal. The writing was a piece of cake. Currently I don't really know what to do with this pic. Perhaps a Earth/holy construct summon?
j) True Believer. I don't know who the base pic guy is. I just found him in a sprite dump picture. His pose intrigued me and I just drew him a robe, gave some stuff to hold to and a halo. Voila', now we have a generic human holy hero. I'll give him to each human nation which already doesn't have a hero with H3.
k) White Bandar. I did this over a year ago as a monkey hero. He is basically a recolor of basic bandar.
l) Earth Keeper. He's a Earth/holy sacred troop summon. he'll also be recruitable from an uncommon holy site. Giving the stoneguy the torso of a Ulmish flaildude worked pretty well after some recoloring.
m) Fire Keeper. He's a Fire/holy sacred troop summon. he'll also be recruitable from an uncommon holy site. I originally had the whole halberd be bronze but it didn't look good. The black shaft really makes the weapon look badass.
n) Water Keeper. He's a water/holy sacred troop summon. he'll also be recruitable from an uncommon holy site. I'm also quite happy how this turned out, although I had to redo the kelp hair like 3 times before it looked good.
o) Air Keeper. He's a Air/holy sacred troop summon. he'll also be recruitable from an uncommon holy site. I just attached the torso of a valkyrie with a tiny air elemental and did some recoloring. I'm not happy with the shield though. I might get back to this and remove the shield.
p) Scourge. This guy will feature in few magic sites. Basically a beefed up flagnellant. He's just a simple recolor of the flail ulm infantry. The graphic looks quite sweet on the battlefield.