Is it worth to create a pack of Asian portraits for BG?

JuliusBorisov

I've been off the forum for several days and have found an astonishing collection of portraits from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms game. They are really good. It seems portraits for BG lack Asian characters (Chinese, Japanese). Not contemporary anime portraits but well detailed historically true pictures of warriors and chiefs. But the best quality I can get is 169*266, that is a resolution of the BG interface portraits. So I would like to know if it is worth the effort to create such a pack.

Edit: I'm not an artist unfortunately, the possible work will be based at portraits from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Series: http://kongming.net/portraits/

JuliusBorisov

I'd like to show an example of portraits that can be made to suit the resolution and size of BG and can be included into the pack:

Kamigoroshi

Depends, I guess. Do we talk about real custom portraits, which you have created yourself? Or merely a pack of cropped artworks from various artists? If it's the former then yes, by all means! But I'd advice against the latter one, since this would be against the site rules concerning copyrights.

jackjack

They are indeed sorely lacking, but I must concur with @Kamigoroshi‌ - copyrights rightfully belong to the original artists.
Having said that, I would love an original portrait pack.

Troodon80

If you do decide to try and use material from that website, then their FAQ does suggest sending them an e-mail, and states "I don’t have sympathy for people that refuse to take out to [sic] follow this basic step." Note that the website also allows for submissions, so sending an e-mail to the person who owns the site, James Peirce, will not be enough under those circumstances.

If you do get permission to incorporate them as a mod—crediting any and all the artists, of course—you will also be responsible if someone else redistributes them without your permission (it can happen).

I certainly like the idea, but I think you would be better off making them yourself, or commissioning an artist ( @Isandir made a portrait for @Heindrich‌'s profile, if I recall. There's also @LavaDelVortel‌, I think) to make some portraits instead of using work from a site like that.

Kamigoroshi

As a side note, I'd also love to see some original Mongolic portraits as well at some point. For the longest time I wanted to roleplay as an descendant of the Tuigan Horde (especially as an archer, totemic druid, or barbarian), but sadly never found a fitting portrait for such an character.

JuliusBorisov

Currently I'm negotiating a permission to make this portraits pack directly with James Pierce. It seems the authorised owner of the appropriate rights is not against any noncommercial use of the portraits, so there's a big chance the BG community will soon get 500+ new portraits

waehuun

Drakonis.org has subsections for Eastern warriors.

FinneousPJ

The obligatory

"There's no Asia in Faerun."

Heindrich

@bengoshi

I am not sure if you are Chinese/Japanese or otherwise familiar with far eastern culture, but another way you can search for Asian themed artwork is to image search popular Wuxia games and novels/TV series and characters. You can use Wikipedia to find the Chinese names, which produces somewhat different results, and you can search on Google, Baidu or Deviantart. It doesn't matter if you cannot read Chinese, cos it's the pictures you are after.

Jin Yong is so popular in Asia that most of his 15 novels have multiple adaptations into TV, movies and games.

For example:

Popular Titles:
Chinese Paladin (仙剑奇侠传)
Demi Gods and Semi Devils (天龙八部)

Popular Characters:
Qiao Feng (乔峰)
Xiaolongnü (小龙女)

the_spyder

the OP has asked the question "Is it worth it." Yes. If for no other reason than for the OP. Basically, if someone has a mind to create a portrait package, there are people who will appreciate it. So, yeah. Have at it. If you got the time and the desire, sounds like a great way to spend it. Have fun and post where we can download it.

JuliusBorisov

@the_spyder‌ and everyone:

You can find the portraits pack at http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/31048/update-03-21-2014-awesome-new-portraits-for-bg-romance-of-the-three-kingdoms-pack?new=1

I'll try to add new portraits step-by-step. Now the collection includes 60 asian portraits for BG.

@Heindrich‌

Thanks, maybe one day I'll be able to create a collection of Chinese/Japanese portraits for Baldur's Gate that consists of more than 1000 artworks.

the_spyder

Awesome.

On a completely separate note, does anyone know where there is a good Sound set pack? I'm getting bored of the standard voices for Charname. Everywhere I look, all I find is one off's and most of them are based on famous heroes/villains etc... Just looking for something a bit different. Thanks.