Asian portraits for BG - the Romance of the Three Kingdoms pack
JuliusBorisov
Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,724
Ladies and gentlemen, dear BG community!
It is my great pleasure and honour to introduce you new portraits that can be used for your beloved Baldur's Gate characters.
The portrait pack that I will gather here in the coming weeks will include more than 500 (!) pictures of warriors, officers, thinkers and so on. It will provide male portraits, female portraits, portraits of young characters, old characters to suit any taste.
Personally, I was simply stunned when I first saw them. The amount of work put into these pictures is colossal. Of course, there're many wonderful portraits for Baldur's Gate characters (alternate PC and NPC portraits) by different artists already. But it's never bad to have more, don't you think?
I've always felt the special need to have more oriental faces in portraits for BG. And it seems now it will be possible.
The portraits in this thread belong to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms game series. ROTK is the most popular novel in Asia. Written 600 years ago, it tells the epic of Han Dynasty in China during the 2nd and 3rd century. Sometimes I look at this old story and marvel to see it glow as the time goes by.
The Japanese video game developer Tecmo Koei (http://www.koei.com/) has been making Romance of the Three Kingdoms games for 30 years already. Their artwork is awesome. That's why I've decided to make a portraits pack for Baldur's Gate with the portraits from this series.
A wonderful http://kongming.net/ site is dedicated to the novel, games and the history behind them. Under the guidance of James Peirce, the owner of that site, several Romance of the Three Kingdoms Portraits Projects were completed.
Following the advice of @Troodon80 , I managed to speak to James Peirce in order to introduce the portraits to the whole BG community. The artwork for those portraits is the intellectual property of Tecmo Koei but Koei is usually very kind to fans of their games in terms of not-for-profit use. So, it became possible to make this pack. I invited James Peirce to visit this thread so maybe we'll hear from him in the future.
In this thread I will focus on portraits from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI (http://www.koei.com/rtkxipc/). Every portrait is modified to suit the needed requirements of BG so that you can download what you like and use for your characters.
UPDATE 29.10.2014: Now the portrait pack includes 220 portraits. You can download them at:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j4ieignj0ohs6gk/ROTK 220 portraits for BG.rar?dl=0
It is my great pleasure and honour to introduce you new portraits that can be used for your beloved Baldur's Gate characters.
The portrait pack that I will gather here in the coming weeks will include more than 500 (!) pictures of warriors, officers, thinkers and so on. It will provide male portraits, female portraits, portraits of young characters, old characters to suit any taste.
Personally, I was simply stunned when I first saw them. The amount of work put into these pictures is colossal. Of course, there're many wonderful portraits for Baldur's Gate characters (alternate PC and NPC portraits) by different artists already. But it's never bad to have more, don't you think?
I've always felt the special need to have more oriental faces in portraits for BG. And it seems now it will be possible.
The portraits in this thread belong to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms game series. ROTK is the most popular novel in Asia. Written 600 years ago, it tells the epic of Han Dynasty in China during the 2nd and 3rd century. Sometimes I look at this old story and marvel to see it glow as the time goes by.
The Japanese video game developer Tecmo Koei (http://www.koei.com/) has been making Romance of the Three Kingdoms games for 30 years already. Their artwork is awesome. That's why I've decided to make a portraits pack for Baldur's Gate with the portraits from this series.
A wonderful http://kongming.net/ site is dedicated to the novel, games and the history behind them. Under the guidance of James Peirce, the owner of that site, several Romance of the Three Kingdoms Portraits Projects were completed.
Following the advice of @Troodon80 , I managed to speak to James Peirce in order to introduce the portraits to the whole BG community. The artwork for those portraits is the intellectual property of Tecmo Koei but Koei is usually very kind to fans of their games in terms of not-for-profit use. So, it became possible to make this pack. I invited James Peirce to visit this thread so maybe we'll hear from him in the future.
In this thread I will focus on portraits from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI (http://www.koei.com/rtkxipc/). Every portrait is modified to suit the needed requirements of BG so that you can download what you like and use for your characters.
UPDATE 29.10.2014: Now the portrait pack includes 220 portraits. You can download them at:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j4ieignj0ohs6gk/ROTK 220 portraits for BG.rar?dl=0
Post edited by JuliusBorisov on
28
Comments
Where are these portraits from? I really like the art style.
These portraits are from a computer game Romance of the Three Kingdoms 11. It's a strategy and is a little bit hard but the artwork is very solid. http://worthplaying.com/article/2009/2/17/reviews/58998/
The portraits for me were an astonishing find and I decided to make them available for all BG fans. It cannot be done quickly but I will add more and more portraits that are BG-compatible and hope you all will like it.
From Shou Lung or T'u Lung more accurately speaking... at a stretch maybe Koryo. These guys are not Yoshimo and Tamoko's compatriots, that's for sure! :P
@bengoshi
In my search for "Shou portraits", I've come across some of these before, but I never realised just how expansive the collection was! And unlike Dynasty Warriors, these aren't over the top and fit reasonably well with BG portraits. Some of them are extremely iconic characters in China/East Asia, and I recognise a few even though I've never played this game before. Only major downside is that, given the game is based on a historic epic, there's too many bearded old men and too few female characters.
Still, their clothes are a tad too extravagant and colourful for my roleplaying needs. Are there some more "rugged" portraits, possible featuring fur or leather armour? Something which could fit a Tuigan/Mongol would be ideal. Like in this AD&D cover, for instance:
It's easy to photoshop the colors a little but considering that most of the characters in ROTG are high-ranking officials their attires were made of silk with extravagant motives >.< and the main characters are high-ranking warriors from a period when Jurchen, Mongols and other Northern barbarian tribes were considered just that: barbarians!
I've been searching for portraits that suit your concept during this weekend and this is what I've found (the portraits have the appropriate sizes) I hope it helps a little bit;)
PS: sorry for somewhat derailing the thread.
@Illustair I haven't tried the game yet. I don't have much time and when I do I spend it on BG;) But from what I have read the RoTK game seems to be an entertaining strategy. The western people tend to understand and thus like it less but - again, from what I have seen and read - this game is solid.
Finding fitting portraits for Asian looking characters is rather difficult, since most of them are rather manga-esque. But these are perfect!
@kiwidoc
Unfortunately, I don't know if we can find out what the artists are - all the artwork is the intellectual property of Tecmo Koei and there're many artists involved, I suppose.
FOR ALL OF YOU, interested in even more Asian portraits by Tecmo Koei, see
http://koei.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Nobunaga's_Ambition_Images and
http://threekingdoms.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms_XI_Portraits
There're tons of greatly done portraits there that are suitable for BG.
Btw thank you for sharing really nice once.
Maybe:) But the man on the current avatar is Miyamoto Musashi, a Japanese swordsman and rōnin, the author of The Book of Five Rings, whom I admire very much.