The new official portraits from The Familiar Magazine

Kilivitz

You may have read around here that the first issue of Beamdog's digital magazine brings us two new official portraits by artist Thea Kent.



They're gorgeous and... they have to be converted to BMP because when you download them from the app they're PNG image files.

So I did that for you. Enjoy. The BMP portraits are attached to this post.

P.S.: hope I'm not breaking any rules. I assume it's okay to share them here since they're free and everything.

Kamigoroshi

Owltastic! I'm hooting for more of the same feather.

*hoot* *hoot*

Rodrian

Hey, New Dynaheir!

Flashburn

Wow, that first one is incredible! It looks exactly like a true Baldur's Gate 1 portrait.

The second one doesn't look like it belongs, though - more like a something you'd see in the portrait threads here.

Anduin

The second one is awesome, just elvenised... Plus can't decide if a druid, mage, or cleric... possibly use for all three.

The first is a human and is thus a waste of hard disk space to me... But I do like that james bond eyebrow... She is one savvy human...

JuliusBorisov

The portraits are superb and make me want to see more of them in SoD!

The colour palette and the details make them look very BG-tey.

One thing I would like to note, because choosing a portrait for my characters have always meant a lot to me. I've noticed that in both BG1 and BG2 portraits, a head of a character takes about 1/2, in certain cases a little bit more, of a picture's height.

BG1:



BG2:



As you clearly see, a head (or a face) of each of them takes about 1/2 of a portrait's height.

But the new portraits show characters so that their head take only about 1/3 of a picture's height. Just compare them.

I've cropped both new portraits (and to tell the truth, because of the familiar on the second portrait, and the fact that the head is on the right side of it, not in the centre of the pic. it's hard to crop it), and see how they fit the original portraits' proportions:

Archaos

@bengoshi That's because the BG portraits are basically busts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_(sculpture)

"A bust is a sculpted or cast representation of the upper part of the human figure, depicting a person's head and neck, as well as a variable portion of the chest and shoulders."

It's something I noticed and when I see portraits that don't fit those variables, they seem off.
The colors also contribute to that authentic feel.

Argyle

I like the color palette and artistry of the new portraits, but why are they all looking sideways? I never liked the original Faldorn portrait very much ... she has three canine teeth on each side of her mouth.

Winterisle

The first one is a human ranger and the second an elven mage/sorcerer/druid/something like that.

meagloth

The colors look authentic but they still seem a little off to me. The owl in the second one seems out of character, and moving the guys face to the side of the screen is... Weird. They're also zoomed out to much as bengoshi pointed out.

Amber_Scott

I asked Dialect to make sure they downloaded as bmps. Ugh! Thanks for converting them here, and glad the feedback is (mostly) positive. Thea does beautiful work.

Amber_Scott

(Also I had the idea to make each of the portraits feature a "familiar" in some way. We couldn't fit an animal companion into the ranger's portrait so we used the wolf's-head amulet instead.)

Kamigoroshi

I'm all for more familiar portraits in The Familiar Magazine!
Like giant space Tardigrades. Always had a weakness for those adorable moss piglets.
Or a Spirit Snake for our Totemic Druids forumites. Best of all of course would be a pet slime for the Oozemasters amongst us. *wink* *wink*

JuliusBorisov

Amber_Scott said:

We couldn't fit an animal companion into the ranger's portrait so we used the wolf's-head amulet instead.)

Didn't think about it like a ranger's portrait. Although I saw a bow there, I still thought about a mage. Maybe it's a hood, maybe it's a bit Dynaheir-esque look.

lunar

bengoshi said:

Amber_Scott said:

We couldn't fit an animal companion into the ranger's portrait so we used the wolf's-head amulet instead.)

Didn't think about it like a ranger's portrait. Although I saw a bow there, I still thought about a mage. Maybe it's a hood, maybe it's a bit Dynaheir-esque look.

I thought m/t. Maybe a 20 years older, tanned Imoen. That expression reminds me of her bg1 portrait.