I don't even know who this person is (I'm not a movie or TV person, actually), but wow?
She is famous because of her role as a survivor on a mysterious island, in LOST series. I guess her character is a natural fit for a BG character. She was practically a ranger there, with great survival and tracking skills and all. Also, chaotic good alignment suits her too, she meant well but had trouble listening to authority (ignoring Jack's orders all the time, lol) ..ahh I miss the series.
The worst part is, I get the reference. I blame my sister for it. She is the only person in the world able to force me to suffer all the way through such a painful-to-watch movie. ...Um... no offense to those of you who like it, of course.
@TiaxRulesAll, thank you very much for taking care of the thread while I was gone. Do you think you can hold the fort a little longer? I'm gonna drop a picture or two later today, and then I'll probably be gone till next year. (You know, Christmas, birthday, unfinished gift-comic, New Year... maybe some actual playing... it eats up a lot of time. Great pictures you've been supplying. Making a pink person brown - yes, it's a pain in the wrist. I think the best results I got was with following procedure (I use GIMP) :
-making three copies of the face layer, -painting over one of them with a burn tool set to maximum burn - this results with lots of orange, so the next step is to -lower color saturation of the burnt layer, -painting over second layer with an airbrush set to 'multiply', using a light gray. -setting opacity of the modified layers to the value that gives best result. (I start with 50% on both and keep changing it until I'm happy with what I see). -taking an eraser to parts of the 'dark' layers - eyes are a must, lips are negotiable. Then it's just a matter of adding shadow and light to certain areas, more on this later.
As for your other pictures, the one thing I'd do differently would be making play of light and shadows more prominent. I do it like this:
I make a new, empty layer on top of the picture, call it 'shadows' and set it to 'multiply'. Then I pick a light gray color, sometimes with a tinge of green, blue or violet, and airbrush over the areas that I want darker - typically it's the hairline, sides of nose, spot under nose and under lips, edges of face, sometimes areas around eyes. I usually make more than one such layer, mostly for places where shadows overlap (e.g. if one shadow indicates a curve of the cheek, and the other is just a regular shadow, cast by hair, hand, weapon or whatever). Then I make another new empty layer, call it 'light' and set it to 'soft light'. I pick a cream or peach, rarely white/light gray color, and airbrush over areas I want light - typically cheeks, parts of forehead, curve of lips, upper edge of lips, spot under the nose (the part which isn't shadowed), edge of lower eyelids, bridge of nose. Again, I usually make more than one of those layers, if I want the light to be more intense in specific places. Sometime I use 'hard light' setting too, but rarely.
Quick note about colors - I usually have at least one original BG2 portrait loaded alongside the picture I'm working on, and I often sample colors from it when choosing color of light.
There, I think I talked your ear off quite enough. ^__^; I'll be back in the evening with a picture and another tangent.
These guys must know a lot of really, really good looking people.
If you want to be ridiculous about it...
I actually wasn't --- (well , not totally anyway).
The premise of the argument is that these artists do 99% white people because that is what they know. First, I'm not willing to accept that this corresponds to whether they know black people but let's assume that this really means people they know particularly well.
These artists also do probably 80% gorgeous women among their female models (perhaps higher). Does a different standard apply to why so few are normal looking? The men seem to range from ugly to gorgeous but the skew towards gorgeous guys is much, much less severe.
I think it is more about artist choice than about who or what they know.
Thanks everybody for the nice comments. @Syntia13 Thanks for the tips. And no I certainly don't mind watching the thread while your away. Been probably spending more time here then playing the game
@Smeagolheart hmm. I have to disagree on that one. I suppose it may appear that way a little but it took up no more space then the original head I covered over. maybe its just the slightly downward turned head, exposing more of the scalp and making it seem bigger that way..
@DarkDogg Well, the extra contrasty background was on purpose. The armor and some details were lost or too dark from the original photos high contrasted background, so I had to hide those missing details as best i could by keeping it dark in some places. I may go back and re-touch some things later, not sure.
These guys must know a lot of really, really good looking people.
If you want to be ridiculous about it...
I actually wasn't --- (well , not totally anyway).
....snip... I think it is more about artist choice than about who or what they know.
Well I can't speak for everybody but personally I feel Its just a matter of who wants to draw ugly people? sure you may have an idea to make something realistic but I always find my motivation to complete a "pretty" or "good looking" picture better then If I was trying to complete a picture of a subject I didnt like or thought was ugly. So yeah, Its just a subconscience thing I think.
@Moomintroll - I don't know if there is a forum rule on it or not, but some of us check these forums from work. Maybe you want to hide an image like that behind a Spoiler tag or something, with a giant NSFW label?
These guys must know a lot of really, really good looking people.
If you want to be ridiculous about it...
I actually wasn't --- (well , not totally anyway).
....snip... I think it is more about artist choice than about who or what they know.
Well I can't speak for everybody but personally I feel Its just a matter of who wants to draw ugly people? sure you may have an idea to make something realistic but I always find my motivation to complete a "pretty" or "good looking" picture better then If I was trying to complete a picture of a subject I didnt like or thought was ugly. So yeah, Its just a subconscience thing I think.
You are just being ridiculous for the sake of it sorry.
As Tiax points out for the most part you want to draw or create something pleasing. Thank means pretty folk more often than not, sadly.
You know fine well what I meant by "you do what you know".
Black people have quite different facial structures, and genetic features from white people and I think that without quite a bit of practice to "get it right" (were I an artist) I think that I would draw quite a lot of ugly or hideous looking black people were I to make the attempt (again presuming I was an artist). I would need to do that because to draw a white person I need only look in the mirror, or imagine it, because as a white person I know what white people typically look like almost instinctually.
It's what I know. I know white people because I am a white person.
If someone said to me "go draw me a pretty female elf please" chances are I would come back with a blonde haired blue eyed elf along the lines of Galadriel.
If you had a black artist, who was into fantasy, and said the same thing to them. "Can you draw me a pretty female elf?" guaranteed that that artist (unless you specified otherwise) would draw you a black elf, someone looking like Halle Berry with elf ears maybe.
Unless you specified exactly what you wanted in the elf, you would get what THEY (the artist) considers pretty. If they are drawing for themselves, then you would get what THEY want to draw, and most of the time unless they make a concious effort to do something different then they are going to default to "what they know".
These guys must know a lot of really, really good looking people.
If you want to be ridiculous about it...
I actually wasn't --- (well , not totally anyway).
....snip... I think it is more about artist choice than about who or what they know.
Well I can't speak for everybody but personally I feel Its just a matter of who wants to draw ugly people? sure you may have an idea to make something realistic but I always find my motivation to complete a "pretty" or "good looking" picture better then If I was trying to complete a picture of a subject I didnt like or thought was ugly. So yeah, Its just a subconscience thing I think.
I know you aren't arguing that black people = ugly people so I assume you think there is something different going on with race. Nevertheless, I don't think it is a generic "beauty" side either since there are lots and lots of ugly to marginal looking men in fantasy pictures. The looks department for most fantasy art seems to correspond strongly to hollywood blockbusters....it is OK to have Vincent Schiavelli, Willem Dafoe, Steve Buscemi, etc. but nearly every woman needs to be someone an average guy would dream of sleeping with.
@fitscotgaymer While I think that it's true, a lot of artists draw people who look somehow like themselves (unintentionally).
I don't think you're right with your elf analogy at all. If you said "draw a person" then maybe.. If a LotRO art director, asked an artist to draw an elf - it would be white, it really depends what the drawing is for, people have a lot of preconceptions about how things are in fantasy, I think.
That's just skin colour of course, the easiest thing to change. It's quite possible the facial features would have something of the artist about them, as you say.
@ahf no I was just talking to the "really good looking people" comment and the "artist choice" comments.
As far as race goes. I believe its just that white people are simply more common in fantasy. I don't know why it is, but it is. I suppose If I felt like black people would be common around amn and Baldurs gate. Then I guess I would make more. As it is the only ones I know of are Valygar and Dynaheir and possibly even Minsc in some interpretations.
At the same time though, the more I think about it the more dark skinned fantasy warriors in movies and such I can start to remember in my head. They are out there, just not as common I guess.
I think it's safe to say that white people are more common in fantasy where the context is culturally informed by areas in the real world, that are white.
Completely new to the realms, when I first stepped out of the ruined tunnel, into Athkatla, with the music, the architecture, I was expecting more Central-Asian accents and faces. Given the context, we make our own assumptions.
@AHF about ugly men and pin-up women in fantasy art. My theory is that until recently (or maybe still) majority of professional artists are men. And men like to look at pretty women, but don't give a damn about scrumptious men. In fact, they don't want to play as pretty boys - they want to play as tough badasses in full plate, and romance with pretty girls in metal bikinis. Hence that particular 'art direction'. There is also the factor of familiarity. If you've seen 950 pictures picturing blue-eyed curvy blonde princesses, and then are charged with drawing a princess yourself, there's a high chance you'll draw a clone of those, simply because that registers as 'normal matrix' in your perception. (Of course, if you are a contrary person like some I know... *glances in the mirror* ...you might end up drawing a freckled redhead with no body fat. [Fun fact: no body fat = no (or very small) boobs] Or a Chinese princess. Or Pocahontas. Or Mae Jemison.
End tangent No 1. Begin tangent No 2.
So I've been making the BG portraits for three months straight now, but when it came to actually playing, I found myself at a loss. Which of my favorite PCs should I play as? After long deliberations I won't bore you with, I decided on creating a new one. First I decided on a class. Then I decided on alignment. Then the gender. But for the life of me I couldn't decide on appearance and name. Until the recent series of posts here made me remember and realize: The only PC I finished NWN2 with was black(dark gray), my favorite PC I played in DAO was brawn(very dark brawn), the only PC I finished DA2 with was brown(dark tan)... ...why on Earth am I not making any brawn BG portraits? (The gnome doesn't count) Am I stupid or what? I quickly went to uncle google for some base image, and on the first search page I said, "There! That's her! That's Daria!" (BTW, that was the picture: http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSZjIMo0HT3_qDZq9eIVoB2X7g1KNtLH4MVkKbLglI5DqyIohyB3-0Kk9PU7g
And in this convoluted way my newest PC was born. She is a ranger and she will turn to religion and dual-class to a cleric later on, after a traumatic experience (return to Candlekeep or Chateau Irenicus, I'm not sure yet). Syntia13 - heavily overthinking her PCs and rambling on and on about them since 1999.
I don't know what AHF is doing, if he/she is just trolling or being serious or just being awkward to be funny or what... I dunno.
Not trying to troll.
The first post was being funny since the people I none of the people I roll played with ever married models while most of the fantasy female images are models. The rest have been more genuine because I definitely think it is a combination of intentional and subconscious choices by fantasy artists to portray a predominantly white characters (probably more reflective of a sales demographic that skews white than reflective of the community and social circles of the artists) and gorgeous women.
I agree with @Syntia13's statement and think that we are saying similar things (and neither of us is trolling):
@AHF about ugly men and pin-up women in fantasy art. My theory is that until recently (or maybe still) majority of professional artists are men. And men like to look at pretty women, but don't give a damn about scrumptious men. In fact, they don't want to play as pretty boys - they want to play as tough badasses in full plate, and romance with pretty girls in metal bikinis. Hence that particular 'art direction'.
I also love the Daria image. I'll be saving that in my portrait file if you don't mind!
I'm not going to use the Daria portrait because, well, she's Daria. Instead of a photo, she's something more concrete. It probably makes no sense, but I'm crazy that way
Just step back, slowly, while smiling. I'll think I'm okay.
@TiaxRulesAll, thank you, then. I'm glad to know the thread is in good hands. @AHF, save away, sharing portraits is what this thread is all about. @reedmilfam I'll take this as a compliment. ^__^ And hey, I get the crazy too, sometimes. ... Wanna trade pills? ;P
Okay now, this is the last one today and prolly last one this year. Recolored Montaron. The changes aren't terribly obvious, but they are there. After staring at Montaron's right hand for hours (exaggeration) I decided that he was squeezing a purse he'd just cut from someone's belt, and is showing it off triumphantly. So I made the purse a bit more visible, and made hands clearer. (How? I made my dad pose for me with my fav forged iron knife and a letter pouch. The pouch turned out too dark, so in the picture I replaced it with with a yellow one found in the net. Then recolored hands to fit the pic). Does the right hand (his right) stand out from the picture too much? It feels out of place to me, but maybe I'm just obsessing over it?
@Syntia13, Unfortunately, the right hand does stick out a little too much. I think dirtier hands are probably needed, or something. The lighting is almost bright on the hands and doesn't (to me) fit the lighting. Still, way better than I could do.
I'd say it's the lighting; Monty's hands should be under the same harsh glare that his face is under, so the white shininess and harsh shadows need to be more apparent.
Eyeballing it, I'd also say the left hand is slightly bigger than the original and doesn't seem to be going into his sleeve quite right.
what the heck is he doing with his right hand anyway? holding a handkerchief? I think maybe he's supposed to have two daggers, one in each hand? Good work though... the original leaves a lot to be desired
Great work there Syntia. His hands does indeed look slightly off though, if you look at them spesifically. Think maybe it's the "outline" on them, looks a bit penciled. And as Pantalion said the left hand is slightly changed; if he's wearing a bracer that doesn't wrap around the arm entirely (just protects one side of it) then it works, if it's his sleeve then he'd better see a tailor to get that rip fixed. I'm not sure which it is. Doubt I'd have noticed either thing if noone had mentioned it though, heh.
Comments
Great job, once more.
What about another background? With less contast.
Answer - Look above.
I don't even know who this person is (I'm not a movie or TV person, actually), but wow?
@TiaxRulesAll, thank you very much for taking care of the thread while I was gone.
Great pictures you've been supplying.
Making a pink person brown - yes, it's a pain in the wrist. I think the best results I got was with following procedure (I use GIMP) :
-painting over one of them with a burn tool set to maximum burn - this results with lots of orange, so the next step is to
-lower color saturation of the burnt layer,
-painting over second layer with an airbrush set to 'multiply', using a light gray.
-setting opacity of the modified layers to the value that gives best result. (I start with 50% on both and keep changing it until I'm happy with what I see).
-taking an eraser to parts of the 'dark' layers - eyes are a must, lips are negotiable.
Then it's just a matter of adding shadow and light to certain areas, more on this later.
As for your other pictures, the one thing I'd do differently would be making play of light and shadows more prominent. I do it like this:
Then I make another new empty layer, call it 'light' and set it to 'soft light'. I pick a cream or peach, rarely white/light gray color, and airbrush over areas I want light - typically cheeks, parts of forehead, curve of lips, upper edge of lips, spot under the nose (the part which isn't shadowed), edge of lower eyelids, bridge of nose. Again, I usually make more than one of those layers, if I want the light to be more intense in specific places. Sometime I use 'hard light' setting too, but rarely.
Quick note about colors - I usually have at least one original BG2 portrait loaded alongside the picture I'm working on, and I often sample colors from it when choosing color of light.
There, I think I talked your ear off quite enough. ^__^; I'll be back in the evening with a picture and another tangent.
The premise of the argument is that these artists do 99% white people because that is what they know. First, I'm not willing to accept that this corresponds to whether they know black people but let's assume that this really means people they know particularly well.
These artists also do probably 80% gorgeous women among their female models (perhaps higher). Does a different standard apply to why so few are normal looking? The men seem to range from ugly to gorgeous but the skew towards gorgeous guys is much, much less severe.
I think it is more about artist choice than about who or what they know.
Her head is way bigger than the rest of her body in this picture no? Lookit how long her head is from top of her head to her chin.
Can you shrink it a bit and it would be perfect(er).
@Syntia13 Thanks for the tips. And no I certainly don't mind watching the thread while your away. Been probably spending more time here then playing the game
@Smeagolheart hmm. I have to disagree on that one. I suppose it may appear that way a little but it took up no more space then the original head I covered over. maybe its just the slightly downward turned head, exposing more of the scalp and making it seem bigger that way..
@DarkDogg Well, the extra contrasty background was on purpose. The armor and some details were lost or too dark from the original photos high contrasted background, so I had to hide those missing details as best i could by keeping it dark in some places. I may go back and re-touch some things later, not sure.
It'll also give it that elusive "don't look at this!" factor.
Thank you!
@AHF
You are just being ridiculous for the sake of it sorry.
As Tiax points out for the most part you want to draw or create something pleasing. Thank means pretty folk more often than not, sadly.
You know fine well what I meant by "you do what you know".
Black people have quite different facial structures, and genetic features from white people and I think that without quite a bit of practice to "get it right" (were I an artist) I think that I would draw quite a lot of ugly or hideous looking black people were I to make the attempt (again presuming I was an artist).
I would need to do that because to draw a white person I need only look in the mirror, or imagine it, because as a white person I know what white people typically look like almost instinctually.
It's what I know. I know white people because I am a white person.
If someone said to me "go draw me a pretty female elf please" chances are I would come back with a blonde haired blue eyed elf along the lines of Galadriel.
If you had a black artist, who was into fantasy, and said the same thing to them. "Can you draw me a pretty female elf?" guaranteed that that artist (unless you specified otherwise) would draw you a black elf, someone looking like Halle Berry with elf ears maybe.
Unless you specified exactly what you wanted in the elf, you would get what THEY (the artist) considers pretty. If they are drawing for themselves, then you would get what THEY want to draw, and most of the time unless they make a concious effort to do something different then they are going to default to "what they know".
While I think that it's true, a lot of artists draw people who look somehow like themselves (unintentionally).
I don't think you're right with your elf analogy at all. If you said "draw a person" then maybe..
If a LotRO art director, asked an artist to draw an elf - it would be white, it really depends what the drawing is for, people have a lot of preconceptions about how things are in fantasy, I think.
That's just skin colour of course, the easiest thing to change. It's quite possible the facial features would have something of the artist about them, as you say.
As far as race goes. I believe its just that white people are simply more common in fantasy. I don't know why it is, but it is. I suppose If I felt like black people would be common around amn and Baldurs gate. Then I guess I would make more. As it is the only ones I know of are Valygar and Dynaheir and possibly even Minsc in some interpretations.
At the same time though, the more I think about it the more dark skinned fantasy warriors in movies and such I can start to remember in my head. They are out there, just not as common I guess.
Completely new to the realms, when I first stepped out of the ruined tunnel, into Athkatla, with the music, the architecture, I was expecting more Central-Asian accents and faces. Given the context, we make our own assumptions.
End tangent No 1.
Begin tangent No 2.
So I've been making the BG portraits for three months straight now, but when it came to actually playing, I found myself at a loss. Which of my favorite PCs should I play as? After long deliberations I won't bore you with, I decided on creating a new one. First I decided on a class. Then I decided on alignment. Then the gender. But for the life of me I couldn't decide on appearance and name. Until the recent series of posts here made me remember and realize:
The only PC I finished NWN2 with was black(dark gray),
my favorite PC I played in DAO was brawn(very dark brawn),
the only PC I finished DA2 with was brown(dark tan)...
...why on Earth am I not making any brawn BG portraits? (The gnome doesn't count) Am I stupid or what?
I quickly went to uncle google for some base image, and on the first search page I said, "There! That's her! That's Daria!"
(BTW, that was the picture: http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSZjIMo0HT3_qDZq9eIVoB2X7g1KNtLH4MVkKbLglI5DqyIohyB3-0Kk9PU7g
And in this convoluted way my newest PC was born. She is a ranger and she will turn to religion and dual-class to a cleric later on, after a traumatic experience (return to Candlekeep or Chateau Irenicus, I'm not sure yet). Syntia13 - heavily overthinking her PCs and rambling on and on about them since 1999.
You get my point though, don't you?
I don't know what AHF is doing, if he/she is just trolling or being serious or just being awkward to be funny or what... I dunno.
@Syntia13
That model is actually really pretty. Ya know, for a girl. :-P lol.
I also do the same thing with my PCs. They all have a background and whatnot.
The first post was being funny since the people I none of the people I roll played with ever married models while most of the fantasy female images are models. The rest have been more genuine because I definitely think it is a combination of intentional and subconscious choices by fantasy artists to portray a predominantly white characters (probably more reflective of a sales demographic that skews white than reflective of the community and social circles of the artists) and gorgeous women.
I agree with @Syntia13's statement and think that we are saying similar things (and neither of us is trolling): I also love the Daria image. I'll be saving that in my portrait file if you don't mind!
Just step back, slowly, while smiling. I'll think I'm okay.
@AHF, save away, sharing portraits is what this thread is all about.
@reedmilfam
Okay now, this is the last one today and prolly last one this year. Recolored Montaron. The changes aren't terribly obvious, but they are there.
After staring at Montaron's right hand for hours (exaggeration) I decided that he was squeezing a purse he'd just cut from someone's belt, and is showing it off triumphantly. So I made the purse a bit more visible, and made hands clearer.
(How? I made my dad pose for me with my fav forged iron knife and a letter pouch. The pouch turned out too dark, so in the picture I replaced it with with a yellow one found in the net. Then recolored hands to fit the pic).
Does the right hand (his right) stand out from the picture too much? It feels out of place to me, but maybe I'm just obsessing over it?
I'd say it's the lighting; Monty's hands should be under the same harsh glare that his face is under, so the white shininess and harsh shadows need to be more apparent.
Eyeballing it, I'd also say the left hand is slightly bigger than the original and doesn't seem to be going into his sleeve quite right.
"Good" Vanessa:
"Evil" Vanessa: