Old Portrait pack collections from the early days

Black_Elk

Not sure if this is useful to anyone but I stumbled upon my old archive of NWN portraits earlier tonight. These used to float around at various PWs back in the day. I kept a thousand or so on the hard drive at any given time, but the zip I came across this evening had about 4 thousand image files from Huge to Tiny, so I'm not sure which iteration of the packs this one was, but its mostly images from the 80s to late 90s. Some are details from older 2nd ed D&D gang, but also with a smattering of concept art and NPC style portraits from around the time of 3rd edition. Surely missing some of the glorious stuff that's been created in the interim, but I think this was around the 2000s mainly when I put it together, so still some good stuff there. After all the hours spent formatting seemed a shame to let them just collect dust, so here they are again in case anyone finds a few they like.

Visual style is all over the place, I was going more for volume at the time, but most are details from traditional illustrations scanned from books in my library or older fantasy materials, unless someone I knew wanted a specific one in there for a campaign or PW thing. I still think IWD was the Sweet spot for these games, always, for something cohesive and my favorite all in all, but also found uses for other style portraits when running campaigns. I never got around to redrafting it for BG, but I guess the file sizes there changed with enhanced anyway. I suppose if anyone was motivated to hunt around and chop a few down, as long as you got the huge targas you can edit a bmp L out of it for use in Baldurs Gate. I like Ineth's collection for BG, and use a combination of those and IWD for all the NPCs in my BG enhanced games, but my NWN collection is a bit more ranging with stuff I used for NPCs/DM instead of player characters, you can probably cull it out some for a personal collection I'd think. I had to redownload a tga viewer just to realize what I was looking at lol.

Originally had a grand plan to include all the artists names within the basic file naming scheme, but this collection was from an earlier naming convention. I have a master list in the txt. at the bottom if anyone likes to explore further.

Anyhow, just figured I'd drop in case anyone finds it helpful. Or if you remember any from old runs but lost them along the way like I've done more than a few times haha. I carved it up into a few folders to make it easier to weed through but should be pretty self explanatory.

Monsters
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/j4syfpxes07bmff/AAD2NG4BT8l3CtSlWiTQuh6Pa?dl=0

F_Elf
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/z1wzxgdsu402hpr/AAAQ-ryzIR8iHYjJRirrN08Ca?dl=0

F_Fight
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lvaksuh34xwmt45/AABE51KHVq6C6bxPGnWwJmFFa?dl=0

F_Mage-Priest
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8u0i1uxis7dpbjl/AADmPAZ71o2MQuXEleYiuZhSa?dl=0

F_Rogue
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/olopyz2mp2lr21i/AACYN3I55B5Z-NcOolvhJGLMa?dl=0

F_Short
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uuplzo47wuoxvmq/AABwrcUEB1fLcHNwIo8z2P3Za?dl=0

M_Dwarf
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/oqr1amx8hy9kawn/AAAMPlbdtQ1v-UWwUJIefKsja?dl=0

M_Elf
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lmbbua51o9ckyhh/AAAQxwPIStZShyT1Aewn9HU_a?dl=0

M_Fight
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bkez2c0t97v4c2x/AADNEExBN7kosSCTCqDu0WEIa?dl=0

M_Mage-Priest
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qq9q943xles48yk/AACk64LgHGa1krGzjhTWUbO-a?dl=0

M_Rogue
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fg9irxzsy3axr6r/AABSffJlZK1LgI8BzaaQ1DWta?dl=0

M_Short
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/evhil9wb0pvjmx9/AAC90Z3ydQmbupJH6l9ThqXca?dl=0

M_BG-IWD
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rx7jh6ab9i2dwni/AABxZTo2Nb1J_k8hAMMfGj04a?dl=0

F_BG-IWD
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3vkopdf4tmvhpcx/AABthgrkNW9FRsiKz-hfwf7Ha?dl=0

list
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6laqgtjv0387vsa/list.txt?dl=0

Have fun diggin' around, catch you next round
best

Jah-Din

Black_Elk

Ps. here are some thumbs, since people probably want a sense of what they're getting. Will see how far the forums let me go with attachments, but I'll start with a highlight from the monsters...

In general I didn't include many shops, recolors or photopaintovers for the pcs in my portrait collections. I definitely like digital painting when its done well, but if it was a retcon of another official portrait image I recognized or an obvious photofilter I'd typically pass it over, but occassionally not. Guess just depended on whether I actually liked the underlying drawing or concept. There might be a few slipped in here and there per various player requests at the time as well, but usually I preferred the more traditional illustration styles whether executed digitally or analog. Medium size down is primarily face crops for all the images since those are more useful, but I tried to get more of the image in the huge/large if I thought it was cool. Otherwise the goal was just to get all the heads at roughly the same size, at least for the smaller crop views since those are the workhorses for mplayer purposes.

Anyhow, here's some bad guys...

Black_Elk

Some highlights from the male pc types...

Black_Elk

Highlights from the female pc types from stuff I used on campaigns. Most of the rest in the packs was for like one off npcs not sure how usable it would be. Anyhow should give a sense of the better stuff in there, lot of 80s and 90s mostly hehe. But never know, somebody might find something in there they were looking for. If I track anything else down old school while rummaging around the ancient hard drives will let you know.

Best,
Elk

Atrophiederic

Thank you for sharing, friend @Black_Elk ! Portrait packs are always fun to dig through!

Black_Elk

Anytime! Just glad to see people still around who enjoy portraits hehe. The unfortunate thing is that I know I had these and probably another thousand images in addition, all formatted and named in a much more systematic way. One of my buddies at the time wrote me a simple renaming program for the original targa project to handle all the files, so everything was all dialed by race/class etc, but I haven't been able to find that one in a couple years. Probably on some external drive in storage somewhere. I recall a lot of scanning, since smart phones didn't exist yet, had to use the old flat bed scanner for a lot of stuff, probably would be a lot easier these days to camp out in a library with the phone cam haha. Anyhow I know there was a lot more from the golden age, Elmore's, Parkinson's, Brom's etc and a bunch of more contemporary stuff from the early 2000's. At one point I went to school with some of the concept artists who worked on the portrait art for those old black isle games and a few of the peeps who set up Massive Black, or else ran into others via conceptart org where everyone used to hang out before it was defunct. I can muddle my way through some stuff, but never really had the chops to fully draw my ideal portrait for use in these games (profile is about as close as I ever got, and it doesn't quite read at tiny size haha), some of those peeps were straight ninja though! Like just the sheer number of cool portraits out there, pretty staggering once you start looking around and learning about illustration of the last century. But I can see that quite a few portraits I remember really liking and resizing are missing from this folder. I think it must have been the first or second attempt at a collection just looking at all the random ass names of the files lol. But yeah, if I hunt down the other stuff I'll post it for sure, since hosting larger files is much easier these days than it was way back when.

I still think the ability to use custom 2D portraits was a big part of what made NWN and the Infinity games so special, and I feel a definite sense of nostalgia for that era. I remember getting involved in the discussion when the idea was first floated, to switch to 3D when Obsidian took over the sequel. It was a decision I just couldn't get behind and still don't really understand. The second it was announced that a switch to 3D without a 2D portrait fall-back and I hag a nagging sense that they would never be able to deliver on the initial promise of limitless customization options, or at least not in anything like a timely fashion. It definitely impacted my enthusiasm for the later installments. Even almost two decades on, the technology and talent needed to create 3D models on par with even the more rudimentary 2D portraits is still just barely at the point where its approaching a similar level of artistry/accessibility. Not that there aren't plenty of kick ass models out there in modern games, but those kind of art assets are pretty demanding in terms of the zots, so it's no wonder if we saw a lag time of an almost a generation playing catch up. Meantime there are still tons of people painting portraits and doing illustration whether traditional or digital over the last 20 some odd years, that it's almost painful to think of how we used to get by. Every time I launch BG1 and see Toehead McFighterson staring back at me during char creation I have to chuckle. That game was practically crying out for custom portraits, basically from day 1, but least they had the foresight to farm that one out to the community. Icewind Dale had much stronger art direction in the portraits department, and you can see the staying power, as people still really love those portraits and continue to port them around.

I know for a lot of players of these games a good portrait is the starting point, and they will build out some pretty complex and varied PCs around their favorite images, once they find a couple they dig. Hopefully people like to keep it going. Even as the game ages, some parts of it retain that timeless appeal. Always

Best,
Elk

ps. Digression, but when I first started playing Baldurs Gate and getting into art, collecting books, going to cons hunting down portraits and all the rest... I'd have thought by now that google or somebody would have found a way to create something like spotify for the visual arts. For whatever reason everyone, or at least casual users of the internet kind of expect still images for free. One of my photographer friends was talking about this phenomenon the other day and I think she was dead on. People expect the stills, whereas if its moving (like audio/video) they will pay the small amounts of like a penny per play or whatever. Anyhow, until artists and illustrators can get paid per pop for tiny bmps or tgas instead of being constantly gifted by random denizens of the web like me, I still feel its important to mention... If you like any of the pics or recognize stuff, check out the list in the lead post. There are a lot more names that could go on and on, and especially people who came up after the time when I was drafting those packs, lots of people who were inspired by IE games and did awesome portraits. Or illustrators in fantasy just producing stellar work right now. Like remember Karla Ortiz? I mean talk about next level. Anyhow, not everyone was in my archive above cause it's pretty old, and there are still greats to find out there. Once you dig around you start bumping into people on account of other people, all doing ace stuff. But back to the point, some of those artists still sell physical prints to support themselves or their estates, or have other ways to lend a hand. So if you see someone you like, peeps might want to swoop a print from the artist or check if they have patreon, like their social media pages, or check out what new projects they get up to that we can support. Just to help shore it up and show the love.

In fact if anyone likes to use this thread to list their favorite artists doing fantasy work go for it or point the way to the new digs. I still feel forums like these are important places for building it better.

Catch you next round!


pps. interesting read
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-rise-fall-internet-art-communities

TarotRedhand

@Black_Elk Just a thought but have you considered posting these in archives to the vault?

TR

Black_Elk

I think I may have had a link up at one point at the old vault, but as I recall there was a requirement at the time that they'd only host original works or custom assets. So I think for portraits it was reserved just for stuff that people had painted themselves. But that was a while back when bioware was running the site, so maybe they were more concerned about people porting in copywrited stuff from other contemporary games or whatnot. If the current vault is hosting user portrait packs and such, and someone wants to add any of these its certainly cool with me. Probably could cut out some of the less polished stuff in that case. Wish they had the formatted file names I eventually assigned, but probably wouldn't take too long to rename to avoid reduplicating or to fit with whatever schemes are more current. Anyhow, good suggestion. I had actually forgotten all about vault if you can believe it hehe. Guess its been a while