Character portraits for the non-artistic?

[Thurbane]

Hi all,

Just thought I'd start a thread about character portraits.

If you are anything like me, you have little artistic talent with which to illustrate your favourite game character. I was wondering what people like us do about this?

Are we doomed to the ubiquitous Google image search, which will net us some often disappointing results? Or do you just use verbal descriptions? Do you ask (or pay) someone with artistic talent to render your image?

- T

 

[Nightfall]

Pay Claudio some money. He's got time.

 

[Glyfair]

Are we doomed to the ubiquitous Google image search, which will net us some often disappointing results? Or do you just use verbal descriptions? Do you ask (or pay) someone with artistic talent to render your image?

Google search, when appropriate. I also have Character Artist for CC2. The pictures are pretty primitive, but customizable. When my friend Chris was living in Delaware he would often doing character drawings for us (especially for Champions games).

 

[Nightfall]

*still thinks paying Pozas the 15.00 dollars can't be ALL bad* Right Claudio?

 

[kenobi65]

Being in the same situation as you, here's a few of the things I've done:

1) Use photos of real people. I've used pictures of actors and musicians for many of my PCs. One of the issues is that you can't always find a picture of them in D&D-style garb, but even so, you might be surprised. IMDB.com, one of my favorite web sites anyway, has many pictures of actors.

2) Rather than doing a general image search, narrow it by looking in "appropriate" sites. Elfwood has a huge repository of fantasy art (though of varying quality...after all, most of the contributing artists are amateurs). Nightfall's reference to Claudio (Claudio "Klaus" Pozas) is a pretty good one, actually...he's too busy to do art for hire these days, but he's got some "character" illustrations on his site.

3) Check out the Art Gallery board here on EN World. I'm always impressed by the caliber of some of the artists who regularly post there.

4) I do have a few friends in my groups who are fairly talented artists, and I occasionally impose on them for an illustration.

 

[Nightfall]

Kenobi,

Really? Claudio's busy?! Darn. Oh well. I guess I'll settle for just borrowing from his site.

 

[kenobi65]

Really? Claudio's busy?! Darn. Oh well. I guess I'll settle for just borrowing from his site.

Chuckle. I first discovered his stuff early on in 3E days (I think it might have been when he was first being hosted by EN World, or it might have even been on Eric's original site), and back then, he was taking commission work. I was interested, and was going to contact him, when he got tapped by Fiery Dragon to do the Counter Collections, and suddenly found himself busy.

 

[Umbran]

If you are anything like me, you have little artistic talent with which to illustrate your favourite game character. I was wondering what people like us do about this?

Heromachine 'em!

 

[Klaus]

Chuckle. I first discovered his stuff early on in 3E days (I think it might have been when he was first being hosted by EN World, or it might have even been on Eric's original site), and back then, he was taking commission work. I was interested, and was going to contact him, when he got tapped by Fiery Dragon to do the Counter Collections, and suddenly found himself busy.

Watchoo talkin' about, Willis?

I *am* busy, but I can certainly make room for a commission here and there.

Plus you can pay $10 and get 5 illustrations in the recently-released Pozas Art Packs (link in sig).

If headshots will do, you can't go wrong with Counter Collection Digital and it's 2000 character-and-monster full-color counters. Characters alone, I'm guessing it clicks out at over 200.

 

[kenobi65]

Watchoo talkin' about, Willis?

I *am* busy, but I can certainly make room for a commission here and there.

Ah, my apologies. Once upon a time, if I'm remembering correctly, you did have a page on your web site where you talked about commissions. When you got popular, that page went away. Or, maybe I'm just imagining the whole thing.