Comments on: A Thousand Words: Character Portraits

By: chigdon

chigdon — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 06:50:02 +0000

If you’re having trouble finding an illustration online that fits your character perfectly, my site might be able to help:

http://www.rpgcharacterillustrations.com

By: Qi Chin

Qi Chin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:59:59 +0000

In our upcoming campaign, we are lucky enough that both me and a player are ongoing artists. I've recently drawn a whole-page image of my dwarf cleric in a different campaign, though I never got around to finish coloring it. That being said, it can be good enough to learn how to draw faces only. Specialize on that first, so to speak. Creating a portrait that is what you had in mind all along is, in my opinion, better than picking out an image from the web. Especially when it's well known. A player once used Altair from Assassin's Creed as his character image. It was highly distracting, really.

By: ronin3338

ronin3338 — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:01:31 +0000

For superheroes, I like this:
http://fabricadeherois.blogspot.com/

Other than that, I scour deviantart.com or rpg home sites for most of the artwork I use. Occasionally I’ll search conceptart.org. A lot of game sites (P&P and video) also have art previews or concept art.

I can’t draw, so I’ll print out a character portrait, and use a glue stick to attach it to my character sheet.

By: Scott Martin

Scott Martin — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:42:20 +0000

Thanks DocRyder and Electrocuted-- I had a link to a character actor page that's since gone dead. With your hints, I was able to find the IMBD photo gallery, which looks like a great replacement. I'm terrible about pictures and photos ordinarily, but I'll be starting up a 1920s game soon. Hopefully I'll find some good characters to match the villains and mooks the heroes will encounter.

By: DocRyder

DocRyder — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 07:31:17 +0000

For pictures of actors, you can always try http://www.imdb.com The Internet Movie DataBase. Most actors have a picture there, and many others from behind the camera do as well...

By: Bloodwin

Bloodwin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:41:38 +0000

Luckily I am able to draw but I was always annoyed at the tiny boxes on character sheets one of the drawbacks to being trained as an illustrator is that A4 is the smallest size of paper I can give good results on, I prefer A3 or A2 but then they have to be photographed or scanned in :/ I prefer to find a miniature that looks like my character and paint that however I have problems photographing miniatures, any tips on that would be greatly appreciated.

By: Noumenon

Noumenon — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:32:42 +0000

I like to cut up Magic cards for NPC character portraits. For your own personal PC, Avatarart.com will draw you a sketch of your character for $25. I got the full color version for my favorite one.

By: Alan De Smet

Alan De Smet — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:57:04 +0000

Hrm, looks like my previous post disappeared into the void. While I'd prefer more "realistic" portraits, I don't really want to spend the time to learn how to do so. I've found that Order of the Stick style art captures 90% of what I want, while being within the reach of a computer programmer monkey like myself. Thus, the above.

By: Alan De Smet

Alan De Smet — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:55:15 +0000

Here is a good tutorial on making Order of the Stick style characters using Inkscape. It's similar to the technique I used myself. (I just noticed my own art page with most of the party in one shot contains old versions of several characters, so if you're curious click individual character names in the list at the bottom for the newest version.)

By: Alan De Smet

Alan De Smet — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:37:09 +0000

Order of the Stick showed me that you could convey a lot with a relatively simple design. And while it can be slow going, even a clueless computer programmer like myself with zero art skill can do some satisfying work. Examples: 1, 2, 3. I'm using Inkscape. It wasn't too much work to create a few templates matching Burlew's style. (On that note, I really should release my template for others to use...)

By: Matthew J. Neagley

Matthew J. Neagley — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:13:58 +0000

@Hawksmoor - You can also take a look at Champions Online when it becomes open beta/release. Go to their website and look at the "Rate my Champion" feature. Their character creator has a lot of versitility and options, surpassing even CoX.

By: Leonides

Leonides — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:23:11 +0000

I actually use police sketch software which works VERY well in making faces. You can find a simplified version here: http://flashface.ctapt.de/

By: darrell

darrell — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:17:02 +0000

One I use, especially for D&D and similar; if I'm using a specific miniature for the character, I hunt down a picture of the mini' and use that. Works really well if you're using Wizards' D&D Miniatures.

By: Sewicked

Sewicked — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:22:50 +0000

I often demo the Ironclaw & Jadeclaw games at conventions. I am lucky enough to be in contact with one of the game artists, who is willing to occasionally do NPC portraits for me. It's really hard to find furry 'portraits' otherwise. For other games, it's amazing how many artists at conventions are willing to do B&W sketches for about $15-25. You shop around Artists' Alley for an art style that you like & a price that you can afford. Or, as for our Mutants & Masterminds game, one player got a group portrait done and gave everyone a copy.

By: Ashy

Ashy — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:35:29 +0000

This is precisely one of the issues that we’re solving with our new card based RPG, Untold. Now EVERY character you play will have a character portrait – you simply pick the picture that resonates with you and presto – you play that card!

For more info, check us out here: http://www.untoldthegame.com

Brannon “Ashy” Hollingsworth
Wandering Man and Co-creator of the world’s coolest CBRPG, Untold!