New Arcanum Portraits

Not all of them are great or belong in the cohesive "feel" of Arcanum, but some of them are pretty nice looking.

 

Thanks Bob! I'll have a more complete pack soon, just working out some of the races.

Philes, Thank you so much for that support! I mean it. Contributions no matter how small make games like Arcanum just a bit more fun then if they had not been contributed.

Spiffy: Thanks, I agree the third and fourth are a bit eh. They don't work at all. I used the old guy to add some form of magic portraiture to represent a magic wielding type or for NPC. He's pretty creepy lookin'. The fourth well, I was hoping Perlman could pass as a half-oger here. But he just looks like some regular dude. Thanks for the quality control.

Drog Black Tooth: Comic book heroes? You can only be talking about Hellboy because he's the only one. Besides, I only used Hellboy, (and now Carrey from Unfortunate events), because It's damn hard to get any realistic photographic Half Oger/Half Orc portraits. The Movie industry is the best place for those. Since all my portraits are true photos of people. Less then a handful are of famous actors. The rest are regular people who dress up or model in Victorian steampunk. And that concept will always stay true my to goal.
Second, there is A Lot more going on then a simple sepia filter. In fact, I don't even use a sepia filter. I use a well thought out antiquing method for all the portraits. The same methods I would use professionally, just toned down. I try to keep things simple to produce all the portraits, although that doesn't always happen. My goal is to reproduce antique like photographs (not paintings) that have the Arcanum steampunk look.
And personally I like those old time Victorian photos.
I'm actually going to use a few more of famous actors because there portraits look pretty amazing. And the movie industry spent millions of dollars to get their actors to look good in their parts. The majority of the portraits will stay with my basic concept and goal. As for being ugly, well, you can have your opinion. But note this; you only cropped and somewhat cleaned up paintings form artists You criticize someone if they had used a "simple" sepia filter over a photo but you didn't even really manipulate the images you posted much from their original state! I can take some pretty harsh criticism, but wow, you have gall. Instead of criticizing my contribution with those words, why not just create your own pack so everyone can enjoy both.

I actually really like the portraits you found, I've seen them before. And others also. The problem with them however is I don't think we would be able to keep finding them in a consistent manner to use for most of the Arcanum portraits. All with the same look for each race and gender, all in the same quality. Nor find them with any steampunkish nuances which is why I choose the photos I used. I'd also like to see you pull out a Half-Orc in a portrait like those you posted.

And you say ugly. LoL. Whatever man, seriously.

If you wanted to take the time to actually draw and paint those portraits to have consistency and steampunk style. Then we really have something and I'd say go for it.
But I'm not going to do that for simple portraits for Arcanum, I'm not getting paid for it. Did you even download the pack and gander at them? Or just the ones posted here that I am experimenting with?

You know what? I'm sorry If this post sounds too harsh, I don't like, in fact I hate, forum fights. So I apologize for the whole tone of this post. I just needed to defend myself and the portraits I spent time creating.

And with that, a few more portraits for consideration



Three new actor portraits:
Gong Li
Gary Oldman
Sean Connery

 

You do understand that these "portraits" look completely out of place? I don't care if you draw them yourself or steal them (several of original in-game portraits are tracings actually) or whatever you do with the images, I care for the end result. And it's completely out of style. What's next? Anime portrait pack?

 

I have no problem keeping with a consistent look. But it feels more like your comments are out of context and totally unwarranted. If you look at the portraits in my pack and the original samples. They fit quite well with the theme or Arcanum! So I have no idea what your talking about.
They may not be done with a painterly look like the original Arcanum portraits. But that's the point! The original portraits are not to my taste.
I prefer the vintage photograph. Besides, the game developers gave their customers the "option" to create their own portraits in any fashion and style they chose. So with that in mind, I am being completely consistent with Arcanum. Using photos at all is not what the developers originally had in mind. But I honestly feel they missed out on an original idea.

I agree that the last few I posted are not really working well, but I posted them for comments. As you can see, or maybe not, they don't have the finished quality of the other portraits I created. That's why I didn't post the 64x64 files. But I'm sure you read this whole post and not just commenting on those.

Comparing these to anime is simply ludicrous.

I respect the work you've done with your patch, but your comments make me feel like your the gustoppo of what goes into Arcanum.

 

Have you played the game actually (I don't think so, since you're talking about female Gnomes and Half-Ogers)? People in Arcanum mostly look like real people, there's no OMG STEAMPUNK thing. People don't wear such extravagant clothes or make up.

Anyway, the portraits in the game are based on oil paintings. A proper fan-made portrait pack has never been done, and I personally don't have time or desire to collect and edit fitting oil paintings myself, I just posted a hasty example of how it should be done.

However, if you prefer sepia filtered shots of action movie stars/comic book heroes over traditional oil paintings then I don't have anything more to say.

 

Be a critic, not an asshole.
That's my job. Now to find a proper emoticon without the use of spectacles (which I've apparently misplaced in a drunken stuper)...not finding a smoking smily....damn.
Anyway, the portraits that came with arcanum are boring, and other than time period placement, lack everything and anything that might be construed as interesting. None of them have a feel for anything the game is about. You're a social con artist, there's the same pictures. You're an exiled technologist, there's the same pictures. You're a conformist mage, there's the same pictures. Wow, they're the same pictures. No variation to get theme or feeling to the individual. The game would be better placing the player into the role if they had portraits that weren't just men in black suits.

 

You know what. I love history, and I am an oil painter. I graduated from an art school in New York, my major was Illustration. I love the old masters and can't stop myself from looking at the wonderful art and portraiture produced in oil. But we are talking about a game. And as much as I'd love to sit here and paint portraits with my time, even digitally, of proper Arcanum persona in a style consitant to the originals. I am Not going to do that. The amount of time it would take is silly.
No one is going to pay me to produce such a thing, I have plenty of other things in my life that need attending to which are WAY more important. And (forgive me) to hear you make your statements on something I did for the fun of it, in my idle time, for free. And originally just for myself. Is something I have a strong reaction to.

Umm, Half Ogers and Female Gnomes ARE a part of Arcanum!
You can choose them as your Player character!
And extravagant clothes? Again did you even look at the portraits I made?
It doesn't even matter to me at this point.

The whole idea of Arcanum came from the steampunk movement, they just made it more fantasy.

I'm not a nasty person, and I'm going to try to keep this as civil as possible ,so to everyone in the forum, even you drog. I ask for your forgiveness for the tone and manner of these posts.

 

Oh, please stop with the whole "I ask for forgiveness" thing. Your posts aren't idiotic or aggressive or anything else that would require you to apologize. You're just defending your work in a heated discussion and it's okay to get a bit worked up.

Anyway, you were wrong about two things.

First, there are no half ogers, only half ogres.
Second, you cannot play as a female gnome.

 

I would call for to apply the simply statement both gentleman have made, in one way or another.
This is simply a matter of preferences. Indeed this new portrait pack is not made in the same way as the Arcanum portaits. If you like this or not, is simply a matter of subjective opinion.
Those that want to use it can, those that don't want to use it don't.
Similiar discussions can be found in other boards of games that use portaits like BG for instance. There is no accounting for taste so let us leave it.

This applies to more of these things like the 'extravagant clothes' which, I assume, Drog means for instance with the metal mask, that some people find the pinnacle of steampunk. Once again, I see no reason to fight, as it is a subject thing to what people find extravagant for a steampunk setting.

DarkSentinel thank you for the time you put in to it. Although I won't be using your portaits as I actually enjoy the more casual look of the portaits (and have downloaded several new ones, that fit if not completely still somewhat arcanum style), but I am sure someone will.

I assume you use the english version of the game, but as Dirtman and Drog said... it is suprising you talk about female gnomes (Oger - Ogre can be a spelling/dyslectic problem), for you can not play them (as with halfling and Half-Ogre females) even if you see them walk in cities.

 

DarkSentinel - A potential source for a couple, three portraits is the TV show "The Lost World".
The time-period is close enough for steampunk use.

http://www.lostworldtv.net/

 

Thanks everyone, I like what you all had to say. And yeah I misspelled Ogre.

I never really paid attention that one couldn't play as a female Gnome, since you can play as a Male Gnome. Nor as a Female Ogre, just the Male counter part. I haven't tried playing as those characters before, I thought I saw them as options but my mistake. I've only played as a Human and never tried anything else. Only glanced through the options.

It makes portrait making easier so I'm not complaining.


Deathsangel: No worries about not using them. That's the beauty of having options.

rroyo: Thanks man, I'll definitely check it out!

 

Alright, I'll be a critic.

The original portraits are PAINTINGS not cosplay (or whatever you call it) photos that someone took.

The original portraits are colour, not sepia.

These looks like they're for Fallout, not Arcanum. (Nazis, Hellboy, bondage gear, my chemical romance outfits...)

Way too dramatic/loud for Arcanum (the original portraits were classy.)

So in my opinion, if you want it, these just don't work right now... but with a bit of work they could.

 

An elf after my own black decrepit heart.

 

What the hell?

 

These are pretty good quality. Thanks.

 

The delicate genius of certain Arcanum modders/patchers continues to amuse me.

 

:/ Dark Elf's mentioning of Perlman never being out of place in a Troika context. My text was nothing but a minor wordplay utilizing the classical cliche' "after my own heart" to mean "dark elf", the person who's statement mentioned above I was agreeing with.

 

Ok guys, Version 2 of the portrait pack is done.
I added quite a bit more to it and eliminated a lot of doubles because I felt the races should have their own original portraits.

Only the masked characters are added as multiples to allow them to be available to other races. And one pic of Perlman has hellboy.

here is the updated link: http://darksky1.110mb.com/Archives/Portrait_V2.zip

The top post link will be updated as well.