Vincent van Gogh in Arcanum

The artist's self-portrait deserves nothing less than to be called an inspiration. The anatomically bizarre ear alone would be enough to convince me.

 

Good find, I've never been a fan of the human portraits in the game, always so old or ugly. always end up using that Doone fellow's face.

 

Wow, that's actually pretty cool.

I love how we're still able to find all kinds of cool references in Arcanum, even though it's been out since forever.

 

I wish a developer would weigh in on this. I'm not quite convinced.

 

Neither am I.
There is something familiar about that picture, and I'm sure I've seen the original somewhere before, but there's also too many differences to make me think it's a stylized portrait of Van Gogh.

 

I've figured that every member will have to decide for himself. As for me, for years I knew there was something insane in the HUM4 portrait, but I just couldn't put my finger on it. The moment I saw the self-portrait I felt so very enlightened in this matter. I mentioned the ear, since its lean looks quite unreal for anyone, so it's quite a 'coincidence' that it's the same in the self-portrait and HUM4.

 

I'm too tired/actually procrastinating to go look for past threads, but didn't we already reveal who this was?

 

I don't recall seeing it before. It's not in the Easter Eggs section.

:checks stealthily:

Or maybe it is.



I'd say HUM4 has a bit from both individuals (Gordon's entirety and Gogh's insanity, age and wicked ear), yet of course John Brown Gordon proves to be the real basis.

 

The ear is probably just a coincidence. The self-portrait was done in 1887, and Van Gogh cut off his left ear (which is the ear pictured here, the image is actually flipped) in 1889.

 

Well, it took care of his ear-painting problem.

 

Yes, most propably. At the moment - after I've seen the comparison with Gordon - I'm not saying that the similiarities between HUM4 and the self-portrait must be anything more than coincideces. I'm just saying that when I look at HUM4, I simply see van Gogh, even though I now know it isn't him.

I did that on purpose so that the portrait and HUM4 would show the same half profile. It made the similarities more noticable.

Good one. :thumbup: