Edited faces for BG

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Tue May 05, 2009 11:58 am

I've been going through the SI face data and trying to copy as many back into BG as I could.

A lot of the faces are a pretty easy one to one transition (like the gargoyle king for draxinsum)

I did have to edit a few, and thought I'd share them.

All progress can be seen at

http://home.comcast.net/~exult/bg_faces.html

Faces you see here are probably made over already

(Edit by Dominus, cleaned up the first post again)

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Tue May 05, 2009 12:03 pm

I'm an idiot....

I know how to use forum codes, I don't know why I tried html tags instead.

Arcadion in mirror and gem (both animated backgrounds)

The Timelord, the blue in his hood and robe sparkles

Shamino, I HATE his SI portrait, so I modified the trapper portrait.

Papa, the naked dude in the cave. I used the nude Frigidazzi shot for Mama, but I needed a nude male... I can't believe I just said that.

Spark, normal and sad. The sad Spark looks terrible, but it's a start.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Tue May 05, 2009 9:20 pm

Not too shabby at all. I've been considering SI portraits for BG for a while now, but I've never had a pixel artist type that's been interested in tackling all of BG's portraits.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Tue May 05, 2009 9:35 pm

Well, I'm definitely a pixel artist type. I'll see how many I feel like working on.

I've got about half of the BG faces swapped out on my game, but almost all of them are just straight out of SI which I imagine most people would be annoyed with.

I've been looking at some more tweaks I can do to keep them somewhat different, hair color, right-left orientation, palettes swaps, etc...

I'll probably post some more shortly, I definitely want to at least do everyone who joins your party.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Wed May 06, 2009 5:07 pm

Some new faces.

Erethian happy and angry

Geoffrey

Gilberto, the wounded guard in Trinsic

Random guards

Horance the Liche and Horance the ghost

Jaana

Julia

Katrina

Mariah

Penumbra

Sentri, needs work on the shading

Tseramed

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Wed May 06, 2009 6:43 pm

I'm probably going to post any further changes at the wiki instead of here.

http://www.thefeudallands.ca/wiki/Idea:SIFaces

kamaka · Post by **kamaka** » Wed May 06, 2009 8:39 pm

nice work! but one thing is bugging me...

Katrina is wearing a golden necklace, in your version of her portrait. Doens't look like the "humblest person" in britannia would wear such a thing hehehe.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Wed May 06, 2009 9:28 pm

I thought about that, but there's nothing particularily prideful about a necklace. I just like the way it looked.

I'm probably going to do Katrina over from the start, I'm not really happy with her yet.

Der · Post by **Der** » Thu May 07, 2009 2:21 pm

Nice work.

However...

I don't like how Spark looks like a realistic rendition of Barney Rubble, and Jaana looks like a clone of that female SI monk. Also, the new portraits for Shamino, Horance and Gilberto make them look like totally different people to me. And since when does the Time Lord have a mustache?

The others look pretty good, though.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Thu May 07, 2009 2:41 pm

You understand I'm not drawing these right? I'm copyng them from SI directly and trying to make minor alterations.

I made Shamino look different intentionally, like I stated above.

Horance and Gilberto ARE totally different people, with the same themes maintained.

I fon't like how Spark looks either, I said above that he was a work in progress.

Jaana IS a clone of that female SI monk. I made her cloak and hood brown instead of black, but there aren't that many details to alter. I might work on her face some, but I like her as she is now.

I'm trying to do EVERY person in BG at this point, so completion is my first goal before I make too many minor adjustments to finished portraits.

Der · Post by **Der** » Thu May 07, 2009 3:16 pm

"You understand I'm not drawing these right? I'm copyng them from SI directly and trying to make minor alterations."

I know. I just don't see the point of using portraits that look nothing like the people they're supposed to depict.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Thu May 07, 2009 3:24 pm

Alright, I caved to peer pressure.

I finished Spark and I'm really happy with his new look.

I made a few alterations to Jaana, nothing too major though.

I removed the necklace from Katrina and did some work on her messed up eyes.

And the Timelord is now clean-shaven.

All of the updates and the new faces are at the TFL Wiki

http://www.thefeudallands.ca/wiki/Idea:SIFaces

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Thu May 07, 2009 3:58 pm

I know. I just don't see the point of using portraits that look nothing like the people they're supposed to depict.

Cause I don't have a secret source for high resolution portraits for incidental characters from BG.

The point is to have better portraits for everybody, I don't see the point in having half of the characters I talk having a totally different style of portrait.

Unless you know where I can find some kind of photo reference for guards in Trinsic that you talk to once, then they're going to look like Flicken and Schmed.

It sound like you don't want to use replacement portraits at all since they won't look EXACTLY like the originals. So what does it matter what my replacement portraits look like?

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Thu May 07, 2009 5:40 pm

Eh, I wouldn't fuss too much about it Lathlas, one thing I've learned over the course of developing TFL is you can try and try, but some people just aren't going to be happy about what you've done with things X Y and Z.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Thu May 07, 2009 6:35 pm

I know. I do appreciate constructive criticism though. I probably never would have tried to fix the Timelords facial hair or changed Jaana's face around otherwise.

I appreciate any feedback anyone has on what can be done to improve these faces.

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Thu May 07, 2009 7:37 pm

Pretty much all of these look a lot more like the SI characters than the people they are supposed to represent. This causes me to think about the SI character instead which poses a major problem.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Fri May 08, 2009 1:03 am

So, suggest how you would change them, because frankly, just saying "I dont like these" is entirely unhelpful. Get a clue.

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Fri May 08, 2009 1:57 am

I said they are too similar, thus implying that more than very tiny changes need to be made in order to distinguish them. That is constructive, civil, and way more information than saying I don't like them. It is pretty ironic that you link to "civil" while telling me to "get a clue". You are the only one being rude in this thread Peter.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Fri May 08, 2009 2:07 am

Really saying "I don't like these, make them better" isn't helpful or constructive. But whatever, I suppose, it's not worth arguing over.

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Fri May 08, 2009 2:35 am

I never said that. I said they were too similar to the SI portrait used and not the BG character they are based on. Quit saying I wrote something completely different. I don't see how my comment can be construed that way. You just seem to want to pick a fight and be an ass.

Post by **Dominus** » Fri May 08, 2009 4:31 am

@Peter and Malignant: be civil and IMO we still have free speech and not always does an opinion have to come with a how to make it better. And it is true that Malignant didn't come close to writing "I don't like these, make them better".
But if you two keep on fighting here, this thread will be locked. You can ignore this now or post a "sorry" but no more on this.

Back on topic, when Malignant wrote that I found my own thoughts mirrored. By all means, go on with it, but I couldn't use these faces since I would be too much reminded of the SI characters they normally represent. As to how find other faces other than using your own photographs, no clue.

TDI · Post by **TDI** » Fri May 08, 2009 7:09 am

I have to agree with Malignant Manor. Lathlas is doing a nice job on those portraits, but I don't think I would use them, as they remind me too much of SI characters (and I'm kinda attached to the BG portraits). Of course some people may want to use them, so by all means, carry on...

I don't think that the way MM pointed it out was offensive either. But I do realize that it's hard to convey an emotional context through forum postings. And sometimes, like when we are having a bad day, we may insert our own emotional state into someone else's text, intepret it very differently than the way it was meant and react excessively defensive to it.

So chill out Peter. I'm sure MM didn't mean to be insulting.

<--- smiley faces always very helpful to show you are trying to be nice.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Fri May 08, 2009 11:02 am

I understand not wanting them to look too much the same, these are all rough drafts.

I'm really happy with Spark and Jaana, and fairly happy with Geoffrey.

Arcadion is pretty much perfect, but I didn't have to do much editing for him.

I want to make Batlin into a slightly friendlier looking version of himself.

Eiko, the oriental half-sister trying to kill Wonder-Boy, is pretty good, but I used the oriental avatar face so it may be weird if that's your character's face as well.

Draxinsum will probably get a headpiece more like his original portrait and lose the crown.

Dracothraxus is fine, just a red dragon. Non-human portraits are easier because they don't have facial features we identify with.

I'm working on a whole bunch of Baldur's Gate style portrait conversions, which causes me the same problems with looking to much like something else but I figure if I mix and match some of the sources it will lessen the culture shock of seeing the wrong face for a character.

Check out Nicodemus for an idea of those portrait styles.

TDI · Post by **TDI** » Fri May 08, 2009 11:47 am

I don't want to deviate you from your original undertaking, but what (I think) would be really awesome, would be if someone took the original BG portraits, scaled them to SI-portrait size and then filled in the details.
Of course, I have no idea how easy or hard that would be to do.

I would definitively use that, if it was well done.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Fri May 08, 2009 11:56 am

I actually tried that with a few of them, but the detail simply isn't there.

I spent about two hours trying to make Chuckles come out right and it was just awful.

Bob The Cowboy · Post by **Bob The Cowboy** » Fri May 08, 2009 6:17 pm

I think this is a great idea for a project, and I think copying portraits from the SI ones *is* a great way to start. I'm not sure about the Baldur's Gate ones, but that doesn't mean I couldn't be convinced ;o)

Is this one Jaana?

http://www.thefeudallands.ca/wiki/File:005.png

I think it might be better if you lightened up the hair (more blonde) and use a darker pink for the lips? Just my thoughts.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Fri May 08, 2009 6:56 pm

Yeah, that's Jaana.

There's not a whole lot of tweaking I can do with the palette, if they're faces don't glow I'm usually happy.

And when I say Baldur's Gate portraits, I don't necessarily mean the ones actually in the game. There are TONS of fan made portraits for Baldur's Gate out there, mostly from game and book covers.

I have a rather large folder of appropriate looking fantasy characters, but they are a lot harder to put into Ultima because the palettes are totally different. Getting skin tones to not be yellow and glowing red is a huge chore.

I just finished a new batch of portraits, Rowena looks really bad outside of the game but for some reason her blotchy skin clears up when rendered in-game. I must have tried at least 50 versions of her portrait before I found one that even remotely worked. I hate redheads, their hair uses up all of the palette tones that I apply to skin colors.

Horance the Lich turned out pretty well, I found two different pictures of the same fantasy character, so he actually undergoes some physical changes when he reverts back to a ghost.

Finnigan is totally new and was the easiest portrait I've done yet.

Chuckles is just a place-holder until I can find some kind of Jester picture somewhere.

Googling anthropomorphic fox-person yields some interesting results, but I did get Frank done.

I tweaked the Troll guard below Buccaneers Den to look less like simon the Goblin.

I made a tortured one, he looks kind of goofy but he's definitely tortured.

I made a Forskis, I'm NOT looking forward to making the gargoyles, since I don't want them to all look the same but don't have a lot of source material. I hope I can find some red demon art that will work okay.

I'm going to try to use photos of the Star Trek TNG cast for the residents of Serpent's Hold. I'm not sure if I can make it function correctly but it'll be a neat head nod if it works.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Fri May 08, 2009 8:28 pm

I would take a look through a free stock site for human photography to use as a source - sxc.hu is a great resource. While obviously you couldn't just shrink/etc them and use them, they're a great starting point for pixel art. It's basically what I've done for some portraits in TFL - to varying degrees of success - though I got lazy with the armour and other fantasy accounterments and copied them from SI.

Looking up "knight" on SXC.hu, for example, yields some pretty good reference material:

http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/o/op/ophelia/10 ... omir_3.jpg
http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/f/fl/flautenbag ... knight.jpg
http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/o/op/ophelia/85 ... ple_ii.jpg

For the sake of bandwidth those are just the thumbs, but you can get full res pictures from there.

It's all a matter of knowing where to look when it comes to that kind of thing - google image search tends to just have a bunch of vacuous matter.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Fri May 08, 2009 9:25 pm

Yeah, source material isn't as hard as getting the palette right. I've got about a hundred fantasy portraits from other games which scale well, and a couple of dozen fantasy photographs from SCA events and leftovers from another project I worked on awhile ago.

If I could make the GIMP's palette work a little more seamlessly with U7's this would actually be easy. Every time I think it's perfect I test it in game and get bizarre results.

At least I don't need to do any coordinates for portraits.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Fri May 08, 2009 9:48 pm

If you have photoshop, I have both ACT and PAL files that I will be putting on the Wiki that you can just import and use. It's what I've done. A lot of the time the colour conversion can be kind of hard on you, but if you play with it right, you can come up with some decent looks with the pattern and diffusion methods.

For example, my latest TFL portrait, which I think came out alright:

(I hope the image code works...)

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Fri May 08, 2009 9:49 pm

Sigh, the image code didn't work. Well, if you plug in the URL, you can see it.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Fri May 08, 2009 10:11 pm

Actually, after writing my last post I got annoyed with myself and found some tutorials. I think I've got my paletting worked out, I'm remaking a couple of portraits now that look WAY better.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Fri May 08, 2009 10:12 pm

Your best bet is just to export an existing SI picture, and rip the colour index from it (tis what I did.)

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Sat May 09, 2009 1:33 am

Yeah, that's what I did. It just took me awhile to make it work right. I got some weird results the first time I tried it.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Sat May 09, 2009 1:38 pm

Does anyone know how I can contact the makers of U5:Lazarus? They have a whole portrait gallery of faces for their game and I want to know if I can use some of them.

I can't find any contact info on their page and I tried to join their forum so I can ask this same question, but I'm still waiting for an admin to approve that.

Figured I'd check here.

I've got several of the Lazarus portraits already converted, I'm just waiting for permission before I post them.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Sat May 09, 2009 8:16 pm

I would stray away from using portraits from other projects myself - there's just too much potential for bad blood if they decide they don't like how they're used, and other such things.

As is, Im not even sure if the majority of the Lazarus team is reachable regarding Lazarus now - most of them have moved on to other projects since its completion.

Petrell · Post by **Petrell** » Mon May 11, 2009 3:34 pm

All the Lazarus portaits can be found at The Hawks Ultima V: Lazarus page. Just make sure you have permission to use them from Laz team first.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Wed May 13, 2009 10:16 am

I've gotsome more information and portraits up at the wiki. Progress has slowed because I'm actually *playing* Lazarus. This game is awesome, hopefully I'll drag myself away and keep working on these faces again soon.

MeddlingMonk · Post by **MeddlingMonk** » Wed May 13, 2009 11:30 pm

Some of the BG faces (the originals, I mean) are clearly just artwork but others are just as obviously made from photos. Ditto for SI. Marzo used photos for his Avatar pack. I agree with others that the WIP examples look too obviously like the SI faces that they are, so (as a positive suggestion) why not consider starting with photos? Modifying the SI faces will involve a lot of work anyway and fiddling with photos won't be any less, I imagine, but it might be better. Marzo used celeb pictures, and that could work here; but headshots of people you know is another way to go. Actually, others could contribute. Might be able to build up a decent library that way.

Tribun Dragon · Post by **Tribun Dragon** » Sat May 16, 2009 3:13 pm

Why not also use portraits from Underworld II?
For example, the game had a really good portrait of Geoffrey.

Oblivious · Post by **Oblivious** » Sat May 16, 2009 4:35 pm

""I have to agree with Malignant Manor. Lathlas is doing a nice job on those portraits, but I don't think I would use them, as they remind me too much of SI characters""
Anyhow, Julia looks way too old, and Katrina looks way too hot and skinny (she's fugly in SI)

""I want to make Batlin into a slightly friendlier looking version of himself.""
Yeah, he looks like an obese emperor Palpatine.

""I don't want to deviate you from your original undertaking, but what (I think) would be really awesome, would be if someone took the original BG portraits, scaled them to SI-portrait size and then filled in the details.
Of course, I have no idea how easy or hard that would be to do.
I would definitively use that, if it was well done.""
Yeah, that would be great.

""Some of the BG faces (the originals, I mean) are clearly just artwork but others are just as obviously made from photos.""
A LOT of them. I'm sorry, but people don't smile like that outside of photographic shots, (Reyna I'm looking at you) and it looks just gaudy. Jaana looks like someone surprised her with a "say cheese" while she was looking down at/reading something (which is better than a grin from ear to ear if you ask me)

""For example, the game had a really good portrait of Geoffrey.""
I didn't think it was that great. Mainly, it doesn't match his armor and his hair is too dark. I guess it's usable other than that (if his armor was changed to match BG's, his helmet was removed, and his hair/stache lightened a bit.
UW2 Julia however looks nothing like the Julia of Ultimas 6 and 7.

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Sat May 16, 2009 7:37 pm

I've never played underworld II for longer than 5 minutes, I hated the interface. I'll check out the portraits, thanks for the idea.

Oblivious · Post by **Oblivious** » Sat May 16, 2009 9:18 pm

Oh, yeah, I also hated Patterson's UW2 portrait. Okay, so in BG he's definitely black (or half-black). In UW2 he has blue eyes and definitely looks caucasian. Maybe the developers didn't want to look racist...

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Sun May 17, 2009 12:59 am

"Anyhow, Julia looks way too old, and Katrina looks way too hot and skinny (she's fugly in SI)"

Katrina is not in Serpent Isle, unless I missed something significant.

Oblivious · Post by **Oblivious** » Sun May 17, 2009 1:29 am

Yeah, I meant BG >_<

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Sun May 17, 2009 2:43 am

You do know that the current progress is at the wiki, not here right? Julia is %100 new, among other changes.

Post by **Dominus** » Sun May 17, 2009 9:05 am

I edited the first post and pointed to the wiki page. If you want me to word my edit differently, please say so

Tribun Dragon · Post by **Tribun Dragon** » Sun May 17, 2009 9:52 am

Yeah, the portraits in the game were good, especially since a number of people from Black Gate appear in it. (Besides the compainions they are, as far as I can remember: Lady Tory, Nanna, Charles, Miranda, Nell, Nystul, Feridwyn, Syria of Jhelom, The Wisp, Patterson, Nelson)

That's quite a number of people that also appear in Ultima VII.
Two examples:
A Wisp:
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/u5laz ... c1/Xor.gif
Nystul
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/u5laz ... Nystul.gif

Lathlas · Post by **Lathlas** » Sun May 17, 2009 2:03 pm

I edited the first post and pointed to the wiki page. If you want me to word my edit differently, please say so

Awesome, thank you Dominus.

@Tribun Dragon: I used the Nystul image, but I can't find any more examples of UW2 portraits online. Do you know where I can get more?

I updated some of the faces again, I'm probably going to keep working on them and my new map throughout the day, so keep checking.

Tribun Dragon · Post by **Tribun Dragon** » Sun May 17, 2009 2:42 pm

Sure, a number of them can be found in the Editable Codex, here the ones that are online:

Feridwyn
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/u5laz ... edwyn2.gif
Lord British (looks more like his Ultima VII portrair than the one in SI)
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/u5laz ... ritish.gif
Lady Tory
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/u5laz ... /Tory2.gif
Nelson (color swap for the cloak and mirroring, and it can also be used for his twin brother)
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/u5laz ... elson2.gif
Patterson
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/u5laz ... erson2.gif
Geoffrey
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/u5laz ... /Geof2.gif

Meaning that only Nanna, Charles, Miranda, Nell and Syria are missing. I can send you these over mail.