19 replies to this topic

[Enkida]

Hey all, a shy artist has been asking me for critique that I haven't had time to give. Edit: The artist managed to update the work to a more complete version. Please help this person develop their own unique style by letting them know what you like and what you don't like about their work. And be constructive! No "I think XYZ sucks!" kind of critique. Tell us what you like, and what you don't like, and how you think it could be better, as nicely as you can please. Thanks!

Edited by Enkida, 20 January 2012 - 02:50 PM.

[Lava Del'Vortel]

Some of you may have noticed that it is me, who's working on the pack. I'm still trying to improve my work, and I think I managed to find my own style. Here is set of those, which I believe are the best. The request is still active. Feel free to shoot me with some feedback.



EDIT:

I also fixed "the dark monk" portrait. No more white spots on his skin + better robe.

Edited by Lava Del'Vortel, 24 January 2012 - 11:35 AM.

[Enkida]

A lot of people have time to stop by the portrait forum and critique there, but nobody's stopping by here? Don't be cruel, folks. Some of these portraits are pretty good.

One major critique I have looking them over is that you're not doing hair well enough. Draw in the individual strands with a very fine soft brush (1 to max 3px) and do NOT smudge those strands away. You don't want hair to be a solid mass!

[Lava Del'Vortel]

Yeah, hair is the most difficult part for me, I suppose. Do you believe it can still be fixed somehow?

[Enkida]

Every answer you will ever need about hair, ever:

http://www.cgsociety..._realistic_hair

[Justify]

I'm not really a digital artist, so it feels odd giving critique, but I'll give it a shot.

What stands out as odd is the cheekbone area on some of the faces. In some portraits it looks too pronounced, or oddly separated from the rest of the face. You can see this more in the first batch of portraits, especially the third, fourth, and fifth on the second row, and the first, third, and fourth on the last row. I think just lightening the line where the cheek meets the lower face may help with this.

For imitating the BG style, I think third portrait, top row, second group is your most successful. It by far and away looks the most painted. In terms of general niceness and realism, the fourth on the top row and fifth on the last row are my favorites. They look the most well proportioned to me, and have very nice contrast and shading.

I'm interested to hear how you make these, and hope this helped a bit!

Edited by Justify, 24 January 2012 - 09:25 PM.

[Lava Del'Vortel]

Thank you I will try to fix a thing or two Probably the shading and will give hair a shot! I'm not sure what will be the result, but...
If anyone would like to say something more, let me know. Also it's good to know what you like - just to let me know that this particular thing shouldn't be changed

Cheers!

[Rhaella]

Some of them seem a bit too soft edged and blurred out? Can't suggest how to fix it, because it's a problem I always run into also. You probably just need more shading. That said, I'll probably be grabbing some of the ladies on the bottom row as soon as this is released.

Edited by Rhaella, 25 January 2012 - 01:59 PM.

[Lava Del'Vortel]

More shading? But other members suggested that I'm doing too much shading I made some changes to get rid of the cheek edge I was overdoing. Are those better? Liam? Enkida? Justify? Other people? Or maybe you really preffered previous version?



Another question is: do I have 3 portraits and just two places. It's about those portraits: Red Veil (you can check it in the previous set), hat lady (visible in this set) and the Viconia's hood lady. Which 2 of those 3 should enter the pack?

EDIT
Slightly fixed hat lady.

Edited by Lava Del'Vortel, 25 January 2012 - 02:18 PM.

[Quester]

Basically, the main thing is that most of them look too much like photographs of ordinary, everyday people. To achieve something similar to a BG style, they would need to be more stylized/painterly. As for how to achieve this, I'm really not sure, not being much of an artist myself. I guess my main advice would be (this is more for future reference), that if you're going to base portraits off of photographs of real people, try to find ones with more 'striking' features. Avoid people who look like just anyone you'd meet on the street. Think character actors.

That said...I like the top middle one in your latest post, I think you're on the right track there.

[Enkida]

I don't think the problem is more or less shading. I mean, my pictures are sometimes pretty soft and blurry too. Your problem is shadows and light. (This is my problem too at times, but I think I have more experience than you which is why it shows up less in my stuff). Always think to yourself, "where is the light coming from in my picture?" and then make the shadows fall to match that. The problem with lot of stock photography is the use of omnilight or indirect light or just plain old bad lighting. You can't just smudge that away, so you have to artificially fill in the shade where it's missing. Or else take a better picture with more defined shadows so you don't have to work as hard. Personally I love taking "bad" or at least "badly lit" photos because it makes the end result more "paint" than "photomanipulation." But if you don't have a lot of practice with traditional painting or shading or drawing, go for photos with sharp contrast shadows, so you don't end up having to shade in the cheekbones on your own.


I had a point to this. I wanted to know if I could use some of your portraiture to replace the minor NPCs in your mods. Or if you'd be willing to make new portraits to replace the minor NPCs in your mods. ;-) Look at this:

http://www.shsforums...post__p__531150

Notice, I need minor NPC replacements for some (not all) of the portraits in Innershade (2 ladies), Tales of the Deep Gardens (6 people, 3 ladies and 3 men), 1 male portrait for White Queen, and 1 male portrait for Yoshimo Romance. (Also, I need to know what those two miscolours of the standard Yoshimo portrait are supposed to represent - Vampire and Dead Yoshimo, or what? - so I can give him his non-balding hairstyle back). On, and 2 drow for that Solaufein mod thing. Some of the default artwork is fine, actually, but it bugs me to no end if their heads are the wrong size. So if you can reduce my workload and improve your own mods while you're at it, more power to you.

Edited by Enkida, 25 January 2012 - 02:50 PM.

[Lava Del'Vortel]

First of all - I believe it's good to have portraits of ordinary people. I won't make Viconia-like stuff or Aerie-like - they are more... different, because they are "ready characters" and their portraits can represent their true nature, while Charname portraits must give some "space" - Charname isn't supposed to be drow, I guess. He/she isn't an avariel as well. If a portrait for charname is too definied, then it may appear that there's not enough space for player to tell some details, if you know what I mean.

As for portraits - I ment that I already softened the light and made shadows less sharp - yet I really preffered previous versions. They looked somehow more... sharp.

And I've got completely NO EXPERIENCE when it comes to sketching/painting/drawing people. I really love art, but I'm not really talented...

As for portraits in my mods... well, we'll see. Yet I would like to close this project first. However, when I thought I am almost there, I lost my hope again. Hmm, it's hard to do something everyone will like.

[Rhaella]

Whenever I try and fail horribly at Baldurizing portraits, I use this guide, so if you haven't looked at it, you might want to. But yeah, I think many of these need to be sharper. Sometimes (not on all of them) it seems like you're overusing the blur and smudge tools a bit. The rings around Hat Lady's cheekbones and eyes, I think, is the most obvious example there. I'd grab a big version of one of the Biowares and keep an eye on it while you paint. That helps at least a bit.

Regarding the pictures themselves... my favourite is the top middle lady also, but none of them, except possibly the woman to the left of her (though that may be because of washed out blurring), is too mundane for me. =)

[Lava Del'Vortel]

But look at the result of the tutorial. That girl has no face lines. I don't find her baldurized - even in cathegory of her skin alone. I would rather leave them some lines. I knoe that I might have overdid the shadows on their cheeks in previous versions, but I'm not really happy with the fact some of the portraits are loosing the lines, in some of the portraits. I really believe that 'mundane lady' was better in previous version, with some lines and light. She's a bit flat now...

[Rhaella]

Hmm. I don't think the original version of the picture used had lines there, so the "baldurization" didn't actually take them away, it just changed the skin tone. But skin tone really isn't your problem. As far as the Mundane Lady, yeah. More lines would help, I agree. The problem with the earlier version wasn't that there were too many lines so much as that the lines were a bit weird anatomically. The cheekbones needed to be reshaped rather than toned down a bit.

[MiLeah]

But look at the result of the tutorial. That girl has no face lines. I don't find her baldurized - even in cathegory of her skin alone. I would rather leave them some lines. I knoe that I might have overdid the shadows on their cheeks in previous versions, but I'm not really happy with the fact some of the portraits are loosing the lines, in some of the portraits. I really believe that 'mundane lady' was better in previous version, with some lines and light. She's a bit flat now...

I totally understand that you want to keep the lines/flaws within the portraits. As that adds character to whoever you're drawing. I can't stand blurring faces out to make them look like 'the ghost of Michael Jackson'! [Especially when done to females...] Drives me up the wall!
The trick is this: After you've blurred/smoothed and colored over their face, reopen up the original stock/picture that you used of the person (Or, as I like to do: Always keep the original picture open and use it for shading/line reference so that one doesn't botch the face up). Then draw what you see (As my art teach always told me).
It's not easy, but practice makes perfect.

And if I can give another tip: Exaggerate with the shading. Meaning go dark, medium, light, and then add a light blue over the light shading to make the faces stand out more. I think the reason your people look 'generic' or 'average' is because they were all given the same shading treatment, which makes them sorta all have the same look about them. While some of the portraits are nice, some of their faces really don't pop out, and that's all due to shading.

To kinda show you what I mean, I'll attach one of my pictures and you'll notice how I have at least 4 different tones to his face.
Note: This is an old picture that was suppose to be Yoshimo for the Romance portrait pack, but I wasn't happy with it, and threw it to the ground.
In my newer portraits I enjoy and have become obsessed with making my characters look like that bathe in Vaseline for fun.

Again, this takes time and practice, but it's not impossible to achieve. The main thing it just to make sure you ALWAYS keep the original picture open while you're drawing over the new portrait, and to take your time and not rush the shading.

Hope that helps, and keep up the good work!

Attached Images

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[Enkida]

That Yoshimo is hot. I would totally include him in one of our portrait packs because I want to lick him. Mmm.

Right. Back on topic: re: portraits for NPC replacer: you wouldn't have to do new portraits for every single thing I mentioned. As I said, the problem with most of them is not artwork, but size cropping. If you have the originals you used to make those portraits, just point me to them and I can recrop to appropriate size, no work involved. Actually, I think I have the drow female image used in Eilistraee's Song, so that's even one down.

As for the others, or if there is no original image with the full head and shoulders standard, I meant, use what you ALREADY HAVE posted. You don't need to worry that things are not 100% perfect in your portraits; for a minor NPC with a portrait the size of 38x60, even the most grievous flaws tend to disappear at that size, and a lot of your portraits don't have "grievous flaws." So you can chill! If you don't feel confident, I will just pick out a few that I think look appropriate and stick them in there, but I'm asking if you want to contribute or at least choose, because you made those mods. As the creator, there may be a reason one of the ladies is bald and has green skin, for example. I don't know that reason - what if I pick a lady who is bald and has red skin, and it turns out her green skin was important? That's the kind of help I'm asking for, not necessarily to make 30535353 new portraits for your NPCs. Most of the work is already done there. :-)

Edited by Enkida, 26 January 2012 - 11:54 AM.

[Lava Del'Vortel]

I'm not sure if that's the topic to discuss TotDG portraits I was to send you a message, so you will get some meterials and descriptions in the PM, ok?

As for portraits... well... I think that I like blurry portraits - as long as edges aren't too blurry. Blurry skin is fine with me. Original portraits are a bit blurry too - look at Dynaheir or Xzar. In BG2 they aren't extreemely sharp, too. As we can see, all of us have different styl. MiLeah's style is the "colourful sketch", Enkida's is.. hard to define... My are a bit blurry, yet good looking in game, I believe. But not perfect. I doubt I will ever make them perfect.

And... well... I was to show this to someone else, but... I decided that this is more or less final version, for now. It's resized to show M version of the portraits - the one used in game. L (large) portraits are seen just for a sec, so...

[Enkida]

You know, I totally forgot to append this to what MiLeah said. But well, whether you like blurry or textured portraits as a style, there is a universal truth about colouring skin: it's not one or even two tone. If you shade skin with straight up black or grey, it will look weird.

Coming from the art skool background, there are 2 things you need to keep in mind: one in general, and one in specific for skin.

The first is the colour wheel. Colours have natural opposites - yes really - and it would be good to learn to play off of what those opposites are. If you have no freaking clue what i'm talking about the simple breakdown is this:
red <-> green
purple <-> yellow
blue <-> orange

You see it in detail visually here and explained much better here:
http://www.colormatt...ic-color-theory


The second is specific to skin. Skin (of white people at least) has basically a reddish tone. That means when you're doing shade, your shade should have a greenish tone to look "natural." This is what the colour wheel opposites translates to literally in your picture. If you shade with green and it looks funny you're using the wrong shade of green or it's not transparent enough, but that is basically as simple as it gets.

Last and not least skin is translucent. Now this is a step I never bother to do in my own Baldur's Gate portraits because I am dedicated to finishing 1 portrait a day, and in 4 hours, I don't have time to paint nice skin. ;-) However as a theory it might help you out to learn shading in your own portraits.

On a !white person!, the top layer of translucent skin is usually some permutation of white. The second layer of skin has to do with tissue and blood vessels and is usually some layer of brownish red. The under layer of skin has to do with blood itself, and as you know from your science classes, blood before it hits oxygen is actually blue, which is why your veins are blue, even though they bleed red. So underneath all that other colour is a layer of something bluish.

What that translates literally to in portraits is that when you shade, skin (!of white people!) will look funny or sorta flat unless there is some amount of green in the shadows and blue in the undertones. It doesn't have to be a lot and it doesn't have to be saturated, but, it is there.

If all of this is like "Whoa OMG too much art skoolz, I just wanna make portraits" --> CHOOSE HIGH QUALITY PHOTOS TO WORK FROM. Because a low quality photo in poor yellow lighting will lose all of this in translation. High quality photos will keep all of these nuances in skin shading. As MiLeah said, look at the original, and then play up those nuances in the shading you do make.

And, as a final, no matter what you do, *you are going to have to take a brush and paint.* Full stop. That's why I always say there is no easy tutorial or filter to learn how to baldurdize portraits. If you don't paint, it's not going to look painted no matter what filter you do. So, get your brush, and start practicing.

[Eric P.]

These are all super-beautiful! The only change I can think of that would improve the look of each is to increase brightness and contrast a little. The smooth shading is sooooo nice...they all look lifelike without looking like actual photos, which is perfect

I would have butted in here sooner, but it's not easy to keep track of all the portrait forums *L*