Character Portraits and Where to Find Them

[Malkavian Grin]

2 hours ago, BBK said:

I use an app called 'Dream' by WOMBO on my phone.

I think I found a website version (I loathe phones) and I'm wondering how you get such clean, precise images. All my characters look mutated and melted like abstract art. And what, uh, filter? did you use. That art style on those is really cool and whimsical.

[BBK]

12 minutes ago, Malkavian Grin said:

I think I found a website version (I loathe phones) and I'm wondering how you get such clean, precise images. All my characters look mutated and melted like abstract art. And what, uh, filter? did you use. That art style on those is really cool and whimsical.

I use the VFX v2 filter. I generally add 'Portrait' at the end in order to focus on the subject (otherwise you lose a lot of detail most times) and use a Descriptive Adjective + Subject + Setting Description + "Portrait" format. If you have a specific celeb in mind, you can do a prompt like "skinny Katia Winter fantasy mage portrait" or if not, you can use a prompt like "burly fantasy dwarf fighter portrait". Just regenerate the really bad ones until you get something half-decent and 'create variations' of the best such result in each set a few times and it auto-refines the more glaring oddities that the algorithm throws out. Here are examples of the results of those exact prompts with the VFX v2 filter:

 

You tend to get cleaner and more realistic pictures if you use a celebrity as a base, as you can see from the first picture where I used the actress Katia Winter in the prompt - you might recognize her from the tv show Sleepy Hollow? Pretty much any celebrity (or popular character name from movies or television) works fairly well. You can see the dwarf's beard is more cartoonish than realistic, but if I spent 5 minutes tapping the 'create variations' button after selecting the option with the most realistic beard, it would eventually give me something more realistic. It took longer to email myself the pictures and upload them to postimg than it did to generate either of these pictures.

 

[Malkavian Grin]

3 minutes ago, BBK said:

I use the VFX v2 filter.

And of course that's the premium one lol

I like the Poster setting too. Managed to get a cool variant for one of my current characters with it. I could see that filter looking great for a game set in like the 1930s or maybe the wild west.

[OzzyKP]

Try out https://www.artbreeder.com

You can take other pictures and "breed" them together.  Then you can adjust various elements from them.  It is super cool. 

[Antares90]

Before I got into AI images, I would just look online for anything I could find. Then one of my players suggested Midjourney. Haven't really looked back since.

As with most AI, it's not perfect but you'll get a diamond in the rough every now and then. I was having trouble coming up with my halfling archivist and the aforementioned player did this for me in mere minutes. I thought it looked great for what it was.

Big image

 

Edited June 3, 2023 by Antares90 (see edit history)

[serraph]

I normally just scan various image sites. In the past I have sought artist permission, but they generally don't seem to care about such a minor usage, so I stopped bothering. I don't have a secret sauce that others havet already mentioned, just time spent sitting image sites.

AI art generation intrigues me, but I'm going to wait and watch it mature a bit more before.

[Chaz Hoosier]

Looking for character portraits is my least favorite part of making a new character. I find it basically impossible to find pictures that truly fit the concepts I have in my head, and the alternative is stealing some artist's concept. It's basically impossible to cite the artist you get the picture from because it was probably stolen by the source you stole it from! And hey: it's kinda stealing even if you cite the artist. You're using it without permission. AI isn't really the bold new alternative people think it is: all it's doing is modifying images it finds on the internet just like you would have done!

I tend to use very generic head shot like pictures which won't burden me with an artist's concept, for which I've had some truly problematic players berate me for picking pictures that were deemed insufficiently fantasy themed.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Chaz Hoosier (see edit history)

[Vladim]

Some of that is (at least partially) true (imo), but the other possibility is to use art from RPG books, and credit the specific RPG and/or the artist. There's some games out there with excellent art, including character art. I even like pregens if the character arc is particularly evocative & fits the backstory presented in the book.

[Malkavian Grin]

16 hours ago, Chaz Hoosier said:

Looking for character portraits is my least favorite part of making a new character. I find it basically impossible to find pictures that truly fit the concepts I have in my head, and the alternative is stealing some artist's concept. It's basically impossible to cite the artist you get the picture from because it was probably stolen by the source you stole it from! And hey: it's kinda stealing even if you cite the artist. AI isn't really the bold new alternative people think it is: all it's doing is modifying images it finds on the internet just like you would have done!

I tend to use very generic head shot like pictures which won't burden me with an artist's concept, for which I've had some truly problematic players berate me for picking pictures that were deemed insufficiently fantasy themed.

Well, needlessly accusatory tone aside, I would be curious to know how many other people feel this way. Personally (and several of the people I game with often) are 100% the opposite. Good character art can make or break a concept! I usually start with the art, and work my way from there. If I create a concept first, it's much, much harder to find something fitting (which is why I like how A.I. art can fill in some of those gaps--no, it's not perfect, but it's a helpful tool as most people aren't digital artists).

I am an autistic artist, and my imagination is too vast. I often have trouble settling on a detail. Boundaries--such as what a portrait looks like--are healthy for me, as I'm constrained within my otherwise boundless need to tweak and refine. Sometimes it inspires things--"why does this person have an eyepatch? Can I work that into a cool background detail?!"

If you can't find art you don't like--or which doesn't suit the theme of the game--don't use it. Plain and simple. Am I going to complain that you might use an anime picture (for instance)? Not openly, no. But it does bother me that someone would choose a thematically inappropriate image. I know I'm not alone in that, and I don't think that makes us "problematic" to say the least.

[CharmingSatyr]

I tend to use the aforementioned google sites (e.g. deviantart and pinterest) with moderately generic search terms (e.g. "half-elf archer ranger") and just scroll until I find something that I like. I tend to look for portraits early in the build so that I can incorporate aspects of the look into the character's creation and history.

 

My half-orc archer looks like a green fashion model? Well, I guess I'm going to be playing a lady's man in this game!

My elven cleric has a knife scar next to his eye? I guess he grew up poor and got into fights and spent time in prison before he heard the religious calling.

 

As for the AI generated portraits, I'm definitely going to give them a try.

[TheFred]

On 6/13/2023 at 2:29 AM, Chaz Hoosier said:

And hey: it's kinda stealing even if you cite the artist. You're using it without permission.

Sure, if by "kinda stealing" you mean "not stealing". Stealing is taking something of someone else's for yourself; posting someone else's picture on your character sheet neither denies them the use of that thing, nor claims that it's yours. Of course you can still question the morals of it; the artist is the one who created it so arguably ought to be able to deny you the use of it, too. However, it's a little hyperbolic and I think simply incorrect to say that it's stealing specifically.

On 6/13/2023 at 2:29 AM, Chaz Hoosier said:

AI isn't really the bold new alternative people think it is: all it's doing is modifying images it finds on the internet just like you would have done!

This is also not really true. I mean, generative AI perhaps isn't quite as novel or amazing as some people think, but the method by which it generates stuff is not simply collaging together images that it finds. What it does it look at a lot of those images (without permission in many cases, depending on the model, which again has ethical questions), learn patterns, and then generate new stuff... you know, kind of like humans artists do. Heck, arguably all those artists that it's learning from already stole their ideas from all the other things they've seen in their lifetimes.

[Aavarius]

On 6/16/2023 at 8:49 PM, CharmingSatyr said:

I tend to use the aforementioned google sites (e.g. deviantart and pinterest) with moderately generic search terms (e.g. "half-elf archer ranger") and just scroll until I find something that I like. I tend to look for portraits early in the build so that I can incorporate aspects of the look into the character's creation and history.

This. Definitely this.

Here's how it works best for me:
The Pinterest algorithm is great for feeding character portraits once you train it. Make a dummy account for yourself and search with a format like "X character" or "X character art", where X is the above mentioned character terms Satyr is describing.

If you get something even remotely close, pop it open in a new tab and then scroll down on that tab. You'll see not just the pic you were interested in but also more results fed to you by the algorithm based upon that one you were remotely interested in. If you pin things you like into "boards" (i.e. folders), you can tell the algorithm to feed you additional similar results based upon what images it sees pinned in your board when navigating that board.

Won't take too long before your home Pinterest page (even without search terms) is generally populated with character art you're interested in.
 

 

Now in my opinion, the key to making this work is to make your character portrait one of the first (if not the first) step. If you've got a large library of character art already available to you, you can more likely get away with doing it the other way around. But as a general rule of thumb, I recommend starting with the art before doing the game mechanics.

[leons1701]

I used to be able to find good character portraits with a google search, not any more because you get 50-75% ai generated garbage for most searches. And lest someone feel compelled to jump to the defense of AI "art", I'm talking stuff you can easily tell is AI from a thumbnail, weird proportions, weapons (presumably, if they aren't supposed to be weapons, I'm even MORE disturbed) out of some non-Euclidean eldritch realm, both eyes looking out of the same side of a helmet with a nasal, disjointed styles, etc. Absolute useless junk. Or links to pinterest pages full of useless junk. Sigh. The internet age was fun while it lasted, but we are clearly in full collapse to uselessness now.

[Malkavian Grin]

1 hour ago, leons1701 said:

Or links to pinterest pages full of useless junk.

I am actually finding more use out of pinterest as of late, due to all your points about low-quality A.I. art. Deviant Art is also an excellent library, but I find myself intimidated by how much stuff is on that site (@_@)

[leons1701]

Yeah, I suppose at some point I may have to break down and give Zuck more data about me by actually signing in to pinterest so I have a chance to train it away from the pages of AI "art". Deviant art is sometimes useful, but I've always had trouble getting stuff that isn't mediocre anime art. Good anime art is useful, though some GM's dislike the style on principle so you have to be careful where to use it.