ogretute1

For the half-ogre series of portraits, the Issig team wanted the images to look like the in-game models for the races, suggesting that perhaps I could use screenshots of the ogre models to make the portraits. I had seen other portraits done from screenshots on the Vault and wasn't too impressed. The models always looked stiff, the lighting was flat, and well... they looked like screenshots of computer models. As I was about to explain this to Daemon, the Issig team lead, I suddenly realized that there was a way to solve the problem of the models always looking stiff: combine screenshots from different angles. The rest (lighting, shading, background and so on) would be no different than working with any other underpainting.

Step 1: The screenshots

All the screenshots I used in my ogre series were taken in the toolset character editor. This allowed me to swtich head models and change hair and skin colors easily until I found combinations I liked. Once I had a color combination I thought worked well (in this case gray skin and blue-black hair) I used the camera controls to zoom in as close as I could on the model and rotate, taking a variety of screenshots at different angles. I tried to vary the angles as much as possible, from side to side as well as up and down. I didn't worry too much about what I was getting at this point, I just took a bunch of pictures.

Step 2: Combine the screenshots
Once I had 5-6 pictures I took them into PSP and looked at them side by side, pretty much as in the picture above. The question then was: what will make a portrait interesting? Portraits by nature are rather static, so to create any sort of drama, you need an interesting angle and/or interesting lighting. Out of all the shots I took, I liked the angle of the face on #4 the best, although #2 is a close second.

Since head #4 is facing to the left and down, to create some tension in the picture, I wanted to choose a torso position that would give me some opposite running diagonals--to the right and up. Torsos 2 and 3 both fit this criterion, though #3 has a slightly stronger diagonal across the collar bone and a bit more depth. So I picked torso #3 to put with head #4. A simple lasso selection around head 4, copy and paste as a new selection into picture three. Move the head around, resize it if necessary, and then flatten the selection.

Since the cut and paste job did not mesh well around the neck area, I used the smudge tool on a high opacity to get some muscle connection between the head and shoulders. Just for kicks I smoothed out the hair, and added a sly sideways look to the eyes.

The result looks like this, a significant improvement already over the straight screenie:

goto Step 3