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Hmmm, let's see...

I took this picture from the movie Troy:

Spoiler: Show

And tried to make him into a Goliath Barbarian type character for my husband:

http://neon-red.deviantart.com/art/Goli … -129004911

His mohawk is too swirly.


It's not as good, but I took this picture of Isla Fisher: link

And attempted at making her look like my current character: link



And I put the hat on the gnome in the above picture that sock put the rabbit in so nicely



Is photo manipulating celebrities a valid way of visualizing one's characters?

Neon_Red_Phoenix wrote:

Is photo manipulating celebrities a valid way of visualizing one's characters?

Um, why wouldn't it be?
There are a lot more pictures of famous people floating around than pictures of people who aren't famous.
It may be kinda cheesy to say, "My character looks exactly like Brad Pitt", but a face is a face, and what matters isn't what you started with but where you ended up.
This pic, for example, is Brad Pitt done up as a water genasi... It looks good as a water genasi, which is more important than the fact that it's a pic of Brad Pitt rather than, say, my brother-in-law.

I originally downloaded this as a fan-made character portrait from the Neverwinter Nights community site.

I've seen some really great character portraits that are quite clearly frames from movies featuring Rutger Hauer, Kirk Douglas, and several other actors who've played knights or warriors in older films. It's all in how you edit the shot - emphasizing the intent and flavor of the final result over the original image. There's another shot I have of Brad Pitt (from the same movie, in fact), in armor. Because of the fact that his helmet obscures part of his jaw line (thus breaking up the specific collection of facial features that signify "Brad Pitt"), by cropping the left side of the pic enough to cut off the edge of his armor and the right side to edit out the fact that he's holding two swords, I've completely obscured his physical pose and most of the obvious details of the shot aside from the head and shoulder of what's now a generic armored warrior - you'd never know it was Brad Pitt under the helmet unless you were very familiar with the original pic.

Doublecross wrote:

Definitely see where you're going with that, and I can make that work. Thanks for the idea!

-DC

No problem - it's basically my default solution to any pic that doesn't have a detailed background, lol.
Just like in a photograph, keeping the background vague and blurry puts more focus on the characters.

I definitely see the background in that pic giving the impression of a large room, a big open space, with the two of them decidedly outnumbered by the bad guys, and more of them showing up by the minute...

@ironchef: Lookin' good :o) suggestions? If you lower the saturation of the head a little (easy assuming you kept it on a seperate layer) to bring it more in line with the colour palette of the body i think it would look pretty flawless :D

No feedback on my last post here I hope i'm not deviating too much from the purpose of the thread, but i'm gonna plough ahead any way as i've really been getting into my photo-manipulations recently and i want to show off :P ; I went to a fancy-dress party tonight:

Me as Prince Nuada Show

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