Wizardry 8 Custom Portraits

[Zombra]

I like making these! Here are some I did recently:

You can see more gifs on my deviantart profile.

Here's a zip file containing v1.09.01 of my easy-install portrait pack. 13 different PCs + Vi Domina and Madras. Read the readme and check the index.

Here's a guide I put together on how to make your own. Post links if you do! I want to see/steal them!

EDIT 07-14-2016: Old guide link broken. I have since learned a much better way to make these. A new guide is in the works.

 

[Baron]

Nice work. I like how they're not overdone.

Would be great in a RPG if they animated for party dialogue, and were otherwise static. Very atmospheric.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Will watch with interest.

 

[Zombra]

Updated to v1.09. Figured out how to fix "large" and "small" portraits for CNPCs, so the Vi Domina and Madras portraits are now complete.

 

[felipepepe]

I downloaded and installed it, but couldn't find the two gifs from the OP. :/

 

[Grunker]

Cool!

 

[Zombra]

I downloaded and installed it, but couldn't find the two gifs from the OP. :/

Sadly, the .sti files from my very first batch were lost. Sometimes I think about redoing them, but then I just get excited to make new ones instead. Sorry!

Who knows, maybe I will redo them some day. I was dreaming about having a different custom portrait available for every voice.

 

[Zombra]

Updated to v1.09.01. No new game files, but I added a visual index to the zip to help players find each portrait by race instead of having to randomly flip through.

Also updated the OP to remove the gifs of the old unavailable characters. You can still see the old gifs on my deviantart page if you want to torture yourself.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

Hi Zombra. I used your guide when I made portraits for my party for my first playthrough of Wiz8. Only problem I had with the guide was that the descriptions of different mouth positions/shapes were bit vague/off or something. I devised my own rules that seemed to give better results, but I don't remember them anymore... it's been 3 months almost. One frame for kind of 'O'-shape for the mouth, one for wide mouth with teeth visible (or at least upper row of teeth) and a space between upper and lower teeth. Or maybe something else. Anyways, overall a great guide.

Quality of my animations varied from kind of ok to not so ok, but when I got them all in, I couldn't be bothered to fine tune them and got to playing instead.

I managed to make one preview gif now, although I didn't get something right, it looks a bit different from ingame one.

Here's the full party.

Maybe I'll upload the .sti and .gfx files somewhere after I locate them and maybe fixing the animations a bit. Would you have use for .tga and .psd files (animation frames on layers) as well?

I found it easier to edit the pictures in target resolution or some resolution close to it, instead of the original resolution of the artwork. (Original image of that black haired pale guy for example was around 3500x5500.) Single pixel brush mmm...

 

[Zombra]

Looks like some excellent work, 4th!

Your variations on my method certainly make sense. Nothing wrong with working at or near the target resolution ... I find that working high-res makes the final animations more, I don't know, "natural" in their expressiveness or something, but obviously there's no right or wrong. The very first ones I did (at target res) feel very "clunky" and perhaps more old-school than my recent ones. That was also before I figured out how to deal with palettes correctly, so maybe I have an irrational association with the lower res work looking like crap.

The Inta gif looks great, very smooth! but I know what you mean about it looking different in game. I think it has something to do with animation timing, something to do with resizing resolution when actually playing. I don't know. I recommend not worrying about it and just using the gifs as a way to easily showcase your work.

I would indeed enjoy seeing your psd files, if only to get a better look at these different mouth positions you're talking about. I'd also be curious to see the original art for these guys ... you have good taste. It's interesting to see what people choose to use. Clearly you lean towards more serious art than I do

Lastly, thanks for using my guide! I'm really grateful it's helped someone else enjoy this wonderful game with their own creative input.

One horrible thing: I just learned of an image tool called GRV that may be able to do all three portrait sizes with one program. If so I may need to rewrite my whole guide.

 

[Zombra]

So I was looking for a savegame editor the other day and I found this cheat site ... evidently someone decided that it was a good idea to use my custom Mook portrait as the art to represent the game. I didn't even do the original art, which of course has exactly nothing to do with Wizardry, but that is my Photoshop version with the ears cut off. I feel weird.

 

[Bloax]

Guys, not to spoil your parade but you could at least try to have the art not be a crazy variety of styles (4th is better here) and at least try to fit them in with the Wizardry 8 portrait scheme - by which I mean at least keep the top borders black.

look at all this ugly aliasing where the action bars overlap the portrait.

which is something the vanilla portraits try to avoid.

even a quick and dirty little bit of shadowing makes it better

 

[Zombra]

Parade not spoiled at all, that's a smart tip about the shadowing. Though frankly the W8 graphics all look like crap nowadays anyway, a little aliasing is hardly going to ruin the game. YMMV.

As for styles, obviously we have different tastes, so ... I don't care if you don't like them? I'm sure if I polled 20 different players about what style they wanted, I'd get at least 15 different answers. I made these for me and you're lucky that I'm sharing them and my method. If you don't like em, take a hike! Enjoy!

 

[Khor1255]

I think he makes a good point. Seriously not trying to take sides but I have seen this in Ja2 portraits and - to me - deviating too far from their style results in something that looks so out of place it can even break game immersion.

 

[Zombra]

I'm not saying it's a bad point, I just don't particularly care. Finding art in that style in the first place isn't especially easy. Finding fantasy art in the same style is harder than that. Finding fantasy art of antropomorphic half-human half-tigers in that style is a bit harder than that. Finding fantasy art of anthropomorphic half-human half-tigers in that style that I like and want to make a character of is even harder than that. After several batches of these I decided that I would just use whatever I thought looked cool, and it turns out it doesn't hurt my enjoyment of the game at all. I like 'em, a few other people have liked 'em, and that's more than I really could have asked for. Don't like 'em? No problem! Don't use 'em and go make your own! Or if you find some art in that style you'd like me to animate for you, you may find my rates a little high, but feel free to PM me.

As for immersion, I can see that being a bigger issue in JA2, but frankly, when dealing with a setting in which faeries and dwarves chase a Spider-Man villain and his team of robots using a spaceship piloted by a gorilla, consistency of style is not something I'm going to lose a lot of sleep over.

 

[Khor1255]

Ah. I totally get it. I had a far easier task since all I had to do was find portraits of human beings. It's weird but even there I found the best translation was action figure heads rather than actual people. I used several from Dragon Models 1:6 scale WW2 figures and Ultimate Soldier 1:6 scale heads. These looked way better than actual portraits.

Your stuff looks good. But on a message board I always found critique to be a gift as long as it wasn't just some crybaby with no coherent point flinging poo.

 

[Zombra]

Strongly agreed, and I appreciate the feedback from you and from Bloax. Basically I just had a lot more fun after I let go of trying to match the style. It's not like I hadn't considered it.

Action figure heads! That's crazy, I'd love to see some of those. And yeah, I'm sure anything would have looked better than photographs. Photographs are pretty much off limits for me whenever I bring in customs for any RPG, animated or not. Crossing that line really does break the spell.

 

[Khor1255]

I think Kermi or Scheinworld might have some of them archived and I believe the scorpion maybe even used one or two in his Fight For Freedom mod. I have most of them still but my internet computer is different from my modding computer since Windows 7 and on does not even support the basic framework necessary or a lot of the old Ja2 modding tools that have yet to be surpassed.

 

[Bloax]

I'm not asking for finding art in the style of Wiz8, I'm asking not to use

alongside

Because they clash like all hell has broken loose.

 

[Zombra]

So I should pick one art style and only animate portraits in that style?

Fine.

Tell you what, here's your chance to show me how it's done. I'll make it easy for you. Instead of asking for portraits of all 16 different races, I'll just ask for four.
Now go find good close-up portraits of:
* A talking gorilla
* An anthropomorphic hamster
* A blue-skinned fairy
* A half-cat, half-woman
All in the same style.

You have 24 hours.

 

[Bloax]

Well technically you can edit the vanilla Wiz8 portraits for all of these, but I don't feel like wasting more of my day because Mr. Rust Led Jimmies gets very passively aggressive when someone tells him something.

i mean really, all your replies to me have basically been a backhanded "omg go fuck yourself" so why should i even bother at this point

 

[Zombra]

Edit the ones that already exist? If you want to do that, great, but I prefer to like ... have ones that are different. For me that's the point. "I made a new dracon, almost identical but with a slightly longer nose"? Pretty boring for my tastes. But seriously, if that's your edit, you don't need me ... you're easily good enough to change the mouth a little and make the eyes blink for chrissake. Follow my guide, animate them yourself, and share the results. I'm not kidding, I want to see them!

As for "backhanded", I resent that ... I think I was pretty up front when I said "If you don't like em, take a hike!"

 

[Khor1255]

Seriously, the guy creates stuff and distributes it for free. Critique is one thing, but don't be a douche.

 

[Ranselknulf]

He might not be wording his critique in the most friendly manner.. but this is the codex after all


Some background variation is fine.. although I think it looks best when all the portrait's backgrounds somewhat fuse together. Like a mixture of 3 characters with dark backgrounds and and 3 with light backgrounds would look a bit off.

Of course you are free to do as you please but it's an honest critique nonetheless.

 

[Zombra]

An actual artist on deviantart used my guide to make a bunch of his own from scratch. I think he did some pretty stellar work.