i used the skin colour, mane colour, and eye colours that were mentioned in the books, first off. the skin colour obviously for his skin, the mane colour for his hair, and the eye colours for his eyes. the orange in his clothes is the colour of the experimentalist faction, the puppeteer political party that he belongs to. he wears a hoodie 'cause it's super casual (just like how nessus is compared to most other puppeteers, fashionwise), and hoodies are good for huddling and hiding in (and he, despite being a comparatively brave puppeteer, definitely still possesses some of the typical puppeteer fear). his hair is long and shaggy 'cause in canon, he doesn't really care about having a fancy mane and 'cause puppeteer manes tend to be long, i think. the orange drink in his wine glass is carrot juice, his fave drink. the night sky background in the anime one was chosen 'cause, well, space. and 'cause that background didn't have any distinctly human things in it. his expression is meant to convey a mixture of fear and determination. that he's scared and anxious but also able to present himself as in control. like, yeah, his control breaks sometimes, sometimes his fear does come out, but that's not the image he tries to present. pretty much everything but the hoodie, the background, and the wine glass applies to the star wars maker. in that one, he's wearing a cloak and some tech instead. the cloak 'cause it has most of the same qualities of the hoodie plus an extra mysteriousness, and the tech 'cause puppeteers are technologically advanced. the spaceship background i chose for the star wars one was 'cause nessus is a sci-fi alien and space is a pretty big thing in the series he's from and 'cause it was the most peaceful spaceship background i saw - puppeteers don't really dive into battles most of the time.
... actually, it could be theorized that Puppeteers' desire to have other people do the dangerous work is behind most inter-species cooperation in Known Space
I saw a game on Roleplay Online, a D&D 5e town-building/adventure game where a king is trying to re-claim an ancient city, and encouraging people to settle and build it up to expand the kingdom. Some characters can be just townsfolk, others just adventurers, and most some blend of the two. And I saw this image in the available character avatars (For some reason RPOL only lets you use the pictures that have been approved, rather than upload your own, so it can be interesting to find a picture that works...) I got the idea of a human noble, but one who's a warlock promised to some archfey. Maybe her family made some desperate deal "for your eldest child." But it turns out, it's more useful to the fey if she isn't just whisked away... but instead, goes to that frontier city to represent the interests of the fey of the nearby forests. Still working on things like personality. :P
Decided to recoup spoons today by mostly being a hermit and continuing to make character concepts for D&D. I kept the same frontier game in mind, and focused on this image: Pretty clearly a tiefling, with the pinkish skin and vibrant red hair---and the horns. (Thanks, infernal ancestor.) Tieflings tend to have trouble fitting into society comfortably, because fantasy racism... But having reading glasses in Ye Olde Medieval Mishmash? That takes somebody who needs them for their occupation. And today, that game's GM edited their advertisement to mention that they could use more types of people, like herdsmen, thieves... and cartographers. "Herdsmen" had already had me thinking about rangers, but cartographer? That's a pretty cool idea for a tiefling. A job that involves a lot of traveling outside well-established territories, in order to map them out, but a necessary and appreciated profession. One with plenty of reasons to establish herself in a frontier town. I'm thinking about going with the beastmaster archetype, so she can have a boar for an animal companion. Be horn/tusk buddies. Frustrations! Can't put hair texture over hat stuff, so I couldn't hide the metal to make it look like she just has horns... And boy, I tried to make her tail. An attempt was made.
another day, another self-set challenge of taking an RPOL portrait and making a D&D character with it, and depicting that character with the angel maker. today's subject: This character, an amiguously gendered half-orc, seems thoughtful, wealthy, and nervous. I'm thinking a high-Int character, with a decent but not fantastic Cha... Wizard, Rogue, or that best of both worlds: the rogue archetype Arcane Trickster? A thief with the magic touch, literally. All rogues get proficiency with thieves tools, which means any of the backgrounds with it are redundent. Took a little while peering through the rest, and realized there's a much better option than a straight up thief: charlatan. Regular disguises and magical disguises alike work around that little "being a fearsome and recognizable half-orc" problem when it's inconvenient, and there's some real possibilities in things like high quality forgeries and Charm Person. Of course, that might not hold out so well when it comes to gameplay and the greater challenges that adventures might pose... so I ever want to use this character in the weekly pregen adventures down at the comic shop, I'll want to think of reason(s) why they're risking life and limb with an adventuring party.
@swirlingflight I thought this was a really cool idea, so I tried it out myself! This lady seems very serious and determined, and kind of grubby, so I decided to make her a practically-dressed rogue, all in dark colours and sensible clothes.
Isn't it fun? Trying to recreate the character in a full body filmmaker requires some decisions about what sort of clothing and colors and other gear, and the process of doing that can make an enjoyable character!
aaaah I wanna do the thing, I made an account in furtherance of doing the thing, how do I get to where I can just browse the whole selection of avatars?
For some reason, avatars are only accessible for people in games. So I just made myself a game called "testing grounds." Once in a game, the "character details" listing in the top menu is where to look for avatars. Alternatively, you could join one of the big discussion games, like the religion chat one. (I am watching tv with friend, can give better advice with screenshots later)
I believe that did it? ETA: If anybody else ever wants in to check out the interesting variety of user-submitted portraits that RPOL has available, feel free to ping me with an invite request to that game.
Sometimes I get really nostalgic for Ragnarok Online and so today I decided to try to make my old High Priest in the angel maker. Pretty good outcome, all things considered. The sprite and the final product.
@swirlingflight i'm unknownanonymous on rpol and i would like to be let into the game to access the portraits.
I love this thread, dollmakers have been saving my brain lately, thank you everybody for the recs and pretty screenies <3 I dunno if it's been posted yet, but eLouai is one I used to visit all the time, particularly the candybar ones. it's gotten biiiig Edit: oh nooo Aud from 2002 has come back from the dead! WoOoOoOo
I used to be super into dollmakers when I was like ten or eleven, but then I pretty much forgot that they were a thing. luckily @swirlingflight reminded me of their existence when they posted a dollmaker version of their character in our D&D campaign OOC thread (I'm pretty sure that image is in this thread too), and I went happily overboard with my D&D character! unfortunately I have found that I am super picky about my dollmaker quality and range of options, but I've found one that works for this particular character, so! Spoiler: introducing Lyriae the campaign we're in is 5e and she's a half-elf Arcane Trickster archetype rogue, hence the fire in the below picture. and the cheeky expression. this is her adventuring gear, aka a meticulously crafted but fairly boring recreation of my vague impression of what leather armor should look like. those are the kinda clothes she'd wear if left to her own devices (and if she had the money for them, which, spoiler, she doesn't). this is the point at which I started getting overexcited. those are her con-man-cum-sex-worker clothes (it's a long story), pretty much. period accuracy? what's that? and this I have absolutely zero excuse for. fancytier outfit?? except she wouldn't be caught dead in clothes that ostentatious unless it was part of a con??? idk. I'd also appreciate recommendations for more fantasy-type dollmakers (particularly ones with armor, weapons, etc.) if anyone has them. thanks!
Friends! I got the portrait I used from here! You don't have to join a game to access them that way. That said, I've used the subeta wardrobe function where you can see all the clothing items on the site (sooo many pretties, you guys) to make two avatars of my character in Fallen London:
Oh hey, cool! I think that's outdated (2014?) but since they only tend to add like 1-2 to a given section each month anyway, that means most of the gallery's probably in there.
