Portrait for Expulsion of the Wesfolk

[The Killing Nun]

I finished the portrait of the main character of a campaign I am currently building, the Expulsion of the Wesfolk. I'm not a good freehand artist so it is frankinsteined with a few additions from myself. I was wondering if I could get feedback on it (portrait of Gerund). I'm mainly interested in finding out if 1) it's too obvoius where I took the pieces from (I used about 6 existing portraits with much editing) and 2) if it looks decent. There are some imperfections I can see because I can't figure out how to fix them, but I'm wondering if they are obvious to others.

The portrait is included as an attchment.


Thanks for your input.

[Sgt. Groovy]

The hand looks like a skeleton hand, and it doesn't match with the rest. The face is of a sulking teenager. Some directional lighting and probably a non-frontal view would make it look more interesting. The red part needs shading.

Generally speaking, frankensteining is not a good idea for portraits.

[Blarumyrran]

Generally speaking, frankensteining is not a good idea for portraits.

O RLY?

[The Killing Nun]

The hand looks like a skeleton hand, and it doesn't match with the rest. The face is of a sulking teenager. Some directional lighting and probably a non-frontal view would make it look more interesting. The red part needs shading.

Generally speaking, frankensteining is not a good idea for portraits.

You're right about the hand (It did come from a lich after all).
The face was supposed to be sulky, and I'm glad that it came across.
Though I know what directional lighting is, I don't know how to add it, but I'll try to find out. I have to figure out what to do with the red scapular. The rest of the garment has waves and wrinkles, but the scapular doesn't. So I'll have to figure out how to fix that as well.
Frankensteining is more difficult for portraits because the pixels are bigger, but I don't think its impossible. Maybe I'll try to have his portrait hand drawn anyway.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Sgt. Groovy]

Frankensteining is more difficult for portraits because the pixels are bigger, but I don't think its impossible.

What I meant is, that potraits are a different animal from sprites alltogether, and you really can't apply the same methods and expect them to work the same way. Frankensteining a portrait is basically like making a picture of a specific person by collage of parts of photographs of other people. It is possible, but making it look good would require very specific skills.

Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to making good art, and collage is definitely not one of them either. It looks easy, because all you have to do is clip some stuff and paste them together, but making it look good is not trivial.

What you can do is use a bunch of other pictures as reference for technique. When you see a picture where some detail is the way you like your picture to have it, instead of cutting and pasting, study how it's done in the original and try to emulate the techique. You get to avoid reinventing everything, your picture will have your original handprint in it, and you learn a lot more in the process.

[Na'enthos]

Ahah! ´tis the rise of Wesgoth!

Eh.. oh, never mind.