Just a quick follow up, because honestly I was pretty taken aback to discover just how many of the heads I enjoy in BG3 were created by one artist in Egypt hehe. Legit! I would encourage everyone to have a look there. It certainly reframed how I feel about the subject, with a greater appreciation for what was probably involved.
I'd like to extend a special thanks to Abdelfatah on behalf of all of us players, for making some very iconic heads! and being in effect the Art grand daddy of many many subsequent BG3 memes hehe. I mean Halsin, Minthara, Glut, Abdirak, Aradin, Arka, Kagha... many of the Tiefs and Gith and Gobbos... Female Elf heads 3 and 4!? A lot of the real standouts there.
I'd be pretty interested to hear more about the BG3 art team. I mean I know I'd love to hear who created the 5 origins heads too for example, and to celebrate their accomplishments as well. I'm sure there are a lot of other really impressive artists behind this work. If the Panels from Hell included more of that stuff I'd be much more inclined to tune-in.
We also never get to hear from any of the women on their team. You might have noticed that too. I think it would be a refreshing departure from 'the norm' on those Panels from Hell to hear from their lead character designers or to see some cool previews or hear some anecdotes from the art department. I mean they preview fan art on occasion, but that's not exactly the same. They should promo their artists and art a bit more.
Generally we've just heard from Swen the Creative Director and Nick the Lead Systems Designer and those sorts of guys. The quote floating around regarding BG3 and Sliders mostly references the AMA reddit Q&A panel from March 2020 where the relevant question was fielded by David - credited as 'Producer.' I put it here with the preceding Q and the follow up Q to give some more context...
How in depth will character creation be? Lots of options or sliders or just a number of defaults to choose between?
David: Character creation can be as in depth as you want it to be
After you select a race and a class, you could be all set and ready to go, but if you want to, you can dive in deeper, and change all the abilities, spells, skills, cantrips… and customize visuals.
I think he meant in terms of appearance. Will we have sliders for lots of different features on the face, body, etc. Being able to make a customized character appearanceDavid: You will be able to select a face type, hairdo, facial hair, skin colour. I cannot give numbers or details, because it's still a work in progress, but there won't be sliders.
I hope there will be more (and slightly more fantasy/extreme) hairstyles!David: We have more diversity in creation than in any other game we’ve done before. You'll be able to mix and match a wide variety of defaults, to create something unique.
That quote definitely made the rounds, and it is pretty telling. It's also coming from a Producer i.e. 'the Money,' so its hard to know how much of the decision is motivated primarily by cost, what they could afford or thought they'd be able to pull off at the time, who they were able to hire onto the art team etc. Basically what they thought would cover the basic needs, as opposed to some overarching artistic vision about the value of presets vs sliders, or for what BG3s char creation scheme could ultimately entail in that regard. I think a more fruitful response might have come from Nick regarding what systems were in place and how they could be utilized, but David basically gave us our short answer in terms of their thinking on that score... "face type, hairdo, facial hair, skin colour."
Right now "face type" in EA is limited to those 69 faces I showed on the preceding page for the custom PC. They are presets and organized not by morphological type, but rather tend to skip around every other model, to give the appearance of more variety when cycling.
I think it's pretty important if they ever really do want to present us with a scheme where "character creation can be as in depth as you want it to be" in terms of aesthetics, that they have that overall framework built out by professional artists and systems engineers working together, and perhaps someone in an editorial role who can make sure that more bases are covered. I think it can be achieved using presets combined with cosmetic toggles/lists or whatever we want to call them, for things like eyes, eyebrows, ears etc.
Leaving it for the mods we may very well end up with whatever can be created and ported from professional 3d modelling suites or unreal, but in order for that to have cohesion and sufficient variety in it's totality they need to build out a much broader base. I think they retained a lot of the best work for their NPC characters and walled it off in that way. Those heads have a lot of character, but also a lot of baked-in features, because they are singular designs with a singular purpose in mind. They're sometimes very compelling and very beautiful, but they aren't particularly adaptive. You can see for example where Halsin started vs where he ended up, and can probably imagine what a Halsin-esque face template might look like for a more generic version that can then be further sketched out via more cosmetic features by the player.
I wish what they'd do is really focus on the Custom PC though. I do believe that while we can never satisfy everyone, we can still get much closer to the ideal of a 3d portrait designer where the player can indulge their imagination. Closer than what is currently in the game at any rate. But it takes many more Head templates at the foundation, and some way for the Player to get a quick read on those, like at a glance, so it can be navigated through more easily.
