Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Elves are not Elven - Tel-quessir feed back ;)

I mean, in anime, all people are elf shaped except the Armstrong family

That depends on the era of anime, really; back in the 1980s through most of the 1990s, adults looked like adults and folks weren't universally slender. In any case, if you place Deedlit (the previously displayed anime elf) next to a human from her world, you can immediately tell the difference.

Jaheria may be an half-elf. But to me (in the BG2 version of her portrait) she looks just how I imagine elves in DnD to look like.

What are the chances that Larian could do her justice? I consider that a coin toss.

The Aerie shown there in photoreal demonstrates why they need to dilate the pupils and englarge the iris relative to the white in order for a stylized anime elf face to carry. Otherwise having tilted orbitals/eyelids will make the face appear crosseyed.

I posted this image in feedback, but it's like 6 pages down now, meaning it may as well not exist, so I'll put it here too hehe....


Anyhow you can see the same effect there (albeit more subdued) with Male Elf head 3. Even a subtle tilt in the eyes has a pretty outsized effect on overall impression.

Basically if you change the eyeline from horizontal to oblique, such that the medial canthus of the tear duct is significantly lower down on the face than the lateral canthus, but don't enlarge the pupil/iris at the same time, it will always give off that crosseyed appearance.

In anime the eyes are typically like 3 times as large and set twice as far apart, which is how they can get away with it there. Even Princess Zelda still has a horizontal eyeline and round orbitals though. Once you tilt the ducts down it's hard to avoid the crosseyed thing unless the pupils/iris are pretty massive to offset.

I'm not the hugest fan of elves in that style, but if that's what they're after, the size/shape of the eyes definitely makes a difference in how appealing it's going to look.

ps. this is rough but just for the quick read... if the iris is enlarged and the pupil dilated the rest of the morphs around the eyes to make the orbitals more triangular aren't quite as pronounced, but it still carries. If they go with larger and wider set orbitals for half-elves they could do the iris/pupil at like 1.5 and then twice that for the full elves. For the ears they could do both length and angle, with the full elves having the longer and more oblique options. The rationale for larger pupils in the fantasy races makes sense with vision bonuses, elves and halflings and such. Trying to hit something in the middle for half-elves that favor their human ancestry in the looks. Right now I think all the current elven heads make fine half elves. For full elves enlarged eyes and more triangular skull options.

aerie iris at x2 dilated

Also this is an alt dark aerie I had saved on the old hd hehe... Shows eyes more at 1.5. Something like that I think would work well for a more dialed down option or for half elves too.

Black_Elk, the thoroughness of your response was appreciated. I - personally - do not need or want D&D's elves to resemble "anime"* elves. That said, Aerie is an Avariel and the Avariel are winged elves with an affinity for and possibly to birds. If someone proposed giving the Avariel somewhat larger eyes compared to standard elves (eyes which would bear a minor similarity to avian eyes), I wouldn't be opposed to that proposal.


* On the other hand, "anime" (along with "manga") is so broad a label that I wouldn't be surprised if there were an anime/manga that features elves whose appearances are faithful to "typical" D&D elves.

Yeah for sure, I could definitely see that with the owl eyes. It's interesting when considering the LOTR elves, that like the single best performance was probably this one with Galadriel... right after the 'all shall love me and despair' line... in that sequence and heightened by the audio one of the things they do is dilate her pupils to the size of her iris and then kick in the blur for something that goes beyond human in the cast shadows. That whole scene caries the film I think as far as the elves in the depiction and seems the most fey. I capped it just to take a closer look at how the cast shadows and such gives off a more triangular vibe and more alien in the sweep. Just curious that even within the elves as human aesthetic, it worked pretty powerfully there to go with the eyes and do something there heheh

NSFW figure drawings of an Elf and Half-Elf (among the other D&D races) -> Here. I dig the earlier (late TSR-era?) inspiration in the faces; also, the builds are spot-on.


That is what I call an animesque Galadriel. "Now we see you as you truly are.".

Did someone say owl? I like owls.

Another NSFW example -> Here. These figures are a bit more stylized for my liking, but still decent. However, I don't think the Human looks quite as fitting when compared to the Elf and Half-Elf.


Just how - in a thread concerning elves - did you manage to zero in on the subject of owls ?

:[ I like owls...

EDIT: and while not on the subject of owls nor elves, I do believe that image you shared would be a great contribution to the Halfling-feedback forum as well.

Other than that, is the half-elf not slightly too tall by average? o.o

Just want to shout this out as a rare example of a portly elf.

I have to broadly agree with the OP that elves should stand out as more elvish, if possible.

There's one exception I explicitly want to stay in place, and that's Halsin. I have a bro-crush on him and don't want his design to change, LOL. So for his sake I guess let there be some bulky elves too.

Body sizes and heights are quite fine here ...

But Dwarves and Half-Ocs should both be a lot more hairy. :P
As i allways said, Dwarf without a beard is not a Dwarf, females included. :P

Absolute heresy. Everyone knows elves store excess fat in their ego

Share away, if you wish.


Compared to the Human and/or Elf, yes. The more I examine those figures, the more I think that the Elf and Half-Elf are fine...in a vacuum (i.e., free of comparison to the other races).


Few exceptions aside, they're a naturally hygienic and fit people: free from body hair, presumably free of bad body odor and rarely packing on the pounds. Usually, the deviations from expected Elf body types are the unusually tall and/or muscular specimens.


As long as strongmen Elves are outliers, all is fine. It makes sense that Wood/Wild Elves are most likely to produce brawny individuals.


Truly? I find that the Elf suffers greatly when placed next to the Dwarf; the Elf barely clears the Dwarf's height (Elves are frequently shorter than Humans, but they're clearly taller than Dwarves) and the disparity between their builds is almost comical. The other NSFW example of D&D races showcases differences, but those differences aren't nearly as exaggerated.

Baldur's Gate is part of the Forgotten Realms setting, and elves here aren't the generic size of this chart.


Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting provides little information on height and weight for the races, except to say this (on pages 39-40):

"Most characters in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting use the normal height and weight values given on Table 6-6: Random Height and Weight in the Player's Handbook. However, elves in Faerûn are tall and thin, so all elves except drow use the human height and the half-elven weight, subtracting 10 pounds from the actual weight. Half-elves use the human height and half-elven weight entries. The emaciated gray dwarves use the dwarf entries but subtract 30 pounds from their weight result. Aasimars and tieflings use standard human height and weight, and the genasi use that as a base, although air genasi tend to be lighter, earth genasi heavier, fire genasi taller, and water genasi shorter."

Which edition? A shame: it seems they were trying to funnel the races around a human standard (due to laziness?) while rarely committing to hard separate statistics.

Personaly i thought that is a Half-Elf.

But yes, Dwarf is a little bigger here than it should be, but this topic is about elves so i was focusing on them.