Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General BG1+2 NPC Renders

Minsc & His Witches.

Haer'Dalis Version 1.0. Like with most of the others, I think the shape is about right (eyes should maybe be bigger?), but I still need to find the right skin texture. And his scars still need to be made to look like scars rather than facepaint which is pretty much what they currently are.

Anyway, Haer'Dalis is a tiefling bard (although other than the scars, he does pretty much just look like an elf in his portrait).

This might be the last one for a little while, since I have more professional things I should be getting on with. But I do want to keep working on them and get all the BG2 cast done at least, then maybe move on to some BG3.

(There are crosses in this cemetary, since that's the set I had to work with. I realised after I could have easily swapped them for regular tombstones, but I doubt I'm going to redo it any time soon.)

Viconia DeVir.

Viconia is possibly the eldest companion in BG1 + 2. Well, Hexxat I suppose, but I consider Beamdog additions less canon, and I have no idea how old Korgan is. Usually we're not given much information on which to guess their age. Like with Aerie we just know she was captured by slavers when she was still 'very young', and a vague suggestion she might be similar in age to Jaheira (which for an elf is indeed very young).

In the Drizzt novels DeVir is the house that's destroyed the day he's born, meaning Viconia was a priestess of Lloth and fled Menzoberranzan before that happened, so she's probably at least a century older than he is. I know that doesn't seem to mesh with her portrayal in BG1 as a totally naive fish out of water. Honestly, I don't think they really thought that much about it; the BG1 companions are more catchphrases than actual characters so they probably just figured DeVir was a neat little reference to throw in.

Jaheira back in the day. This french braid will have to substitute for the hair she has in her portrait. Still very pretty.

Korgan Bloodaxe. Aerie won't put up with his bullying in SoA, but they can have a cute scene together in ToB when she has the confidence to stand up to him herself.

Boo might be happy. I'm afraid Minsc's witch is likely to be scolded for this.

This happened to me once. You know the old dog ate my homework thing, but it was my hamster; left my textbooks next to the cage and he shredded them to make a bed.

Edwin Odesseiron, Minsc's enemy, although by BG2 he's turned into just another comic relief character. I decided to give him a shorter beard than in his portrait. I think more people actually prefer his BG1 look.

Yes - he is a bit Ming the Merciless.

I definitely prefered his BG1 portrait!

Mike Sass did some truly fantastic portrait work for BG1, probably because the portraits there are of friends and coworkers who worked on the game.

The BG2 portrait comps had way too much magenta and yellow in them for my taste, and it was too easy to see the famous people he used for reference.

You know like Nalia is totally Drew Barrymore and whatnot. Hard to unsee once you've seen it. BG2 was better I thought for the Non-Humans

Anyhow, nice work! These are fun!

Speaking of Nalia:



Nalia De'Arnise. Don't know if I really captured Drew Barrymore in this, but I have noticed doing these that a lot of BG2 characters have similar noses; they tend to have raised nostril wings and lowered septums.

Keldorn Firecam. Obviously he was already a pretty old dude in BG2. He definitely had kids though, so who knows - maybe we'll run into his descendants some time in the future.

Valygar Corthala. Probably not really a great ratio that of the three POC companions in the original games, two are killed. But Val survives!

Yoshimo! IIRC, he was supposed to have been Tamoko's brother (Sarevok's mistress/lover in BG1), but I don't think that info made it into the game.

I dig your Nalia!

And your Jaheria, of course!

It's true lots of the noses did have the same thing going on in BG2. You sorta see that with everyone I think, but maybe that's pretty common I guess across the board. Like even going back to the Gibson girl and maybe all the way back to like a Praxiteles, with noses getting knocked off the whole time hehe.

Kinda figure like Sass probably had some pics of the various celebrities that he thought were cool to work from, and maybe like 1 model to actually play around with props, like broomsticks and halloween wings for the witch, and a replica greatsword. Lots of scrunchies and robes probably to try and get something going for the BG2. Maybe it was snowing out and he just had to make it work from home. BG2 was so massive for the day, but also by then they kinda new that custom portraits would fill in a lot of gaps for many. He might have some feedback on elves faces or something like too and thought, 'well gotta give another pass' so you get some of the reduxes into the sequel like for Jaheira. I would frequently switch out Viconia for a portraits for random drow alts from random book covers, but then that would start a chain reaction where I felt like I had to do customs for the whole party it would tend to look weird with the color correction all over the place. Though you sorta get that just going from BG1 to BG2 comps anyway. I remember early experiments to see how it'd look with them all desatured and tinted sepia.

Alas poor Cernd, he didn't get many requests probably, compared to Keldorn with the Unseeing eye or Val. Or Yoshimo, now we're talking!

Anyway these are fun to see. Catching early Poser and 3d memory lane is cool, especially I think compared to what is likely floating about currently for the mini portraits. Even for the old portraits, the BG2s I mean for the actual game, though they have their little flaws and the charms of digital painting of that time, they still got heart. Whereas now through stable diffusion and mass grift, people could probably do just about any celebrity morphed into a stolen Karla Ortiz illustration, and while it will be super clean and appear ultra polished, it just doesn't carry the same way like it does when you know someone was really work it for it. Like you've been doing.

The 3d maquettes, to me I dig almost in the same way as the physical ones from like harryhausen times or hensen or something. Starts to take on that character of how things were done before with the historical provenance. I think there may also come a time here where traditional painting becomes really sought after again, even for things like scans that end up in games only in digital form ultimately, but just to have them around somewhere in physical space too. I feel like the way 3d modelling goes it'd still be kinda simpler to go from the more abstracted shapes down to super tiny, if they were to be sculpted in plastic, which is always a fantasy. Like imagining them articulated on a little battlefield on the table.

It was sort of a miss that they never put out a BG/BG2 miniature line while the games were still on the shelves. They probably did afterwards same way they do with cards and the like. But I mean to hit at the same time. BG2 GI Joe Aerie vs team Cobra with Viconia haha. That would have been such a winner! The BG3 big boxed set has got that diorama, but like you could just picture that gone to the next next level. Never know, could still crack off I suppose, though for BG3 they'd have to go a bit more storytime/explorer for it, since this such very much adult game if you option on all the options. Still it's fun to think on.

Meantime this thread is a blast! I like the scenes

ps. ! Real quick (and hope it's ok) but just to check it out in the ultra tiny hehe... She holds up like a badass!



Obviously BG1 upscaled from a 38x60px bmp back in the day but I did one at 110 just to see how'd she'd look. My crop was off a bit, but she's pretty ace for a face and expression! Great work!

Oh yeah - Jaheira and Aerie are the ones I'm most pleased with so far. The challenge is when you only have a stylised image of the characters from one angle and one lighting to translate into 3D, you have to make some guesses and take a bit of creative license at times. But once the models are done, I can pretty much just play with them like dolls, swapping their costumes and making them do whatever. Might have some fun with that later, like dressing Aerie up as an Anime Magical Girl or something; kind of suits the earnestness of her character. Although in meantime I'm still tweaking the others:



I think now Haer'Dalis is looking much more like a doomed poet.

Korgan Bloodaxe. I've sort of made him look a bit rougher than he really does in his portrait. If you're wondering, the hairstyle I've given him here pretty much is Daryl's from The Walking Dead.

There. It is done; all sixteen original companions from BG2. Phew! That took a while. Of course, there was another companion added in Throne of Bhaal I may or may not get to one day, or some companions from BG1 (like I already started on Dynaheir for Minsc & his Witches). Maybe Beamdog companions, one day, but definitely BG3 at some point.

I kind of threatened it before, so here:



Magical Card Capturing Girl Sailor Aerie, or whatever.

That is fantastic!!! So much character!

Well done and thanks for letting us check these out