Am I the only one who feels this way about character pictures?

I prefer...

  • ...everyone to use real-life photos.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • ...everyone to use only art or only photos.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    46
Status
Not open for further replies.
L

Levusti

Guest
Original poster
When I join a roleplay, I really really really hate seeing people a mixing of hand-drawn character art with real-life portraits.

If we plan to play a historical RP, I play using real-life stills as an appearance photo. If I plan to play an anime-inspired RP, I play using drawn art.

Does anybody else feel the same way or am I the only one? Does this make me excessively anal-retentive?
 
Excessively? Not at all. Maybe a little.

I kid. People have their preferences, and that's cool.

Personally, I inwardly groan whenever someone uses anime-styled pictures for their appearance description, especially if it's over the top like I see quite often.

But honestly I just kind of suck it up. It comes with the territory, and in my case if I have a problem, it's on me to GTFO, if you will, as opposed to pooh-poohing what other people like.
 
I used to feel that way but I've long since let it go.

When I first go into blog roleplaying I had no idea what a play-by was and I had also no idea why everybody . A lot of folks there used a mix of celeb/model photos and anime art to represent their muses. At first I wasn't in board but I learned to accept it eventually. Of course, I circumvent all of this by just drawing my own stuff, as bad as it may be.

But not everyone can draw their own character portraits (or afford to commission them) so they work with what they got. There's no harm in it unless they also claim said pictures as their own. Then it's theft.


And anime photos? Whatever. As long as they source the art I have no problem.

Live and let live. At the end of the day we're all dorks pretending to be fictional characters on the internet.
 
I can definitely see where you're coming from, but it's not something that bothers me really. It doesn't really make sense when someone uses a picture that is, as Scrap Iron put it, "over-the-top" in a realistic setting. On the other hand RP is about freedom to express oneself so if they feel that a given picture best expresses what they have in their mind for their character, then good on them.

This next bit is me going off on a bit of a pseudo-philosophical musing. If you just want the basic core idea without the more nebulous ideas pulled from my mind, feel free to disregard everything after this point.

Anime-style images and other forms of exaggerated character photos. What are they? What are they an exaggeration of? They're still, at their core, based on people. Such a picture could be viewed as the roleplayer seeking to represent more than just their character's visual appearance aspect using the visual medium of pictures. In the same way a caricature takes the features of its subject and exaggerates them, these pictures take the personality and individual color of the character and put them on display in a way that they wouldn't be in real life. It takes internal things and makes them external. If you pulled them right off the screen, yeah they wouldn't be a realistic person. If you take all the busy information that's been exaggerated to pull the internal aspects out and you compress that back into internal aspects, you are left with the realistic person that picture represents.

-End me over thinking the situation for fun-
 
Honestly, it does not bother me in the slightest what people use. I tend to use a combination of anime and actual-people photos. For me it just depends on the character I am playing and the appearance I want them to have. Even people who use BJD's as their bases don't bother me one bit. But that is just how I am.
 
I don't usually use any sort of visual aid for my characters, though if I do, it's something I've designed/drawn myself or commissioned from another artist. I don't really care what my partner uses if they want to use an image, but I personally feel pretty uncomfortable using photos of real people for my characters. It's like, to me, a photo of RDJ (example) is just going to be RDJ; I'm going to have a hard time imagining your character that way. Images from photoshoots are different imo, because they're models dressed to tell a story; that I don't mind so much.

Honestly though, it doesn't really affect me. I'm not going to abstain from role-playing with someone just because they use celebrity photos for their characters, or because they use anime photos, or don't use any photos at all. I just don't like being expected to hunt down an image of a real person to use as a portrait for my characters. It's weird to me. And also takes way too much effort on my part haha. I know that's part of the reason I stopped role-playing on individual games... it became such a pain in the ass to me when your character's play-by/avatar/signature/graphics were more important than the story telling.

That being said, if you're the GM and it's something that bothers you, you should definitely have the right to say 'all realistic photos' or 'all anime pictures,' etc. I can see how mixing the two could be a bit immersion breaking.
 
I do. It drives me nuts when you see a fantasy photo with a real life picture. Especially if that roleplay had specifically said 'Use this kind of image please' and there's always that one person who doesn't want to comply.
 
If the GM specifically says "use this type of image for the RP" then I would probably find an out-of-place character photo bothersome. If the GM doesn't care, I don't care. If the GM wants it a certain way and someone decides to ignore that, yeah. Then we have a problem. Then it's a matter of politely asking them to choose a different picture for their character if they want to be a part of that RP.
 
Aside: I have a fairly good idea of what the term "play-by" means (I know how to use a search engine, haha), but could someone explain the... etymology of it to me?
 
I kinda care and the same time I don't. I think the only time it bothers me is when the pictures used don't match the time period/theme of the roleplay. Like, if we're playing this post apocalyptic gritty zombie roleplay, and someone posts a picture of this super cute 12 year old moe blob anime picture, I grind my teeth a lot. XD Or if we're doing an epic fantasy roleplay and they use a real life modern picture of a guy in a suit, that really doesn't seem to fit.

Otherwise I am not bothered at all by the mix of pictures. If I want people to use the same style of pic, I just say so in my game info. O_O
 
To me it doesn't matter what others use. I always, Personally use my own hand drawn illustrations for my RP characters and avatars. What others do is up to them and not for me to judge. Whatever helps them get into character ^_^

I choose to use my own Art work simply because its my stamp, I work very hard to create my illustrations and characters and art needs to be seen. If I am feeling rare I'll even step it up and illustrate a scene from an RP for a post here and there.

As I get more comfortable here on Iwaku, My art is evolving into something more confident and dramatic. My avatar was the first Drawing I did for Iwaku, Fijoli. Slowly but surely I'm honing these long lost illustration skills.

As for others, I hope that everyone does what feels best for them and helps them to be creative, I'm a live and let live kinda gal.​
 
Only thing that bothers me are RPs that insist there be an image. I do not have the time or inclination to look through hundreds of galleries for the "right" picture. Sometimes I have an image to build a character from, other times I do not. In either case I am doing creative WRITING why do I need a picture?

But you know what, that's still my issue. Best for me to find a different game.
 
i come from a group of roleplayers who only ever used art. and never anything that they didn't draw themselves or had commissioned or received as a gift. none of this found-it-on-google-it-fits stuff.
so it's jarring to me, coming into a roleplay and seeing art that is clearly someone else's used as a reference for someone's character.
if i have no art for my character, i just describe them in as much detail as i can. maybe allude to similarities they may have to a certain celebrity or whatever.
 
I honestly dislike reference pictures. Seems lazy to me- this is writing, after all. If you've taken the time to draw it yourself or commission it from an artist, then that's pretty cool. Shows dedication and implies the character is developed. ^^ But stealing art, especially art that doesn't fit the mood, just pisses me off. I have to really like a RP to join it if the OP permits blatant art theft, and I absolutely will not let anyone join my RPs with stolen art. RPers would be pissed off, and rightfully so, if someone copied the character. Why is it ok for them to just casually take something another sort of artist spend minutes/hours/days on?

But, if a picture is necessary, match it the fuck to the mood. Don't post anime for realistic. Don't post a casual pic for fantasy. Don't post over-the-top for a down-low setting. Don't be the one person with an artsy photo when everyone else went plain and simple.

But honestly, pictures are like the stray taxi and I'm just all "I'M WRITIN' HERE!".
 
For me, I prefer everyone use drawings - style notwithstanding - because the only photos you'll find are either of models or historical figures. If you use art pieces, you have a beautiful representation of average people, or demonstrations of occult personalities. Painting, lineart, "anime", what have you.
 
If it is something like what you want your character to look like, and it doesn't goes against the GMs ideas, do it, your character your call.
But for the best impact, describe your characters with words, always makes for fun discussions when people get different images in their heads ^^
 
I have never used anime pictures or real pictures when roleplaying (closest thing was something from a manga) I either use a written description or my own drawings, I don't like it when people use real photos because it feels to real, I feel the same way about people's avatars, I don't want to know who you are. I do find it awkward when putting one of my drawings in a roleplay where people used real photos as their appearance like I did in Diana's recent vampire rp. I felt out of place but yet it was the best description I had of those characters, a written description would have been too generic.
 
I do have to mention that if a picture is required, I'm far less likely to consider doing the RP. I'll use a picture if I find one that suits, but not if you make me. I guess that's just my contrarian side showing.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Lady Sabine
I used to care. I don't anymore.

I still prefer real images personally. For fantasy settings though I usually use drawn or CG because of the difficulty in finding an appropriate image.

But to answer your question, I don't think you're crazy at all. I totally understand wanting the uniformity of having them all be from the same medium. It helps imagine the interactions between characters better. Otherwise you feel like you have this weird Jessica Rabbit situation where part of your cast is real and part of them are drawn.
 
I get annoyed if people use descriptions like "Looks like FAMOUS ACTOR/FICTIONAL CHARACTER but with different colour eyes" etcetera, so I guess using actor/actress photos would be my hot button

In general though I prefer not to use pictures as character descriptions at all. I'd rather see good writing telling me how the character looks and dresses; I think it allows more room for originality that way, too.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.