Where to Find Character Reference Photos
With all my attempts to draw my characters lately, I’ve been trying to find good faceclaims and reference pictures for them. I’ve come across a few useful resources for this, which others might also like to know about!
http://rphelper.tumblr.com/fcdirectory - Narrow down your search by gender, age, ethnicity, eye and hair color, and even whether they have freckles/piercings/are plus size or whether you’re looking for actors/models/musicians/socialites. With this one I discovered that Nina Nesbitt makes a pretty good Lenneth :-D
http://angeldustmt.tumblr.com/fcdirectory - Same sort of thing, search by gender/age/ethnicity/eye & hair color etc.
http://bunchoffaceclaims.tumblr.com/masterlist1 - Only sorted by gender, age, ethnicity, and what the person is known for (actor, singer, etc.) but there are a LOT of faces in this database.
http://jellyfishfaces.tumblr.com/tags - An archive of underused/obscure faces with tags to find posts by gender, hair color, age etc.
http://lookbook.nu/ - Outfits. It’s all modern day, just people sharing what they’re wearing, so perhaps useful for a modern AU and less so for fantasy RPG characters, but it’s a very broad variety all the same.
And, of course, Google…Sometimes it works to do a Google Search By Image with an in-game portrait or model, and then go through the “Visually Similar Images” results. Mostly those return things in a similar art style though, not photos of real people who resemble the portrait. Then again, if you’ve managed to find a good reference photo for your character somewhere (like the one for Xipil I screenshotted from…the loading splash image of Paint Shop Pro when I start it up), you can Search By Image with that and either find the model’s name or use Visually Similar Images to find someone else suitable.
Even with all this, most of my characters still don’t have a faceclaim other than their game screenshots. But sometimes I’ll come across a photo that has just the right combination of facial features, hairstyle, and pose to turn into a character drawing. Other times it’s facial features from one photo, hair from another, etc… Here are some blogs I’ve been following and other good sources I’ve found in all this recent Googling for those random, anonymous references:
http://portraitsfordrawing.tumblr.com/ - http://www.portrait-photos.org/ - Plenty of unique faces in high detail and good lighting! And https://charactersfordrawing.tumblr.com/ for outfits/poses, not just faces.
Blogs like https://met-costume.tumblr.com/ - http://history-of-fashion.tumblr.com/ - http://historicalfashionnerd.tumblr.com/ - http://fripperiesandfobs.tumblr.com/ - http://costumehistory.tumblr.com/ - A variety of historical garments to draw characters in
Blogs like https://maiahairhacks.tumblr.com/ - https://leaprettyhairstyles.tumblr.com/ - etc.; there are a lot of them and they seem likely to be bots but still they’re a daily supply of photos that often make good references. Variety of hair styles, mostly female; mostly photographed from the back, i.e. hairdresser perspective I suppose, but now and then something turns up from a front or side angle worth drawing a character.
https://line-of-action.com/practice-tools/face-expression-practice/ - You can pick a type of expression you want to draw and get a series of photos for reference to practice that kind of expression!
Got any good sources for picking your characters’ faceclaim and reference photos? I’d love to check them out!
