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Falenthal
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Joined: Tue 10 Mar 2020, 21:13

Martin Grip and the drawing of female characters

Wed 04 May 2022, 18:56

Lately I've been preparing and running a one-shot of TOR2 to get to know the rules and demo the game to a few friends. Did it online and I always like to use the presented drawings and style of the edition to keep an homegenic feel to the setting. But, when looking for portraits for the hero characters, I found that every character in the Core Book spreadsheets is male. Ended up using also some portraits by him from Symbaroum, but it would be nice to complement the fellowship presented in the Core Book (the Ranger, the Elf, the Dwarf and the Hobbit) with some female character heroes to use in our games.

As a side note, it seems that Martin Grip is like butter spread over too much bread nowadays... While in the days of Symbaroum he did every illustration for every book, now he is comissioned for every IP in Free League and has to specialize in Core Books and Covers ;)
While a shame for those of us who are in love with his work and want to see him in every page of our prefered games, he truly deserves the praise he is getting.
 
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eternalsage
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Re: Martin Grip and the drawing of female characters

Wed 04 May 2022, 19:06

May have been intentional (not commenting on if that would be a good idea or not) given the source material. Personally I agree with you though. My favorite character in 1e was the woodsman woman with the dog. She ALWAYS looked amazing.
“It is useless to meet revenge with revenge; it will heal nothing.” - Frodo Baggins, Return of the King
 
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Harlath
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Re: Martin Grip and the drawing of female characters

Wed 04 May 2022, 19:20

I thought each Culture had at least one female character on their double page culture spread? With the potential exception of the Dwarves and the debates on what their women look like! Although I think one of the Dwarves show up again on p171 and is more clearly female there.

All reference are reading left to right
Bardings: 1st and 4th character
Dwarves: 1st and 3rd
Elves of Lindon: 1st
Hobbits: 2nd
Men of Bree: 1st and 4th
Rangers: 4th

Some of these characters show up in other illustrations.

Sorry if I've misunderstood!
 
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Falenthal
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Re: Martin Grip and the drawing of female characters

Wed 04 May 2022, 21:03

While the whole book has a variety of male and female characters, I was only referring to the art by Martin Grip (cover and double pages that open each chapter).
His style is so unique that I'd like to use it everywhere when playing TOR, so that I never get enough of him to use in my games :D
 
Asgo
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Re: Martin Grip and the drawing of female characters

Wed 04 May 2022, 21:37

I like his style in terms of the theme and flair they transport. But I also am very happy that they went with the other style(cannot remember who did those ;) ) for the in chapter art, as it fits the general style and layout of the book better.
For most of the chapter spreads that contain recognizable characters, its the same party of chars. But only one is actually close up enough to tell that they are male, for the rest there is a lot of room for interpretation. :)
So in principle there is the option of a bit of creative picking art representations.

But honestly, as inspiration for character portraits they wouldn't be my first pick, which isn't that surprising because the vagueness of the style is more to set the scene and deliver the flair, while not to make it too much about exactly this specific characters.

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