#Konstantin Porubov

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Annihilating Glare by Konstantin Porubov

[gebo4482]

Dragonborn for Baldur's Gate 3 by Konstantin Porubov

[pepperclint]

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

Hol up you drew the gold scars yourself? I thought Aylin just had them in game on her model?

I did! And she does, to an extent - the ones on her head I didn't have anything to do with. Unfortunately, on the in-game body model Aylin uses, the scars just end around the neckline of her shirt and kind of fade out partway down her back.

So I decided to learn a bit of Substance Painter and texturing, and went to town, using the above as a starting point. Getting it to export right and show up in the game properly was the main challenge! I wrote a post about some of the process here.

Of course, me being me, the most fun part of the thing was overthinking and deep(ish?) lore cuts. I'd like to share some of the concept art that inspired this and that I referenced in that post. This is from the artbook:

(That pillory-looking thing made up of Myrkul-ish triangles? Damn.) Then we have this, by concept artist Konstantin Porubov who has a lot of great stuff posted on his ArtStation:

(Unrelated but shoutout to him for this lineup of Isobel outfit variants which I look at every other day because there are so many bangers.)

As you might have noticed in these, there used to be a whole thing about "the Nightsong's heart" (eerily enough, the item's still kind of in the game) which in the final story ended up "just" being Aylin getting repeatedly stabbed and ritualistically murdered. Along with dialogue about the magical "spear intended for [her] heart" and such. So I decided I wanted to have the big golden patch on her chest as a reference to all this.

Meanwhile on her back we have the aftermath of Balthazar's handiwork. This is one of those notes that, on your first playthrough, you probably read before having any idea about the Nightsong twist and you file it under the giant "Atrocities, Various" pile that is Balthazar. And then some time later it hits you and you think it's really convenient how you have a save file you can load just to go kill him again.

[cultofthewyrm]

Guillaume de Launfal by Konstantin Porubov

[dukeofdogs]

Gwent: The Witcher Card Game | The cards that could’ve been 71/?

Guillaume de Launfal (Konstantin Porubov), Grégoire de Gorgon (Sébastien Blondet)

[skxrbrand]

Konstantin Porubov

[wanderingcotabussurgetank]

Ravengard by Konstantin Porubov

[deck16]

I've seen people make "movie posters" of their RPG campaigns and always wanted to do one. Thanks to the power of AI, now I can!

More about this after the jump, including a broad overview of how this was made, some admissions about stolen art, and the story behind this scene.

Highly Unethical Theft

Some of the components of this work aren't mine. I'd care more about these if this wasn't a hobbyist project for personal use. At the least, though, I can credit the sources.

The sinister man summoning red magic is from here, apparently by a gentleman named Konstantin Porubov. The art has been fed through the AI to give it a look more in-line with the other art, but as you can see it isn't fundamentally transformed.

The leopard in the bottom left is from the Fall of Plaguestone adventure path. Not sure who the artist is.

I'm 98% sure that elf with the sword in the top-left is was something I found on the internet, but the AI has re-imagined it so much that not even Google Images can find the original.

The dragon in the bottom right is art commissioned by a player, so that's not unethical to use.

The large head of the half-elf woman is also from the Fall of Plaguestone adventure path, but much more heavily re-imagined by the AI than the sinister man.

How the Poster was Made

All the AI stuff was made using using tips you can find in this post. Then, of course, I composted the various images using GIMP; but that's more generic image manipulation stuff and there must be a billion tutorials out there for that.

Some of the characters depicted are generated using txt2img. Some are Heroforge screenshots which are then filtered through img2img.

The text was made with HTML, which I then screen-shot and paste into the scene. I used some Google Fonts.

The Story Behind the Poster

I'll keep this short. This is a group I've been GMing for about one and a half years. We moved from D&D to Pathfinder Second Edition and started with the adventure path Fall of Plaguestone.

(Minor spoilers for Fall of Plaguestone appear below.)

They managed to mostly win that adventure, but the main villain -- Vilree the half-elf -- managed to escape. She's grown to be a major villain in the larger home-brew story that the campaign has progressed on to. So much so that she threatened to destroy the town that the heroes saved in that first adventure! So back they went, to save the town once more...

At the time of writing, that adventure arc was played and concluded several months ago. Yes, the heroes saved the town a second time. But Vilree is still at large!

[wh40kartwork]

Skulltaker 

by Konstantin Porubov

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Mesmerizing Dose by Konstantin Porubov

[scifi-fantasy-horror]

by  Konstantin Porubov

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

I was wondering about this as I was reading a fanfic the other day but, did Isobel have white hair before she died? I can’t remember if any of the in-game lore said anything about it. Based on my light perusal online I can’t seem to find anything either. If anyone knew, I figured it would be you! (I love your blog btw!)

Hi there! Thanks for that vote of confidence, I do appreciate it. You're very kind.

Sadly, there's nothing I've seen in-game or datamined that talks about Isobel's hair at all. The concept art of her that's been made available also shows her with light hair only - it's the current, in-game version of her anyway, mostly exploring various concepts for her outfit and toying slightly with the hair length. An example:

The full versions of these were posted by artist Konstantin Porubov on his artstation (which has other cool BG3 stuff and I recommend taking a look). I love that she's holding a very Wand of the Four Moons looking mace there, and that top right white hooded cloak look is very Silver Lady of her. Tasty setting lore deep cuts, mmmm.

If we reeeeeeally want to stretch it, you can see a "dark-haired Isobel" in this fun EA datamining video by Chubblot from 2021 which shows what Isobel's placeholder model looked like early in development, when a lot of the NPCs just used character creator presets:

While I don't think this can really be taken as representative of anything and thus isn't super relevant to your actual question (and it's not supposed to be a pre-death version of Isobel anyway), I do recommend watching the video - it's really interesting and especially so with the layer of hindsight we now have. Also, Gortash and Orin's placeholder models are hilarious.

Unfortunately, we also don't actually know what her mother Melodia looked like, because the one image of her in the game is... a painted-over Aylin (as the picture looks to be a slightly repurposed asset, more about that here, Magical Photographer Isobel my beloved).

It's a really cool bit of fanon though, I find! I genuinely really like all the various versions of it I've seen: the idea of Isobel being this super-special moon-touched moon-blessed white-haired gal from birth is neat; then the idea of the practice of hair dyeing as a sign of religious devotion which has a nice resonance with Shadowheart (and goes well with Isobel's tats, too! I want more cool body mod stuff for clerics always); and finally the angsty one of her originally having dark hair and eyes like her dad and the paleness being a result of the weird resurrection and curse, and the century of darkness visibly leaving its mark on her just as it did on Aylin.

Anyway, that's all I've got - comments and contributions welcome, as always!

[cultofthewyrm]

Karlach by Konstantin Porubov

[hadesbeast]

Artist Konstantin Porubov…Gutmorn, Pactbound Servant 😈 ~ßεศş†~ https://www.instagram.com/p/CjEYiLXPbOQ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[manfrommars2049]

Adepta Sororitas by Konstantin Porubov via ImaginaryWeaponry