Pirates And Firefighters And Gargoyles (Oh My)

As some of you may have deduced, though I so cleverly couched my discussion of it in “hypothetical” terms, I’ve been thinking about offering a service in which I provide people with what I call Heroic Portraits of themselves.
These would be images of people transformed into fantastic versions of themselves, taking on the roles of barbarian warriors, super heroes, wizards, monsters, and all manner of imaginary men, women, and beasts.
I’m still kicking around some ideas as far as what I would charge for this service and working out some of the other details, but in the meantime I thought it would be wise for me to generate something of a portfolio.
Towards that end, and without their knowledge, I decided to use my friends as guinea pigs.
Here are some of the Heroic Portraits I’ve completed so far.


Here we see Scott as, naturally, a pirate. Note that “Heroic” is only meant to indicate the notion of the fantastic, as the end result need not be entirely heroic.


Here is my friend Zalfiro (AKA Jon, though he doesn’t get to be Jon in my mind because I’m Jon. Besides, I’m older.) rendered as a gargoyle. Again, “Heroic” doesn’t necessarily mean pretty. Note that this one demonstrates the customizable aspect, as the greenish cast was added by request after seeing the original.


And here is Brian as “Fireman.” When I first saw the picture of Brian that served as the source for this, it brought to mind the epilogue of the animated movie Batman: Mask of the Phantasm during which we see the Dark Knight standing atop a building looking grim and sorrowful over the events of the movie. Then the Bat Signal appears in the sky and he casts aside his sorrow and springs into action. Thus I had no other choice but to render a similar scene – in what I thought was a fitting artistic style – though changing the context to fit with Brian’s role as a volunteer fire fighter. This one falls squarely in the more conventionally “Heroic” category.

I’ll most likely crank out a couple more samples, make some pricing decisions, register a domain, and throw up a Web site.
In the meantime, if any of you would like to receive similar treatment in order to help me expand my portfolio, I’ll be happy to provide you with your own Heroic Portrait free of charge. Of course, you will be limited to a digital-only copy that’s not really suitable for printing. If you want an actual print we’ll have to discuss the terms of some sort of financial remuneration.
But for a digital copy suitable for display on blogs or MySpace, send a photo of yourself and a description of how you would like to see yourself (the more detail – in both the photo and the description – the better) to heimdal472@gmail.com. I can’t promise a quick turnaround, but hey, you get what you pay for.
As sort of a follow-up, it would probably be best for everyone involved if you kept the photos and the requested images relatively “tame.” After all, you might make me blush if you get too naughty. Not that I have any opposition to skimpy outfits or anything like that. Let’s just say that it would be best if we kept things capped in the PG-13 to R range, with no NC-17, okay?