A Plea About New Species Portraits

[Ezumiyr]

There is only one thing I don't want to see: more portraits that are just an earth animal transposed into Stellaris, like the last ones we got.

This isn't an alien, that's a butterfly.

This is a mantis shrimp.

And this is some kind of paradise bird.
There are others which have been there since the beginning too.

I'm ok with some portraits like this as jokes, but lately I've noticed a strong tendency from both the art team and players to prefer actual animals as portraits, instead of things that look at least a bit alien. There's a post on reddit calling for actual "generic ray" or "shark". Please don't do that. Portraits in Stellaris don't have to be completely weird, but most of them are reasonably different from what we know.
There's a confusion with how we need to use thigns we know to identify alien things, and the nature of those alien things. The platypus portrait isn't a platypus. The starfish one isn't a starfish either.
So please, please don't make animal portraits become the norm.

 

[steve.bd]

I like the shrimp...

 

[Molikroth]

I like the bird, I use it a lot.

Buuuuut I get where you're coming from, it would be cool to see some more alien aliens.

 

[Peace Weaver]

Technically everything the art team can possibly come up with will resemble something from earth, because that is all we have to work with. If other portraits look more alien to you than these it is simply because you are less familiar with their source of inspiration. Art is derivative - it is impossible for the human imagination to conceive of anything truly alien.

I would never of included your mantis shrimp as something that is recognizable for instance, but I would of included the toad or ant eater.

 

[Spectra Twilight]

And what exactly does a space alien look like? I can understand your sentiments, but it's rather difficult to design something that looks like something that we have not yet solidly proven to exist, let alone have actually seen, in reality.

Perhaps providing me with some descriptions of what you're looking for would help me to understand better, because all of the portraits I have seen that I would not identify as replicating the appearance of a non-human animal I would instead define as looking, well, like a human but with slightly different facial features.

 

[EvilTom]

Instead of more animal type portraits, I'd rather have minor variations on the current portraits so we can have subspecies... or show when a population is assimilated, or cybernetic... or strong, weak, etc.
I'd love to then be able to chance portraits when genemodifiying (atleast along phenotypes)

When playing random games you can build your own empires to face against, with more "sensible" portraits if you wish! Otherwise a "lock" on certain portraits might be nice os they don't turn up in a game. I'm sure you can mod that in though.

 

[edenprime]

Actually what would be cool is to simply be able to prevent some portraits to spawn in the galaxy. For example the cute and more fantasy portraits and soon the unicorn (if we do get it) would break my suspension of disbelief if I was trying to rp a more serious hard sf world.

 

[Adolf - Finite War]

This isn't an alien, that's a butterfly.

This is a mantis shrimp.

And this is some kind of paradise bird.

It's not the game's fault if you spend time outside.

As far as portraits go the Synth's are much more disappointing_

If I click this

I expext this

no that