Saaay, aren't you?

August 4, 2005 6:59 AM

I always thought Bruce Campbell would be perfect to play the guy from Doom. And yeah, Howie Long is a dead ringer for Duke Nukem. But looking at how much Mr. T looks like Barrett from Final Fantasy 7 and Winona Ryder looks like Vice from King of Fighters I have to wonder how much of this is on purpose? Of course there are the exceptions.
posted by Smedleyman (20 comments total)

The human scientist from Masters of Orion 2 is a dead ringer for Sean Connery. Got me to thinkin'.
posted by Smedleyman at 7:00 AM on August 4, 2005

Cody and Guy/Damon and Affleck, not so much, methinks.
posted by alumshubby at 7:03 AM on August 4, 2005

Here's the main Video Lookalikes page.
posted by mediareport at 7:17 AM on August 4, 2005

Wow.
posted by cheerleaders_to_your_funeral at 7:19 AM on August 4, 2005

I hereby conjure the ghost of Shakespeare to consume the person who put quotes around actress. Flaming tea stained teeth and many quill pins to poke with.
posted by nervousfritz at 7:20 AM on August 4, 2005

Thanks mediareport.

*goes off to find bat with which to smash lousy work computer*
posted by Smedleyman at 7:31 AM on August 4, 2005

IIRC Vice doesn't really look like Ryder apart from that one picture. She's got uh... larger assets, plus a really weird fighting stance.

I can't believe he compared Guy to Ben Affleck.

Let's review...

Guy: Awesome Ninja

Ben Affleck: Pasty Matt Damon groupie.

Class is now dismissed.
posted by selfnoise at 7:34 AM on August 4, 2005

I can't believe I never noticed before...
posted by voltairemodern at 7:38 AM on August 4, 2005

I'm convinced that this cover art from the game Guild Wars is based on Milla Jovovich.
posted by crunchland at 8:25 AM on August 4, 2005

Crunchland-

Unlike Thor, I think you might actually be on to something there.

I'd also like to add that if someone in Hollywood makes a Final Fight movie and casts Ben Affleck as Guy, I will personally see to their mysterious death.
posted by selfnoise at 8:32 AM on August 4, 2005

I'm convinced that the bad guy from star wars is based on the bad guy from the middle-east
posted by cheerleaders_to_your_funeral at 8:39 AM on August 4, 2005

The Umaro/Robin Williams comparison suggests a certain level of jest. Cool stuff, thanks though.

And crunchland, I was wondering who was on my GW box. Thanks for clearing that up.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 8:43 AM on August 4, 2005

Wow, check out that pipe on Super Mario.
posted by ssmith at 9:16 AM on August 4, 2005

Huh. In the Japanese version of Street Fighter, the character we know as Balrog was actually M. Bison, as he was a parody of Mike Tyson.
posted by Marit at 9:21 AM on August 4, 2005

Wasn't he M Bison in America too?
posted by mrgrimm at 11:49 AM on August 4, 2005

mrgrimm, they switched names around - Balrog in the US was the boxer, and in Japan the boxer was called M. Bison. It seems they changed a bunch of names around - the final boss in Japan was called Vega, who was the clawed/masked boss in the US. Only names changed, the characters were the same.

This forum post says it is:

Japan / America

Vega = M. Bison
M. Bison = Balrog
Balrog = Vega
posted by drstupid at 12:08 PM on August 4, 2005

I really doubt video game characters are modeled after an actor they hope will eventually take the part. The more likely reality is that pop culture seeps into video games, a la the Mr T comparison. His look has become iconic and is used to fill a necessary role in the game, where the game writers don't have to tell you the backstory on why this character is crazy. Instead, he looks like Mr. T, which tells you the whole story.
posted by poppo at 1:42 PM on August 4, 2005

from drstupid's link:

In Street Fighter, Major Bison was played by Raúl Juliá, the last role he played before his death

apparently death waits for no man to make a decent last film.
posted by sixtoes at 2:56 PM on August 4, 2005

Hey, I'm a concept artist at a video game developer, so I can maybe shed a bit of light....

When we design characters, we look at a lot of reference photos, and a lot of times we do wind up looking at actors who fit the stereotype of the character we're working on. Howie Long is a big, square-jawed tough guy, so he makes sense as one reference for Duke Nukem, for instance.

What we wind up doing often is looking at 6 or 8 different faces and/or bodies as reference photos and picking and choosing different features to draw or paint - a chin from this guy, eyebrows from that guy, nose from yet another, eye shape from another. This is pretty much standard procedure; characters are rarely invented entirely out of our heads.

Another consideration, as always, is time. I usually only have at most 2 days to create and do a full realistic painting of each character I do, so I use whatever help I can to speed the process. I've been at my job 5 months and I've done a couple dozen character paintings and over 150 different environment drawings, along with 6 or 8 sets of storyboards too... with that kind of workload, conjuring things up solely from my brain would be impossible.

Personally I try to make my characters not look like anyone in particular, but sometimes it's hard to keep it from sneaking in. Sometimes I finish a painting and realize it does look like somebody, and I'll tweak a couple things to play it down a bit.

And then of course, we artists are always looking at each other's work and being influenced by artist friends and others who we admire, so there's always some bleed. Again, it's a pick-and-choose process. If I like the way someone renders hair or composes an action frame I might borrow that technique for one of my pieces.

So, I guess it's sort of a natural growth of the process.

Then again, there are "lightboxers" out there... there used to be a whole site dedicated to comic book swipes, but it's gone now. Here's one page of it that someone... heh, swiped!
posted by zoogleplex at 5:18 PM on August 4, 2005 [1 favorite]

Y'know, every time I've played FF7, I've named Barrett "Barracas".
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 6:58 PM on August 4, 2005