Help With Played Bys

[Cupcake]

Do you need help picking a played-by?

I love helping with finding played-bys. I think in my former life I was a casting director.

What I need from you is:

1. Gender (or indicate androgynous/suggested gender/attach applicable label or lack thereof)
2. Age range
3. Skin tone
4. Build type
5. Hair & eye color.

Optional: Setting type. I tend to look at period sources for L&L games, go a bit more wild with Changeling types, etc. You can also provide some indication of what the character does if that helps: "she's a ballerina" "he's a biker", etc.

Feel free to mention facial hair, but keep in mind that very specific scarring or tattoos are almost impossible unless you already have a specific PB in mind anyway. That kind of thing is Photoshop territory.

[Ganymede]

@Cupcake

I will give a positive reference to Cupcake on her skills, although I've gotten decent at doing this myself.

[Sunny]

THANK YOU for doing this. You are the best.

For the cheap seats, do you recommend any particular sites for looking at?

[Cupcake]

You'd be surprised at how many websites might be common sense for reference. My go-tos?

IMDB, Wikipedia, and Google as a search engine.

In all seriousness, you might think that Wikipedia is a weird choice but if you're just trying to remember "hey who was that guy in that thing and wasn't he in the other thing?" it can be a lot faster and more streamlined than IMDB, though the latter is still helpful. You can also flat out google stuff like "black actors with blue eyes" "redheaded actresses under 30", etc.

Beyond that, it's just an issue of being a pop culture whore. Even if I don't watch a show or have seen a film, chances are I'm aware of it and have probably eyeballed stills. Historical/L&L stuff often gets a bit messy because, well, history (My PB's pic on Arx is from a mini-series set in Ancient Egypt)...

Specifically for L&L though, I've find this site helpful: http://www.recycledmoviecostumes.com/

[Cupcake]

Double post, but I wanted to add - an easy way to be on the lookout for potential Changeling PB's is to check out various scifi and fantasy shows. Several iterations of Trance Gemini from Andromeda, for example, or the alien characters from Farscape, almost any show, film, or even scene where prosthetics and skin color alteration are involved can be used. (e.g., Natalie Portman in Black Swan mode)

Also particularly pay attention to media that focuses on historical flashbacks. How did I find an Asian woman dressed in Victorian era clothing? Vampire Diaries.

[surreality]

listal.com tends to have some interesting lists by 'type' sometimes. I've stumbled across a few gems there. Also willing to contribute suggestions; I seem to have weird luck with this (unless it's for myself then I am at a loss, I tend to find a face and then get inspired for the character in a flash of 'I KNOW WHO THIS IS!' -- which never works if I know who it actually is).

[Sunny]

@Cupcake

Thank you.

[Auspice]

I often use http://www.hollow-art.com/, myself. The Search allows you to narrow by gender, age, hair, eyes, ethnicity, etc.

It's crowd-generated, so some actors just aren't there, but it can be a way to start drilling down.

I will note... I think the photo sets are primarily submitted by teenagers, so the 'age' ranges can be way off. We're talking someone in their 20s being in the 40s section and vice versa.

[Kanye Qwest]

Giving no consideration to how good or bad an idea it might be, here's a link to a folder I share with people who play Arx, full of about 200+ possible PB pics that I have given a cursory cropping to. Most suitable for something low-tech, nature of the beast, but still.

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AkPSk6gZp9dYajlqeS76Y8epPX4

[thebird]

For the sake of compiling resources, I've had good luck with Pinterest and Deviant art... But I also don't like using actors for PBs. So if you're looking for some more not well known faces, you can search for characteristics you're looking for at those places.

[Cupcake]

@Auspice said in Help With Played Bys:
down.

I will note... I think the photo sets are primarily submitted by teenagers, so the 'age' ranges can be way off. We're talking someone in their 20s being in the 40s section and vice versa.

That is a huge peeve of mine. I'm okay with "Hollywood Aging", like using actors in their late teens/early 20's to play middle teen chars, but no one's going to look at say, Russell Crowe in a recent film and pass him off as 23, or or Phillip Seymour Hoffman and call him college age.

[Kanye Qwest]

Have you ever played a mush?

[Auspice]

@Cupcake said in Help With Played Bys:

@Auspice said in Help With Played Bys:
down.

I will note... I think the photo sets are primarily submitted by teenagers, so the 'age' ranges can be way off. We're talking someone in their 20s being in the 40s section and vice versa.

That is a huge peeve of mine. I'm okay with "Hollywood Aging", like using actors in their late teens/early 20's to play middle teen chars, but no one's going to look at say, Russell Crowe in a recent film and pass him off as 23, or or Phillip Seymour Hoffman and call him college age.

I honestly think it's because most of Hollow Art's users are teenagers. And teenagers are kind of bad at guesstimating ages for adults. But even then, I mean, it's not like IMDB isn't out there.

But like @Kanye-Qwest is saying, people do that sorta thing all the time on MU*s. Hugh Jackman, the 22-year-old werewolf! (I don't know if this has ever been done. I'm just tossing out something that wouldn't surprise me.)

[Cupcake]

Oh naw, believe me, it's not limited to the teenage assessment.

[Faceless]

@Cupcake said in Help With Played Bys:

That is a huge peeve of mine. I'm okay with "Hollywood Aging"

Now I have it in my head that I want to use present day John Hurt for a early 30-something character.

[Sunny]

I am not a teenager, and I am COMPLETELY AWFUL at estimating how old somebody is. I cannot tell by looking at them any more. If they're 30 or under they look like a child to me. Until they're 75 or so I can't really tell how much older than me they are. So.

[reimesu]

I can testify to Cupcake's ability to find good PBs.

[mietze]

Me too!

And I share Sunny's lack of good age gauging. Though I think to some degree, 30-40 can be super hard to gauge for anyone. I am constantly (and not by people trying to blow smoke up my ass) mistaken for being a decade+ younger than I am. It's not because I truly look younger than average than my age, but just that most people kind of look the same once they get out of their mid twenties until their mid forties it seems, especially women. (Unless you're a smoker). I am really good at gauging the age of children-teenagers, but that is only because I'm a mom and have spent so much time volunteering with youth organizations, I think.

Or I could be full of shit, and just a bad judge of age/bodies of adults. Who knows. The only class I almost failed in college was the meat grading one. I can't grade a cow's ass while it's still alive to save my own, apparently. (Once it's butchered it's easy peasy!)

[surreality]

@mietze I'm a smoker and it still happens to me! So help me.

It also doesn't help that a lot of the fashion models in magazines we're accustomed to seeing actually are teens, they're just very convincingly and adeptly made to look considerably older, too, with hair/makeup/etc. Throw this into the mix with casting mid-20s folk as high schoolers on television, and it really does skew everything considerably.

[hedgehog]

More egregiousness - apparently Sofia Vegara is a good example of 'late teens', according to this wiki:

http://coh.spork.com/index.php?title=Penny