I'm looking for a collection of character portraits for a game i'm working on. Something in the steam punk genre but I'm flexible. Generally just bad ass semi-realistic images of soldiers or assasins or mercenaries. Every once in a while I can find one but the problem is, I want hundreds... Are there any collections (paid or not) that you guys have come across that I may not have?

Thanks!

Hi. It's very specific what you want, so it's most likely harder to find.

Since you're considering investing financially in this, I'd suggest contacting freelance illustrators.

This is one, for instance: http://johanndevenecia.daportfolio.com/gallery/784643#2

I found him while googling for "portraits" in a RPGMaker forum. You can find more people if you look on the 2D sections of developer forums such as TIGSource, IndieGamer or Unity.

Thanks for your reply, Kryzon. While I can pay something for thesse assets I'm affraid that commisioning someone specifically to do this would be outside my budget (especially considering the amount of images I need). I'm more looking for existing art I can get a license for. There are plenty of 3D models and sprites that can be bought but the market for what I want seems to be much more narrow. Perhaps it is a bit too specific but I'm hoping someone knows an obscure set of images (or perhaps someone can sell old assets they have from another project)

Maybe you could try free online character portrait / avatar generators that come in various styles?

Like http://www.heromachine.com/ which seems to be the best example for character portraits.

Printscreen program and image cropping script would probably yield you some good amount of portraits pretty quickly.

You'd still have to do changing the features and pressing print screen by hand but I can't see you getting out of it entirely anyway except if you manage to find someone who just happened to have "hundreds" of the portraits put aside. You can start with smaller base and expand as you go?

Good luck :)