Game Character: Tel’andra

This character is from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Obviously she's a dark elf warrior.

Her appearance was a personal challenge for me. The characters in Oblivion look terrible. In fact, they all seem to suffer from some sort of mild physical deformity. My male character's shoulders slump terribly, for example, and the eyes of darn near every character are just plain wrong. They're out of place either ever so slightly or ever so noticably.

So I wanted to make a character that was awfully cute. The challenge that the game was going to provide to me was not to be the closing of gates to Oblivion, but the creation of a charater that did not look as though it was exposed to radiation before birth.

Tel'andra is the result of that challenge.

NOTE: See the comment below for links to larger versions of these images.
NOTE: If you own Oblivion you can use this character in your own game. Download here. That's inside of the sewer directly in front of the exit, so you'll be able to edit the character should you want to.

I'm awfully proud of how she turned out, but I am disappointed in her hair color. I'll most likely use a console (aka cheat) code to bring up the window to edit her hair. She simply has too much blue about her as it is, and I rather like the pink that I had during the creation process.

…but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The challenge starts from the beginning: Finding the race to use to make an attractive character. The majority of the non-animal races look like they suffer from generations of inbreeding. The odds are against the player from the start.

Here are a couple of shots during the creation of the character. This one isn't so bad, but I couldn't get the race to look quite like what I was after. She could even be considered kind of cute when viewed from the side, but I didn't like the way that she looked when viewed head-on (see right).

I think that this was a Bosmer (wood elf), but I can't recall. Either way, the race simply wasn't co-operating enough. Her best feature was her hair color. I think that I'll change the existing Tel'andra's color to something like this.

So here we have the finished version. I happen to think that she's incredibly gosh darn cute. The shot with her eyes closed was accidental but it came out pretty good. The image on the right shows her face at a slight angle.

I would like to point out something that some may consider to be childish, but it's part of her character (pun intended :p). I wasn't able to edit this, but I would have chose this look if I did have the option: Her breasts are petite. Why is that important? Because it fits her look perfectly. It looks more normal; more natural. That's what I was going after, an attractive natural look, and I'm glad that everything came together so nicely.

Of course, it took the length of an entire play session to get it just right. Perhaps now that I'm more familiar with the sliders I'll be able to create better looking characters a bit quicker, but I don't look forward to repeating this particular challenge any time soon!

Last, but not least, it kind of looks as though she has freckles. At least it looks that way to me. This was completely unintentional and is not a part of the character creation process. This was not visible while making the character, but I couldn't be happier with their mysterious appearance. It's the stroke that finished the painting, so to speak.

So much <3.

Oh, and if WordPress.com should experience another episode of vanishing images, then here is a screen shot hosted on ImageShack to provide you with at least one image to look at.

So what'cha think? Isn't she a cutie? \^_^/ <-cheering

~Steph
This post has been edited for grammer grammar and notes.