HiPhish got fed up, it seems, got rather annoyed that the inventory gump paperdolls for recruitable companions in Nuvie used same generic appearance as each character’s sprite. Ultimately, he hopes to overhaul each character’s sprite as well, so that all the companions have something unique and distinctive about their appearance (instead of e.g. Dupre, Seggallion, and Sentri all looking like the same knight cloned three times).

But to begin with, and to better decide what each character will be wearing, HiPhish opted to create unique inventory paperdolls for each companion:

The Artisan’s Guild of Minoc proudly humbly presents its newest addition to the Avatar & Companions dress-up dolls* series, the “Heros of the Gargoyle War” edition. Get an authentic piece of Britannian history with such legends as the ranger Shamino or the lovely couple Iolo and Gwenno, and of course everyone’s favourite Sherry the Mouse. What are you waiting for, collect all the companions and relive fantastic adventures of the Gargoyle Wars yourself, but don’t forget to get the best equipment for them*. And stay tuned for our next announcement of the new Avatar & Companions sprite action figures!

To celebrate the launch of our new series we are holding a very special challenge. Are you a real expert on Britannian history? Then name each of the companions in this picture and enter our draw for a chance to win your own complete set of Avatar & Companions dress-up dolls.

*equipment sold separately

Poll Results: What dost thou think of the new Nuvie paperdolls?
Total votes: 18

On a more serious note, concerning the above images he offers this brief explanation and challenge:

The six male Avatars and the third female Avatar are not by me, they have already been included with Nuvie, but only showed up when using the fullscreen interface. The dolls for Durpe, Shamino and Iolo are also now included with the latest snapshots of Nuvie. Can you tell which of the remaining dolls is which companion? If you can’t I have failed in my endeavour. Please let me know what you think of these dolls and how well they interpret the portraits. The images are all drawn in a non-destructive way, so I can make changes very quickly and toggle accessories on and off.

My main concern was staying faithful to the portraits. If the portraits didn’t provide enough information the artworks from the Japanese cluebook were used, but only if they didn’t contradict the portrait (Blaine’s portrait and cluebook artwork for example differ very much), in which case the portrait was given priority. For Dupre, Shamino and Iolo the intro cutscene was given the highest priority. Beh Lem was tricky, I wasn’t sure if gargoyles are naked or if they wear at least a loincloth. In the end I opted for naked, because that’s how they appear in the ending cutscene, but I gave him a belt with a boomerang holster and I interpreted those blue straps in the portrait as some sort of belt.

Here’s an image of the Dupre, Shamino, and Iolo paperdolls in action, by the way:

HiPhish would like feedback from the Ultima fandom on the paperdolls he has created, and welcomes any suggestions that others have to offer. Those of you who are curious can also follow the complete genesis of these graphics over at the Nuvie forums.

As well, for those of you who want to use these paperdolls in Nuvie proper, Eric Fry has left a brief explanation as to how to do so in the project’s changelog:

Added support for custom doll images for other actors. Any actor can have a custom doll gump image now. You simply create a bmp file with the following name ‘data/images/gumps/doll/actor__<actor_num>.bmp’

So Dupre would be data/images/gumps/doll/actor_U6_002.bmp