Talk:Erich Van Houten

Hair/Eye Color

His official blonde-haired mugshot has brown eyes if you zoom in enough, so it's probably safe to list it as such.

As for him being changed to fit the motif of Solaris, it was probably also to keep Elly's story intact. It wouldn't make sense for her to question her mother's identity if Erich wasn't himself pure-blooded Solarian, so in order for Elly being an outcast to make sense they had to make Erich as Solarian as any other Solarian if you catch my drift. I feel that the fact the concept art of Perfect Works makes him brown-haired is proof enough his design WAS changed, though, and is citation in and of itself for the fact a change did occur. For the reason, it could really be either to match other Solarians or to keep Elly's story intact.

... but now that it's been pointed out I cannot unsee the poor job they did changing his hair color but NOT his mustache. Oh my god. Abearhead (talk) 01:36, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

... HANG ON. That picture isn't official! In the game mugshot he has a BLONDE mustache. His eyes are still brown though. Abearhead (talk) 01:41, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

Erich van Houten

Here are his mugshots from the game. Standard size from the game files, screenshotted from play, and zoomed hella-in so you can tell his eye color. That, huh, picture on his page? Unless he can source it, I'm 99% sure AlexShepherd MSpainted it together, because the more I look at it the more obvious it is that isn't an official picture. Abearhead (talk) 01:54, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

The brown-haired picture is from the Perfect Works guide on pg. 164, so no, the profile one is official. The second one I can't locate in the book- it could be from an old website. Us geezer-type fans threw up a lot of Xeno stuff on the internets back in the late 90's.  Tanyuu (talk) 02:33, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

I'm talking about the blonde one, not the brown one, yes. I'm looking at the brown one in Perfect Works right now. The one used on this wiki page at the top, with blonde hair, it appears as though the hair was vector-traced or otherwise photoshopped, because the hair doesn't have the same... I don't know how you'd say it, the same quality, as the rest of the picture. It's very obvious that the picture is the one from Perfect Works with the hair photoshopped or pasted on top of it. I'm not comfortable having that as his picture if it can't be sourced because it clearly looks editted. It's also NOT a game file asset because you can see the scan lines. It is 100%, definitely the brown-haired picture from Perfect Works photoshopped. Abearhead (talk) 03:11, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

My recommendation is to just replace it with his in-game-screenshot mugshot for the time being. Abearhead (talk) 03:14, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

OH. Derp. I can't believe I've missed that! Yeah, we should swap that out. Tanyuu (talk) 03:29, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I photoshopped his PW portrait because why not? It's literally the exact same as his in-game portrait, except with blonde hair. The only other alternative is a low-res pixelated portrait with his hair cut-off, which looks terrible and the quality is inconsistent with the rest of the portraits on the wiki (I had to upscale it 4x or else the picture of Erich slapping Elly appears in the Category Exhibition instead). I don't think his mustache color matters either since it's so thin and you can barely even tell what color it is in-game, but I could always photoshop it dark blonde too. I still think we should re-add my edit, and I can re-do his mustache and try a better job at the hair, otherwise we're left with a small pixelated portrait with his hair cut-off. —AlexShepherd ツ 12:01, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

Photoshopped or otherwise editted pictures are not official material and shouldn't be passed as such. It sucks there's no canon picture of Erich outside his tiny mugshot, but no respectable wiki allows fanart or editted art as the main infobox picture, and generally relegates those to a fanart section at the bottom of the article, if fanart is even allowed. The quality of the edit is also a concern. Abearhead (talk) 15:55, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't consider it "fanart", as calling it "fanart" is extreme, an exaggeration and misleading. I consider it "digitally retouching" official art in order to meet standards. Sometimes, I will digitally retouch official media if they have glitches (such as 3D screenshots of games showing clipping), errors, poor coloring, fuzz, noise, blur, etc. In this case, I don't think it's wrong to do such a thing. When I re-did the hair, I made sure to use the exact same colors present in his portrait. Being overly pedantic about such a minor thing like this only hurts the wiki, as the quality of his in-game portrait is so awful. I didn't think anyone would care about such a thing. Another example I did is on Zephyr's article, as there were no official full shots of her with good coloring, so I combined two and tweaked the coloring, resulting in the artist's intentions. —AlexShepherd ツ 16:16, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

It's still not official art. Abearhead (talk) 16:35, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

Sheesh, you only need to indent three times, not four. Anyway, I think it's okay to sacrifice "officialness" if it brings us closer to the developer's intent. Of course, context matters. Although wikis generally prefer official art, I've never seen a policy on here (or any other Wikia) that claims modifying official art can't be done in order to fix inaccuracies or blemishes (so to speak). His official art is still the base, and it uses his official hair color, so I don't see a major issue in combining the two. —AlexShepherd ツ 16:43, August 18, 2017 (UTC)