As part of the UI revamping for the mobile version of Total War: Medieval 2, we created over 2000 unique character portraits, of which you can find a small sample below:

We started by taking the original game’s portraits and classifying the different components (faces, clothes, hairstyles, hats, etc.) used for each character type. This gave us a list of over 300 different components that we hand-painted in high resolution. I implemented the system that grabbed the different components for each character type and put them together in a unique combination for each character.

Special character types such as Generals needed “old age” and “passed away” portrait variations. This required the system to remember the component combination used for each character, swap the necessary components (wrinkled skin, white hair or statue versions) and export the portrait with the appropriate identifier.