Huh, the artist's quite decent, but like so many others, she's got a tendency to pretty up Hermione. Now, I'm not saying Hermione's a straight out uggo, but she isn't that great of a looker that most people seem to think she is.

Oh and love that Hogsmeade.

 

Hermione has a lot of issues you can pick apart, but her looks really isn't one of them. She's described as pretty when she makes little to no effort in putting herself together and downright stunning when she really makes an effort to look good. Her biggest issue regarding her physical appearance was her teeth, which got fixed by Pomfrey in the 4th book.

Honesty, I thought viria's rendition of Hermione was a lot closer to the books than most other fan artists, who tend to visualize movie Hermione rather than her book version.

 

Yeah... minor changes with her teeth and hair have even Malfoy gawking at her during the Yule Ball.

Think it's pretty safe to say that post GoF Hermione is quite attractive, she just hides it beneath layers of... well... Hermione.

 

Didn't she go through a lot of effort to look pretty though? Not something she's used to doing on a regular basis.

 

She needed Sleekeasy's Hair Potion, but I can't recall any other particular effort needing to be made.

 

Edit:

goddamnt. ninjas.

The changes Harry notes is that she's smoothed her hair, put on a dress, and also that she's smiling and straight-backed, instead of hunched over with books.

/derail

 

Huh, I should go and reread the official books. It's just odd, I guess, I never thought to imagine her character as being pretty in any manner. It didn't seem to fit.

 

Which is exactly why JKR wrote that scene. Breaking 'smart girl' stereotypes and such.

 

This will always be Harry in my mind

 

I always hated the cover of Philosopher's Stone. It looks like Harry is gonna get squished by the train and is not quite sure how to feel about it.

 

His hair bugs me every time.

 

He looks derpy as fuck but I must have read the book with that cover 50 odd times so that it's branded into my brain whenever I think of Harry's appearance.

 

PhilStone cover always makes me think of Crispin Glover.

Harry the Creepy Thin Man.

 

I wasn't sure if I'd seen burdge's gallery or not, then I looked through my unsorted DA folder and found every one of her HP pics in there. Good stuff.

Yeah. Hito's Ron always looks too (Christ, I'm gonna have to use this fuckin' word) bishonen. That goes double for Sirius, who in no way shape, or form, looks like he just spent a large chunk of his life in the prison from hell.

I always liked the outfit he gave his version of Tonks, though... enough that I made a version of it for Sims 2. Of course, my Sims HP characters, much like my writing, have never really been finished, nor have they ever been released to the public (though some pictures are out there, in the wild - like the much-abused Ginny in my sig).

Tonks wears that outfit in all of his drawings of her, too.

They're all a bit too 'pretty,' really; probably a side-effect of that style...

I've also always had a fondness for Jenny Dolfen's rendition of Tonks.

Seriously, though...

That Harry looks like a genetic experiment that combined Ghostbusters era Harold Ramis (his hair, anyway), young Elvis Costello, and Lyle Lovett. Hermione looks like Shelley Duvall and Allyce Beasley somehow had a bastard love child together, that they kept in the attic because of some unfortunate business involving heavy metals in the water supply.

And, Ron... Ron looks like a misshapen russet potato, afflicted by a red fungus. Anyone think Voldemort's face sticking out of the back of Quirrell's rotting head is some nauseating shit? Bitch, please: Finnish Harry Potter book covers = the stuff of nightmares. Before seeing them, I had no idea Hogwarts was located in motherfucking Pripyat. I guess Diagon is in Love Canal and Azkaban is on Three Mile Island.

She's apparently removed or "stored" most of her older stuff.

What's the deal with that, anyway? I guess I haven't spent enough time on DA in... ages to know this was a thing. "I don't want people to see this shit, but I'm not quiiiite ready to remove it from the site." Is that it? I dunno...

I always thought her technique was pretty appealing, but her love of the Malfoys (and the other villains, in general - combined with an open and slightly sneering disregard for the heroes, tinged with schadenfreude) kind of turned me off. You might get one Harry or Hermione picture for every fifteen of the Malfoys... and they're probably sharing the pic with their canon partner (and made to look like clueless dipshits), so you can't win there, either. But, hey, if that's where your inspiration resides... we're just lucky artists of that caliber are interested in drawing HP stuff, I guess.

It's a recurring theme, my dismay at certain other artists and their undying devotion to constantly portraying the canon ships... or shit like Dramione, or their bizarre love affair with villains in general.

I mean, it's all spelled out for you pretty clearly in the HP books: If you're not a good guy, you're either a blatant Nazi analog, a filthy collaborator, a cowardly non-entity, or a self-serving, obstructionist, and possibly moronic member of a bureaucracy (whether it's a government, bank, or school).
Except Snape: Like an abused wife who just keeps coming back for more, Harry gives Snape his endorsement, despite the cold hard fact that nothing he contributed to the cause ever really equaled the level of his utter douche-baggery. So I guess he's the only real total asshole to whom we're clearly supposed to give a pass, with Draco coming in second because he never had the sac to pull the trigger on anyone.
Having a hard-on for the Death Eater Klan villains just boggles my mind.

If I were him and I knew how I was going to be portrayed for the next 6.8 books?

"More steam!"

That, and he looks too old to be eleven, even by the standards of the plastic mannequin he so clearly is, on that cover. I think his uncle was Bob The Builder in that edition.

lol

 

Age matters.

About Finnish covers: apparently lots of colours, characters and elements with distinctive grotesque features are far more appealing to the target auditory of children, at least so stated some research article on this subject that I read about a decade ago.

English Children's cover features a rather thoughtful Harry that is about to be nominated for Darwin Awards Junior League, which sadly is not exactly the thing that will attract attention of a brat that ventured into a bookshop. Adult cover was even worse though.

And Finnish cover did a good job on catching Madam Marsh unique... Innsmouth Shadow's appearance. I'll never understand why Umbridge of all people was portrayed as a generally nice and rather attractive woman in the films, especially when they managed to botch casting of both Harry's love interests.

 

Why does Umbridge looks like a Deep One Hybrid from Innsmouth?

 

That's where the Finns had to go to make her scary; whereas the casting agents for the movie were like, "This toad-like business from the books is fine, for kid-lit, but we lived through the eighties and know the true face of a terrifying female bureaucrat: Witness the nightmare that is our take on a magical Margaret Thatcher."

​

 

She was described as one in appearance in the books.

Pish posh, there were worse. Thatcher at least tried to do the right thing in the beginning of her career instead of heating the chair like most of current politicians do, lazy aristocratic fucks. A bit of liberal for the conservative even, considering her views on the privatisation of state enterprises. And unlike Umbridge she was an accomplished scientist before her election. First female Prime Minister, first decently intellectual Prime Minister, somewhat telling, no?

Recessions were before, recessions will be after. Unless you are a filthy hippie, a nazty commie or a jobless drunk, there wasn't much to complain about. Better than Soviet dressed senile bald pigs or American dressed, shaven and powdered apes. Though Merkel sometimes tries and fails to make Thatcher her role model.

 

This isn't the politics thread, friend. But even so, I hope you were being sarcastic, and not just thick.

 

A bit. My point about Umbridge's portrayal stands. While I hadn't liked Thatcher, she wasn't corrupt official bent on destroying the educational system, forbidding advanced or useful knowledge and purging all niggers, arabs and gitfolk. Nor was she an evil and sadistic obese monstrosity.

Speaking of evil... Why isn't there any image of evil or just a bit mad Potter yet?