You know, "alternate" isn't such a dirty word. Sure, Pencil used it almost derisively to refer to her (more pleasant in personality, yet less pleasant in her opinion) fellow competitors Book and Ice Cube, but sometimes the alternate version of something can be just as or even more interesting than the original. To be honest, I hope that's not the case here, because many of the alternate versions on this page are actually just older versions of the final photos that I've saved, in case I wanted to go back and edit them some more.
Spoiler alert: I hardly ever did.
Anyway, I'm posting them here because they may be of interest and shed some light (which has never before been shred) on my creative process. I couldn't put it on the TIMELINE pages because that would ruin the fun of avoiding spoilers, but right here, right now are the alternative versions of the yearbook portraits of the contestants of RLBFB!
Editor's note: This page is best viewed with the page with the final yearbook photos open on another tab. I'll be talking frequently about the differences between these and those.
Gallery of alternate portraits[]
A high-quality tribute to P2O[]
The only big portraits I have downloaded from AB (they have a special function for that), and they're of the three main characters that make up Pencil 2.O: Pencil, Match and Pen... whom you probably know more as Penelope, Maja and G.P. by now. This is the spiritual successor (and in fact the preferred version) of the images from my old blog, "What do Pencil 2.O characters look like as humans?".
Penelope: The main difference is the way she's facing... she looks to the right instead of to the left, mostly for the purpose of shipping her with everyone.
Maja: The main difference is how detailed her eye makeup looks. It's still the sixties in the EXIT!
G.P.: Before the long hair, the moustache and the cheeky grin. He's got a lighter shade of blue on that apparently matches his eyes.
G.P.: As he was in 1971, wearing his Death P.A.C.T. team uniform. He gets two big pictures because today he turns 80. Son of a gun works out 24/7 to keep fit, so I don't think he's dead yet.
Accessory over/underload[]
Different clothes/accessories[]
G.P.: An actual alternate look (as opposed to an older one).[1] He's wearing all blue instead of white—blue was my first choice for the colour he should wear until I saw on DeviantArt earlier this year that, in his 擬人化 form, he's more often depicted in white, just as Match is more likely to be seen in beige than dark red.
Thomas: His April portrait. I realized that as an older-type guy in the groovy early seventies, T.B. with his particular glasses would look a bit misplaced,[2] so in May I swapped his glasses for a sleeker pair of browlines—the same as the ones Khaled's got on, only recoloured.
Paula: With yarn in her hair. This was scrapped because the ribbons seemed a little out of place for her loopy personality and they didn't really look that realistic. Not as though the other accessories in the main yearbook look more realistic (maybe from a distance, but that's it), but I kept it anyway, just in case I wanted to modify her portrait further.
Ruby: With a headband. This was scrapped because I didn't want her to look too much like a Tanzanian Maja.
Without glasses[]
Eugenia: In one of the '71 yearbooks I looked at, the majority of the kitchen staff and front desk people (most of whom were older women) wore cat-eye glasses, just a few years after they went out of style for high school girls. To be fair, Eugenia wanted to resemble Mamie Eisenhower until RLBFDIA, 1964.
Thomas: How often do you find couples in which both are bespectacled? With today's population staring at screens all day, it should be pretty common, but in the 1970s it must have been a rarity. He looks like a dad.
Astrid: I'd written earlier that her eyes were hazel. In her May portrait, they are a bright green.
Terry: Same thing with the green eyes. Look closer and you might spot one of the many Easter eggs in this year book (which I'll reveal below)! The only thing I don't like is that the frames are so thick that they cover his eyebrows, which gives the illusion that he's got either nothing above his eyes or a large black unibrow.[3]
Khaled: But with the moustache and the suit (and without the "chiselled cheekbones", which were added later). The reason he looks so serious—something even more evident without the glasses—is that this picture was taken right after he was recovered in August 1971. He was not in the mood for photographs!
Renata: Of course, with T.B. getting the same kind of glasses from someone else, that meant I had a pair just lying around in the virtual world, so I decided to give them to Renata (she previously wasn't wearing any, which I didn't think suited her as one of the more strongly mechanically-minded individuals).[4]
Violette: Her glasses also changed from a totally extra green cat-eye pair (or whatever they're called in French), to a more ordinary one to fit her ordinary personality. I thought about swapping her pair for Astrid's but decided against it after looking at a few yearbooks, like this one.[5] Her hairstyle and even her face have also changed. (See below for the full evolution!)
Joaquin: This portrait, along with Flora's, was the first final (or near-final) portrait that I leaked to this wiki, albeit intentionally, as it was a gift to readers as a part of the BFB 30 review package. The only difference is that he's smiling big here.
Without other stuff[]
Flora: Without her flower crown. Since I had hardly changed anything compared to her May portrait, she should look almost exactly the same here as on the BFB 30 review.
Flora: Without a nose. Even in April, the lighting I used for Flora was already so different from the others that I wasn't sure if she should be the only contestant who looked like she couldn't smell. Ironic because flowers are meant to be sniffed. (That's what they teach in gem school.)[6]
Lela: Without her "plant crown" (or whatever it's called). I felt it necessary to change the shape of the top of her hair a bit. As you can imagine, she doesn't wear that thing all the time.
Jake: Without the big hair clip. Most 擬人化 versions of Cake still include the toppings as hair ornaments to accentuate his "feminine" personality. I really can't argue with something like that—especially if it's on the Other Wiki—so I set about incorporating that aspect into his final portrait. It was going to be a full-blown diagonal headband (from mouth to the eye) but I decided it would be too extra and just stuck with the clip. You would see this in bohemian circles, particularly in New York.[7]
Jessie: Without the string and the obligatory price tag to which the string is connected. Another anachronism (perhaps?)—if you look closer on the final photo, you can see that the hair ribbon has the same colours as the non-binary flag 42 years early!
Colours (not quite) nailed onto the mast[]
Woody: An example. As one can imagine, getting the lighting to be consistent across all portraits is not an easy task. If you get the shirt too light, the hair gets lighter...
... and vice versa for too dark. I've chosen to use the dark photo for the final portrait, with (mostly) only the original shirt colour as evidence that it doesn't come from the same photo.[8]
Astrid: She has hardly changed since April—that's a good thing. The main difference is the colouring of her shirt, the introduction of boundaries between her clothes and her hair, and the improvement in the lighting of her glasses. They're rose-tinted...
... For some reason, however, her face changes when I modified her shirt colour. Not in expression or anything, just the aesthetic. Again, I went with the darker version (for most portraits, it was a combination: dark version with 100% transparency, light version as a layer on top of it at 20%).
Simon: With the shadow away from him, used for a lighter shirt colour in the final image. Somehow this makes him look a thousand years older...
... Now here's him with darker blonde hair. Elements of this picture were combined with parts of the older one.
Thomas: With lighter blonde hair brought by the shirt colour also becoming lighter.[9] Not everything is lightened; his small beard looks darker. His eyes are also blue here and not green.
Eugenia: With darker grey hair, almost brown. Unlike what I'd done for T.B., I opted to use the lighter variant… but only for the hair. She'd had a significant amount of grey hair since the late 1930s.
Hair[]
Frederic: His April portrait. It's one of the more dramatic changes among the contestants' appearances over the months, as this included a change in the direction of his hair part[10], which unintentionally changed a bunch of stuff, like his facial expression, his features in general (why are his eyes bulging?), even how thick his neck was. But not all is lost. His androgynous haircut just happens to be the same one that Venera has.
Frederic: Here's a later change: the very tiny fringe-ish formation above his right eye was actually taken from Frederic's May portrait. It has not appeared on AB since because I didn't want him to have a fringe too obvious (lest he should look like Terry, coiffure-wise).
Columbus: His part-fringe isn't diagonal after post-AB editing. If you notice further, his face is a little different in this one; the final portrait combines a tiny bit of his May portrait. You're just going to scroll by without saying "hi"?
Lela: With longer hair. The grinning face that that it complements was combined with the shorter one to make the final portrait. It's funny that the length of her hair goes from long to short every month.
Thérèse: With longer hair. (See below for the full evolution!)
Toni: It was easier to get braids on Toni than it was on Thérèse, as I combined her short-hair background with her long-hair everything else, after which I modified the shapes with shameless use of the paintbrush tool...
... It's fine because her hair is black, so you can't tell that much of it is drawn (especially when coupled with the other drawn stuff in her final portrait[11]), but this would only last a while in-universe. In early 1972, she'd actually cut her hair short.
Barbara: As with Toni, I saved a long-haired and a short-haired variant. These were combined with those colourful hair bands that form braids to create a distinctly early seventies look...
... which AB cannot process. It's all very reminiscent of Native American activist and Barbara's idol Sacheen Littlefeather (from whom I drew inspiration not only in creating an look based on hers for an RLBFB contestant, but also in her beliefs—this is her famous speech from 1973).[12]
Leo: Really a continuation of the edits I'd been making to Leo's portraits over the months. It was only when I imported that I realized that his March portrait looks quite unrecognizable and I wanted to return to its origins with a more undeniably '70s cut. Also, his eyes are bluer (which I had definitely not written originally).[13] (See below for the full evolution!)
Naily: Her April portrait, with a totally different hairstyle (and face). Here was a question for the fringe: the half-filled style (à la K-pop) was simply not contemporary enough! If the yearbook photos were RLTPOT-themed and had been taken in 1980, now the answer would be a definite "yes".[14]
Belle: Mentioned this on the timeline pages, but another fringe-question was posed: I was deciding whether she should have one or not. This appearance was a compromise, along with the obligatory bell-flip. (See below for the full evolution!)
Kathy: As with Belle's photo, this one took a lot of time to edit. As you might expect from an artificial intelligence website (I think it's called that) from the 2020s, there's not as much exposure for the "flip" haircut as there was in the late 1960s and early 1970s. No doubt women wore their hair like this, though.
Lina: Whatever I said about Kathy also applies here...[15]
Ruby: ... and here. But instead of a flip, it's one of the more popular Black American hairstyles from around 1966 to 1970. [16] Ruby's hair suddenly became natural after Two teleported the RLBFB-ers away to Afghanistan in December 1971.[17]
G.P.: With short[18] hair, but with a fake moustache. This is how he looked in the first twelve RLBFB episodes, from 1969 to summer 1970.[19]
Of the face[]
Clean-shaven dudes[]
G.P.: Before the goofy smile and all the other attachments (even the sideburns). I'm not 100% sure, but I think this is how he looked in late 1965, after RLBFDI and before his amateur video thanking the viewers...[19]
... but I know that he never looked like this in our universe, although he might have in an alternate reality where he isn't endowed with curly hair. This is a long-ish, sort of mid-seventies look that I used only to get the part-mullet, which I used...
... for the final portrait—that's the look he carries here, just without the baffi finti that he insisted on wearing in front of the camera. This is how he looked for much of 1971—the great perm takeover happened sometime between episodes 15 and 16.[20]
Khaled: He looks good like this, and I think it suits his personality more. Yet according to my informal image survey, Clock is the contestant most likely to have hwiskers when 擬人化-passed... which means I had to give him one.[21] It's fine, though—we do need someone who's only got a moustache (and no beard) besides our boi. It is the seventies.
A hairy situation[]
G.P.: His RLIDFB look[19]: short hair, but excessive hirsuteness (with the side effect of rather thin lips). Yep, the Jeep was bearded in 1968, but by the time "Paper Towel" was shot, he voluntarily shaved everything under his eyes.[22] To get the lone "'stache" look on AB (not only for him, but for Khaled), I used a combination of two images, both with different moustache gene settings in use.
Khaled: I think there was some study about it, but they found that men with square faces look better without facial hair.[23] The precedent for this is SpongeBob, whose looks range from comically adorable to gosh-awful... I suppose with any kind of hair, though, not just facial. Khaled never had a beard in RLBFB, but he had grown one out during the month he was stuck in the Tiny Loser Chamber for RLIDFB.
Other photos[]
Terry's Death P.A.C.T.-themed glasses[24]: I'll let the image do the talking. Possibly something to be noted, or maybe it was just the style back then. I've never been to Australia, let alone in the '60s.
Getting Nathalia to show emotion: For months I couldn't get her to show even a vaguely smiling facial expression, which was very much at odds with her final portrait pose. With a few filters and knowledge of how to reduce distortion and what not, I was able to achieve the goal, not only with her, but with everyone else.
Inspiration for Barbara: All sources had to be from the period between 1969 (when RLBFB started) and 1973 (the present time).
Columbus's hair switcheroo: His hair is not in the direction I started with. It was flipped (with some side effects, see Frederic above) because I thought it would be too boring if too many guys let their hair go like ノ instead of 乀.[25]
4 2 non-blondes: Originally, Lill was meant to be the one with the fringe and Katja was to show her forehead. As you can see from the picture, there's at least some historical precedent for Swedish women of the late 1960s (when Lill was last seen outside the EXIT) wearing their hair like this, but hardly any for Slovene women in Italy. In May, I switched styles for them and I think they look better this way.
Coiffure coincidences: No, it can't be an accident that I decided that Peggy's hair should be the shape of an egg, or that Maja should have a chignon like a matchstick's head. Or can it?
A timeline in six images[]
A comprehensive history of my editing process as demonstrated with six selected contestants.
Violette: Gone through a lot, lot of change.
Belle: Gone through a lot of change.
Leo: Gone through much change.
Ruby: Gone through a slight change.
Thérèse: Gone through a very slight change.
Freddy: Okay, he wins in the consistency department.[26]
Alternate pages[]
The first back cover, from April: It's hard to look at this now without either feeling smug because I've improved upon these so much, or cringing because I almost uploaded the yearbook with these exact pictures.
A better back cover, from June: In nearly every respect, except the acknowledgments at the end are missing and the contestants aren't sorted by team. This would be the basis for the promotional poster at the end of the YEARBOOK page.
Alelsatan[]
Just like in actual yearbook, the only unambiguously evil character in the series comes at the end.
Alelsatan: Her April portrait, which looks really different from her final portrait[27] (she doesn't have a May portrait because only RLBFB and RLTPOT contestants are included on the back page). Sometime in April or May—can't remember the month—I discovered a gene that somehow transports a face downwards so that half of the face is visible from the bottom of the image.[28] I still have no idea how this process works... but I thought it was creepy, so I used it for Alelsatan.
Where to find more[]
There are actually infinitely more alternate versions of the contestants' portraits, if we're being technical. But you can only find them or (even better) create them yourself by following the links to the AB URLs after each contestant's name on the previous page.[29]
Or, type in the particular variant of a character you want to see on this wiki and I will provide the image in the comments section (as soon as the yearbook is published), along with some of my commentary. On the image, not the contestant. Now the March portraits are pretty low-quality compared to the others and were not processed through AB, so I won't upload them here—they only exist for historical reasons. But if you feel there aren't enough pictures on either this or the last page, just ask /s and I shall deliver. Don't go overboard with requesting things, though.
Notes[]
↑This was made after everything else was done to him, although the blue shirt is an artefact from the AB import and was actually one of the first things changed.
↑His RLBFB personality marks him as wanting to be young in age, but not youthful in style.
↑I don't remember changing this, but when you compare this portrait with his final one, Terry's not as pale here (nerd stereotypes, amirite?)—and his hair is a little different.
↑As a robot, she could easily get an upgrade that would give her the best eyesight in the world, but since she wants to be seen as human like everyone else, she maintained her own status quo and got glasses in 1969, which coincides with fellow robot Arbutus' getting human eyes a year later.
↑Interestingly enough, this is the same type that Book wears in Pencil 2.O!
↑I think this is because of how much make-up Flora's got "caked on". The similarly fashion-conscious Maja has this problem as well, but at least with her it's contemporary, i.e. appropriate to 1970 (when she was last seen outside Four). Apart from the hippie hair, the way Flora adorns her face is simply an exaggerated version of the trends that were popular in her own youth in the 1910s.
↑Citation needed? I don't deny that NYC had a great artistic scene that overlapped with the counterculture of the early 1970s (Upper West Side!), but whether this kind of "gender-bending" expression was common seems to be more of a "you had to be there" thing.
↑There's a historical precedent for this. Although nearly every yearbook from the 1970s is in black and white (technological limitations, not an aesthetic choice as perhaps in the 2000s), there seemed to be a "flatter" look for the pictures, particularly those taken indoors, which might result in images looking quite distorted if colourized. No idea if that was due to the camera's flash, but it still resulted in a certain aesthetic that was fairly easy to reproduce here. Hence the dark colours for the hair.
↑The lighting is similar in his May portrait. He's blond, just not that blond.
↑There's a gene for that on AB... thanks, codingcats7!
↑Here's something interesting: Barbara's hairstyle in the final portrait was actually really uncommon in actual yearbook photos from that time... but only in senior photos. In pictures of underclassmen or students doing normal things, there were many more girls wearing pigtails, braids etc. I suppose that makes sense; you want to look your best on your last picture day.
↑I wanted to give Leo a little bit of facial hair, but that alternate portrait never manifested after I saw what he looked like with it. Besides, I see Leo (and to some extent Lightning) as a naïve, young Irishman who might be classified as a twink in gay circles (as a queer person I can really sense that about him). And you do know who's been doing him for most of the fourth season, right?
↑Don't know about you, but I think TPOT will be around in 2028. Will Naily be eliminated from the game by then? Who knows.
↑Lina's style, however, is more from around 1963 to 1968 or '69; at the start of filming RLBFB 13, she'd wear her hair as a medium-sized afro.
↑That's not to say Ruby is a Yankee, because she's not, but she's become very aware of its culture after making friends from Western countries.
↑BFB 16: 14:03. It's called the "get-away-from-me button", and possible side effects include restoring contestants to their natural state... not just in the objects' universe, but in ours as well. Okay then.
↑And slightly messy: his hair looks like it's about to burst into a perm the moment Western Kenya's humidity kicks in.
↑ 19.019.119.2This look would have been paired with a very small blonde streak above his right eye, which he dyed to dark brown sometime in late 1970.
↑With G.P. barely taking centre stage in episode 16—a few lines here and there, but all in groups—it took until RLTPOT for viewers to notice that his hair had gone all Greg Brady-like.
↑Of course, this is all due to the fact that Clock's hands are on his face (which is uncommon for most object show contestants who are not timekeeping devices), which to the average observer translates to "oh la la" STUFFY FRENCHY GUY. In hindsight, perhaps it does suit him. Four may have strict rules for competition, but a ban on facial hair is not one of them.
↑And he hasn't stopped since. He leaves a bit of his chest above the torso unshaven, though, as well as the area above the upper lip (after 1972)—certainly a stark contrast to Joe, of whom every last inch is covered in... yeah.
↑Yes, I know it's a little silly that the file names are in Swedish when I'm not even a native speaker, but at least where I come from, people perceive things as being of higher quality if they come from rich countries like Sweden or Japan. Besides, one of my summer resolutions is to learn the language of Liy.
↑It's not so much a problem at the moment because the fringe-ish bit is more horizontal than diagonal (faithful to 1969 aesthetics right there!). It's a little similar to Donald's haircut, but at least it's not in the other direction, i.e. nearly identical to what a number of other boys have.
↑This also explains why Freddy's photo has always been at the bottom of the "BFDI" or "BFB" category in my personal AB tags' list. His portrait was edited the least!
↑It's also the only portrait that's been publicized on AB as of 16 June 2021.
↑Found it! It's "Shiftdown" by Stephenpsmoll. The gradual transition from a face in its normal position to its bottom-ized one is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen on this site.