portrait tokens, your opinion?

In our games, we use close-up tokens that I have made based on portraits that I created for the character avatars.. Here are images of my ranger token and a rat token to give you some idea of what I mean by close-up portraits... I have noticed in the marketplace that most tokens are top down (or top down at an angle) full shots of the character. But a few are like these close up portraits. Do most people prefer the top down type? Or do you use the portraits too?

I think one of the primary reasons you see more top-down tokens in the market place is that it actually takes some skill to make them.  Anyone out there can take a portrait image from Google and just crop it to make a portrait token, so there's no demand or need for them in the marketplace. As far as preference; it's just personal preference.  Some folks like one way, others like the other.  Personally I prefer seeing the details of a character's face.

Top-down tokens are typically used by people who use top-down maps. There are fewer sets of portrait-style tokens in the Marketplace than there are top-down tokens for reasons that Mark mentioned. Some Marketplace contributors include both top-down tokens and portrait art of those tokens within their sets.

I prefer portrait tokens with a decent border, generally because I tend to lose sight of top-down tokens as they seem to disappear into the background. However, I also come from having used Maptool/Tokentool for so long that I tend to make custom borders myself and use various online images.

I ask my players to choose their own Avatar art, then I make a Portrait token for them using TokenTool. I use the top-down tokens for monsters usually, but some monsters get the full figure tokens available to Pro subscribers. 

Portraits all the way.

Portrait tokens are probably more often used for heavy Role games (Theater of the Mind, Old World of Darkness)

I have no issue using portraits, but those are really small and hard to see any detail on.

SkyCaptainXIII said: I have no issue using portraits, but those are really small and hard to see any detail on. It depends on how well they're created.  If a portrait image is cropped/centered correctly you should see the details of face/race/expression, etc.  If the token is high-resolution, you can always click on it and hit the "z" key to zoom it in for you to view. (ctrl+z for GM's to show this on everyone's screen) Conversely, if the portrait token isn't made well... like with a too-thick border, not centered right, not cropped to just the face, etc... it will be hard to distinguish any details.