Philotic Web

There was some discussion of this before, so I decided to look around and see various artists' interpretations. The internet tends to have the same few pictures repeated a hundred times, so I'm just posting the closest, highest-res versions of what I find.






This one's fairly massive, so I'll just link to it.

And the one that sparked my interest to begin with:


What do you think? Who does a better Ender? What should he look like?

And, just for fun, here's one of Bean and Petra:

Okay, so I don't think any of them looked remotely like the Ender I imagined, except for maybe the second to last one (though in my opinion, his hair is to light, I mean it never said he was blonde-white). And all of the battle suits look to bulky. Of course, they had to buff it up somehow. They couldn't just have a bunch of kids floating around in suits that look like giant colored marshmallows with laser guns. And Bean and Petra. Bean looks weird and not at all Greek or African, and I didn't even know that was supposed to be Petra. I'm just relating to the actual stories. I've never really like book covers with pictures of the protagonist on the front. It doesn't leave enough room for imagination.

Yeah, I only figured it was Petra because it's a girl close to Bean. And it's gotta be Bean because it's the cover of Ender's Shadow. No one looks like what I expect, probably because OSC spends little to no time describing their looks apart from "small".

To be honest, I expected Bean to look a little more like this (except gaunt and without the cross earring):

Since OSC doesnt spend alot of time descripbing the caracters, the task is left to our subconcious and our brain creates an image of ourselves mixed with cultural indentifiers. Since Ender is from the US he has light skin, since Bean is really greek he has a more olive skin color...

I would have to disagree with Psudo picture representing bean, way too dark but thats just my opinion.

I agree with Sherisarose

I suppose it has to do with how your imagination works. Mine has always been weird. I'll "see" the basic outline of the person the author describes, then fill in striking features like eye/hair/skin color and scars/deformities. But as far as I remember, Orson Scott Card doesn't even give us a coloring to go by. He describes his characters by their age and nationality. And as a resident of the big ol' USA, I know that appearance varies greatly. Maybe that was on purpose? So that no matter what nationality you are, you can identify with Ender? It seems that artists have interpreted Ender with the standard blond hair and fair skin. I suppose I always thought of Ender as having light brown hair, sheared short for the military, more olive skin, and blue eyes.

I thought the blond haired, blue eyed pretty boy was more along the lines of Dink Meeker's appearance.

Bean, if I recall correctly, was Greek, but he had some African in him. So he looked African in Greece and Greek in Africa. I took that to mean that he had a slight tan, and for some reason I always thought of Bean having dark hair and brown eyes.

Psudo's picture looks more like how I envisioned Alai.

Yeah, I only figured it was Petra because it's a girl close to Bean. And it's gotta be Bean because it's the cover of Ender's Shadow. No one looks like what I expect, probably because OSC spends little to no time describing their looks apart from "small".

To be honest, I expected Bean to look a little more like this (except gaunt and without the cross earring):

actually that's pretty close to how I always thought bean looked, good find

Ender looks like a young Mormon Jesus with acne. Deal with it.

By the way, that picture of Bean is spot-on. Bean and Bonso in the movie didn't look right. Everything else was visually better than in my imagination and a film's look can get no higher praise than that.

I think Bonso in the movie should have been rat...look wise at least. The actor I like, and would love to see him in other movies as well.