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Hello-lo people! I bought Humble Bundle a couple days ago, and discovered Game Character Hub. It's not exactly my thing--I tried it out and I think I may prefer my good old Photoshop way better--but it did give me some inspiration. As you may know (or maybe not), I create all of my portraits 100% from scratch--no bases (except when I first started), no templates, no color swatches, outlines, nada. And while I do love this method, it takes...a long time. Like a REALLY long time. :\ (Now gear yourself up, because this is going to be a LOOONG post.) Sooo, I decided to make my own generator. I have always considered the facegens of the RPGVXA system to be some sort of abomination and crime against aesthetics. ^^" Just my own humble opinion--and another thing I noticed was that generators tend to spin out characters that look too similar mostly because they have the same poses or big features. Small detail changes as well are big changes can totally change a portrait. Take Archeia's Emily from Porcupine Prin (all rights to her and EB! So NO, you cannot use these from me!!)) Dem eyelashes~ Now compare with the Emily (err...cover hero) she put in Division Heaven's material stuffs. ALMOST the same person. Not quite. Emily and....the other Emily...look almost the same. And they're pretty much the same person physically (both of them represent the cover hero cleric girl >>) But wow! Their faces look pretty different! Of course, Nessiah (bless you!) didn't just edit the face to make Emily or vice versa--there are some small differences in hair/pose/etc; but it's definitely the eyes that makes Emily look different from her almost-twin. ---- Another example. Sorry I'm using so many examples from you, Archeia. Ernest (default Actor 4) vs Sairen (PrinPrin Ep. 1.5) VS Ernest vs Sairen Granted, the age gap should be accounted for, but Ernest and Sairen look pretty similar in terms of clothing and hair, at least. (They use the same sprite.) But first and foremost, their faces are very different (, and it's obvious who's more gorgeous.) Last example for now, also from Porcupine Princess. Syrn. vs Syrn Material Version (cover hero) vs Syrn Porcupine Princess Version (better looking ) Besides the obvious hair differences (and don't mind the sizing), they're pretty similar. Dressed almost identically, and aside from what you might think, upon closer inspection their hair is quite similar. I think I've made my point. Facial features are important in distinguishing different characters. Rights to all the lovely portraits above go to Archeia, EB, and anyone else who contributed in making these. So, after thrusting all that lovely eye candy that ISN'T by me at you to compare, give your eyes a rub, and keep on reading. So obviously facial differences are important. But pose difference and angle difference are important too. Take a look at these random facegens. Rights to Liberty~ Since the VXA face generator only generates frontal faces, there's not much room for angle/pose deviation. In the end, they all kind of start looking the same, despite the array of facial feature differentiation that they have. Now, if you REALLY wanted differentiation, some people use portraits/faces from a variety of artists. But consistency is always the key for graphics in games, and this usually isn't wise unless styles are very similar (ex Archeia matches really well will RTP. <3) So now that I have this whole hullabaloo out of the way, what does this have to do with MY new generator? I'm glad you asked! Welcome to my new generator project, TsarGen. My messy, hurriedly created logo. I love cyan glows. <3 (Note: TsarGen so far is planned to only generate females...since that's my chosen preference.) Things that will hopefully make my portrait generator not look repetitive include: 4 different angles for the head: 3/4 facing left, 3/4 facing right, 1/1 frontal, and 2/2 profile (<<this last one should make Spectre happy) 5 different angles/positions for torso (which will blend seamlessly with all head/neck variations): equal shoulders, tilted left, tilted right, raised shoulders, crossed arms, spread arms 4+ eye shapes: round, arched, narrow, doe-eyed 5+ eye/iris/pupil designs (this is important!): split shade, gradient, starry/glassy, ripple, large pupil 5+ lash differentiations: wide-spaced, full, cat eye, flat, low 5+ ear positions/type: E-shaped round, angular edge, long, tall pointed, frontal view 9+ mouth positions: neutral closed, wide smile, small open, side-view open, side smile, closed smile, neutral open, sad open, cocky grin As well as numerous hairstyles, accessories, piercings, face decorations, and clothes Here's a grainy written-with-images picture if you don't get all those weird terms in the bullet list. I hope with so many pose, angle, and facial differentiations, that this can make a generator successfully pretend to be unrepetitive. Sadly, I have no scripting language, so TsarGen will not be an actual program that you can download and make your own portraits....since I'll be doing all the piecing things and stitching people in good ol' Photoshop. It won't be easy, but I hope to get it done. Each TsarGen portrait will, of course, be done in Tsarmina style because I'm the one developing/drawing them. They should blend in just fine with my hand-drawn scratch portraits. Most TsarGens won't have emosets I'm guessing, but maybe a couple of some of them. It all depends on the success of my generator "program." As for if I'll continue to make make 100% created-from scratch portraits, the answer is Duh Yes. But for NPCs, random people who just need a picture or two--this should do the trick. Hopefully I can make TsarGen have the same generator pieces that would match the Ace generator sprites, therefore letting you use Acegen sprites but TsarGen portraits to go along with them. I suspect this project is not going to be completely foolproof, and I may have to do some editing before I release portraits in case of small artistic discrepancies (Your head's skin tone doesn't match with your shoulder's!), but ultimately, I'm hoping to start generating portraits soon. As for if my pose/position/angle/facial theory will indeed make TsarGen a totally different generator that gives the illusion of non-repetition....only time will tell. ^-^ -- Portraits made with TsarGen will probably have the little TG symbol next to them: It's the same size as an emoticon~ Have a great day and I will be developing TsarGen from today on! Special thanks to: Archeia @Division Heaven: letting me use her portraits and PrinPrin/PorcPrin/handmade work for comparison purposes Liberty: face generator examples belong to her and EB Source: Tsarmina's Laboratory

Welcome back to Writer's Resource everyone. This week we'll be looking at http://fantasynamegenerators.com/ a great place for those of us who are a little creatively stifled when it come to making up names for out fantasy game, or even for our modern games. Yes, that's right. I said modern games as well, because, despite it's name, fantasynamegenerators.com isn't just for coming up with names for your elfy elves, or drunk dwarves. It actually has quite a large selecting of generators for modern, and sci-fi settings. Granted, most of these are based off of names from popular franchises, but it really doesn't take that much to edit a name into something new and unque. And for those of you who are thinking, "I don't need names for my characters. I need names for my towns and cities and giant squirrels towers!" Okay maybe I'm the only one who says that, but the point is that the site doesn't just do character names, it also does village/town/city names, monster names, race names, mountain names, forest names, star names, ocean names, continent names, country/nation names and plenty more that are all available for free. I personally use this all the time when I don't have time to use more own personal name generator (It's complicated. I may bring it up in a later post.) and I think it's just a great website. Heck, it even has helpful little guides for creating the magic, society and several other parts of your world. Hope you guys enjoyed this. See you next week. -LS