Visual Character Creation Technology

[Awakened Kitten]

Okay, so sort of different than most of the questions, but does anybody have advice on good sources of technology or other things for creating a visual representation of characters. The main thing with this is that I've always enjoyed when people have pictures they've drawn of their characters. In one group I was in, we had a lot of fun with one of the more artistic people in the group because of her always drawing out the funny things that happened in the campaign. While that is an experience that would still require a player to be artistic and have artist supplies available, it would be nice to have some sort of app or program to use for visual character creation short of using the character creation menu on a computer/video game. Hero Forge is really the only thing I've seen out there to use for this purpose, and the fact that it's the only thing I've found is disappointing.

So the question is, are there any good apps/programs out there that work for visual character creation? It goes without saying that any program would be more limited than using artistic mediums, but it would still be a good starting point for players who wish to show other people what their character looks like in their head, and could be used as a base model for further artwork.

[master_marshmallow]

Hero Forge is a website that has a free system that allows you to design your own custom 3d miniatures, and you have full control of the application as far as camera angles and zoom goes. You can save them and edit them later or actually purchase them (my group does it every campaign, makes the characters more investment worthy).

You'll have to figure out something for color.

[Awakened Kitten]

I already use that a little, and using a photo of art editor with layers, masks, paintbrushes, and semi transparency options should work for that, though it wouldn't be to good of a quality for that. Since Photoshop Express (or whatever the free version is called) has layers now, that's not a problem, but that's still a bit of a hit and miss solution.

[Rennaivx]

Did you mean Hero Forge (the 3d miniature creator master_marshmallow mentioned) or HeroMachine? HeroMachine's a 2d customizable art creator that's not half bad for what it does, and it's likely to give you the highest variety of race types within a single tool. You might also try poking around Doll Divine - it's got a wide variety of "paper-doll" art creators, and while you'll have a harder time creating a half-orc, elf, and aasimar in the same doll maker, you'll probably find something that works among all the options.