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A downloadable tool for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Disclaimer: This is more a request than an imposition, so please, do not use the generated characters for any crypto-shenanigans or to feed LLMs. Thank you so much. Both the tool and the characters built using it are under CC BY 4.0.
Is your RPG project in dire need of literal billions of colourful characters and you have nor the time or skill to make them? Fear not, the Hero Printer is here to help!
In the Hero Printer one will find all that is necessary to build a plethora of RPG characters, from head to toes:
*While most of the heavy lifting is done through the tool, some editing might come in hand to truly perfect the design and make a few tiny adjustments. Plus, being able to edit the generated image will grant far more flexibility.
This tool will see quite a few updates, always catching up with both theChar andFace Workshops, from new body types and clothing items to final fantasy-esque little animations, such as crouching, laughing, waving and so on. Here is how the current roadmap looks like:
Don't forget to rate this asset pack, it keeps morale high and makes sure that more packs will come sooner than later.
Be sure to check out other Tiny RPG assets:
| Updated | 4 days ago |
| Status | Released |
| Category | Tool |
| Platforms | Windows,macOS,Linux |
| Rating | Rated 4.9 out of 5 stars (13 total ratings) |
| Author | tiopalada |
| Made with | Unity,Unreal Engine,GameMaker,RPG Maker,Construct,Aseprite,Godot |
| Tags | 2D,Character Customization,Characters,Generator,Godot,JRPG,No AI,Pixel Art,RPG Maker,Sprites |
| Asset license | Creative Commons Attribution v4.0 International |
| Average session | A few seconds |
| Languages | English,Japanese,Portuguese (Brazil),Russian,Chinese (Simplified) |
In order to download this tool you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $19.50 USD. You will get access to the following files:
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Noticed a weird little glitch! When I was making my custom assets I was baffled that the engine wasn't loading the Eyes13 I made. I realized the reason is because it always loads the amount of parts you have for Skin00, and Skin00 is missing the Eyes13 file. Maybe you left it out when compiling the zip? When I just duplicated another eye and named it that, it made all the Eyes13s come back for every other skin too.
That is not a feature on the roadmap right now because tinting isn’t that great for keeping colour/palette cohesion. Instead I would rather program a proper palette swap within my palette, so the contrast is kept as well as cohesiveness. But as I said, that isn’t a priority right now, some other features will come first, such as:
However I have added a couple of colour variations for all items in the tool! :D
Yup! It wasn’t the case until the latest update - where now you can access the raw files and add your own, before you couldn’t - turning both the Face and Char Workshop obsolete (unless you want only one of those).
Thus I offer a very special discount to people that have bought either or both of those before said update so they are not hurt by the changes.
The 3 frame versions is compatible with MZ, yes, you just have to place the exported file on the proper asset folder on RMZ and you are good to go :) Now, the 6 frames versioncan be used on RMZ or MVif you have a plugin for doing so, changing how many frames a charset animation has and how it is played.
I've noticed that the file structure for facesets and charsets seems to be different in one way: I can't make a part look different for different skins on a charset, like I can for a faceset.
I was planning on having the furry tail options be replaced by different coloured snake tails, for my snake skin. That way I wouldn't be making a duplicate file structure for every possible colour combination of the snake and human halves. It was working fine on facesets but on charsets I can't make it only replace that part if you select a snake. It means I also can't fix the Bottoms to change to match them.
Is there a different way to do this? Or should I give up on making snakes a new Skin and change the sprites so it could work as a Back or Bottom part to be attached to other Skins? That'd be a shame cos my options would be more limited.
Sorry I've been asking so many questions about how the custom assets work, I really appreciate your help!
Ah, disregard my last comment! I tested it and making the tail colour a Back part doesn't work anyway. Just doesn't layer right unless I make it Bottoms, in which case I can't have any Bottom parts be compatible with it. Unless I made them all Skins, which would be implausible as it'd be like 20 of them...
Can I just ask for your personal advice on what you think would be more useful as an asset? A snake tail with multiple colours, or a snake tail that can wear skirts?
AH YEAH. You are right, it went completely over my head, apologies for that. Yes, the way the files are for charsets you will hit this bump since it makes no such differentiation as it happens on the facesets.
Here is a thought: have the base scaly body - without tail - as a skin. This first part will cover both the faceset and the charset.
Then add the tails as bottoms, but make multiple tails with not only differents colours, as well as tails with different acessories - skirts with the tail going through it, clothes wrapped around the tail - this way non-snake characters can also have snake tails, adding variety and, at the same time, letting one build a full snake character if they so wish.
It is not an optimal way of doing it, that is true, I have to find a better way to break those apart.
EDIT: In the end you would have something like this on your bottom . Let us assume that you are using c## as a way to differentiate colour between parts
Having the pieces like this will also let people make further changes. let us assume that the person likes the armour colour for cc00, but doesn’t like the tail colour itself, they prefer the one on cc01. They can open your png files, copy and past the pieces and have it their way! :) Don’t stress too much about making it super-duper flexible, there is a limit to what can be done without requiring the user to edit some stuff themselves. I want to take to opportunity to also thank you for all your hardwork on getting those skins and bottoms done! :)
Thank you bud, that's a great solution! Yeah I think I was getting too hung up on having it keep ALL the existing skirts. It'd totally work great to make just one skirt specialized for tails, one armor, etc. I'd already made two variations for a scaly and unscaly tail (in case people want to do slugs or caterpillars) and lizardlike head or keeping the human one. So it might work better to make all of that modular 'outfit' parts to mix and match!
You're also totally correct that I can't possibly make every colour everyone would want, and they can totally edit it if they need to. Perhaps I'll just include a bonus image with some suggested palettes for other scales, and people can eyedrop them if they want.
Thanks for all your great advice, I'll keep on working hard! I hope you enjoy the sprites when they're done :)
You reminded me that I completely forgot to add my palette to the files, so people have a reference x_x
Yeah, don’t overstress to much, there is just so much we can do. We should also trust that people are fully able to go further into their own edits as long as we provide the base files for them. Mix and matching is interesting because people will come up with combinations that we didn’t think about at first.
You are always welcome, my friend, I really appreciate all your hard work and I am sure I will like them, with all the clear as crystal passion you are pouring on it! :)
OH YEAH, THE PALETTE
Hey this looks amazing and I just snagged the tool! I'm having some trouble with the setup on Mac though, I read the SETUP.txt file, but I don't see any .app folder to group together with the assets folder. When I run the application, it doesn't respond and I need to force quit it. Any chance you know what's happening here?
Oh yeah, I should probably repack that while on linux or emulating mac, because windows will consider the .app as a folder instead of a .app.
Extract that tinyrpgheroprinter_v_1_0.zip that you have selected to the same folder you currently are, then move everything to your applications folder.
Try to runtwice it and let me know the results. Load it, if it freezes, force quit, try again. I am guessing it will still not respond, mac is a bit of an oddball and there are plenty of possible issues. But worry not, we will figure out which one it is.
Here's a question: can the characters you create here move like the idle characters in your "Battle Kits"? Like, will they do the "Idle" bounce? Or a simple strike animation?
I was thinking along the lines of FF1 where they are lined up, side on and when they attack in a turn based battle they just move forward and then back with a simple animation. I like what your Battle Kits do and being able to build a bunch of characters that can be used in those battle animations would be cool.
Hi, just another comment! When the update comes to let us add custom parts, would we be allowed to share them here? I've already started working on a snake tail base body and a bunch of skintone recolours. I'd be happy to post them here if anyone needed them. I'm having so much fun playing around with the editor I'd love to spread the hype~!
Absolutely! :D And the update is already live, just download the latest version and you will see that there is now an “assets” folder together with the tool. Just place your stuff there and it will show up once you reload the tool. If you need further instructions, check out the NEWASSETS.txt file included on the zip! Since new body shapes can’t be added - yet - add the snaketail body as a skin instead, similar to what I have done with the catfolk and the werewolves.
Oh that's what I meant, I'm making it a skin! Haha I wouldn't categorize being a snake as a new gender. Gotta add that I appreciate a lot that the engine calls them Shapes and you can mix and match any one with any gendered parts like facial hair and dresses. That's so awesome!
I'm enjoying the update so far but realizing oops the stuff I already started making had the wrong format! I didn't realise you needed to make the sprites without outlines. Do I have to make a separate outline file and put it somewhere? Or will the engine automatically create them? Should I take all the outlines off my files and then it'd work?
Oh darn! I'd also started making some fantasy skintone ideas, but it seems every Skin needs to have a full duplicate file structure of every clothing part for the Face file. I think I'll avoid making too many Skins then if it means the file size would balloon hugely for each one.
A possible suggestion for the future, maybe it'd be possible to organise Skins by "category"? For example all human ones could share the same outfit parts with no changes. Cos it seems only Eyes, Mouths and Brows have differences between human skin 00, 01 and 02. Then the cats have different hats, so they'd share skin category 2, and have one set of all the clothing between them, and so on. But I don't know if it's possible in the programming to set different parts to share different folders like that?
In any case, I'll just focus on my snake tails and make them for the three human skin colours for now. Hooray!
Oh yeah, the skins, you also brought to my mind that I completely forgot how to write proper instructions for those. And you are right, every skin requires a whole new copy of the file structure. I really need a more lean approach to that or things will grow exponentially - which will, in turn, use a lot of RAM to load all the files at once. The main issue is how I am building the paths so I can keep everything working in a similar way for all options. Your suggestion would work but, at the same time, it will limit the variety one can add to the tool since it becomes “hardcoded” in a way. I will tinker a bit with it and see how I can clean it up. Maybe an auxiliary text file giving instructions to what matches whit what - directory wise.
ANd keep at it, mate! I am really happy how much you are enjoying this tool and your feedback, I can see there is a lot of room for improvement. Thank you so much!
It's understandable! I thought that my suggestion probably would be short-sighted, as I don't know much about programming. I'll just tone down the scope for my snake tail set for now, and I can always add extra colours in future if things change. Currently got 4 of them and I hope I can finish it this week! I wanna modify the Bottoms into things a snake can wear instead of just telling people "don't use that option" haha. And gonna swap the cat and dog tails for different pattern snake tails cos they don't overlay right. But it's a little time consuming. Also including some faces and mouths as a bonus~!
I like that you see what I did there. I didn’t want to slap it as genders, instead I went for shapes as a broader and more neutral approach instead of the male/female dicotomy, so you can mix whatever you want. There are also no gender based clothing, just slap whatever you want on any character.
As for the outline, the engine will create them automatically! Ideally leave without it, but if you want the engine to properly replace your outline - when the option “Tiny RPG Outline” is on - use #131549 as the colour for it! What I do is run 3 shaders when the option is on: one to remove all #131549, one to add #131549 but without rough corners, then I add ##f7eddc to the faceset only and with corners.
I am glad that you felt included, that was the first thing I thought about, being lax about gendering pixel art and letting people decide what their characters are and how they look.
Ah, the coding ain’t even that complex buuuut being so long since I have programmed everything came out a bit janky, so every iteration I try to improve things, clean up code and optimize where I can.
Thank you once again, my friend! :)
This is so awesome!! I'd been searching for months for a good larger RPGmaker base that looks more cute and chibi. Most of the ones on itchio go for hyper realism or sexualized proprotions for some reason. This pack looks AMAZING!! A whole maker to mix and match all these parts?! You've got so much more here than everyone else's packs! Even two sets of frame lengths for use in different engines? Buddy, you're spoiling us!
I saw your fundraiser for a new tablet and I'm gonna try and donate as much as I can! All your hard work deserves to be paid back with a little good luck in life.
Thank youSO MUCH for your generosity, mate. I am in a loss for words, this help immensely, you have no idea. Past few months have been hard mate, not gonna lie, a lot going south, one thing after the other. This will surely help me get back on my feet. My luck is having so many great people around me that actually enjoy the silly little things I do for a living.
Oh, and you can barely wait. I am just wrapping up another update for the Printer were one can add their own files, bringing the customization one step forward! :) I just want to optimize the code a little bit, get a little manual on how to add your own files and the update will go live for all three platforms: Windows, Linux and Mac.
Hope you like the next patch, stay tunned for more and I wish that all your generosity circles back to you, mate. People like you make this sometimes bleak world a better place. :)
Oh hell yeah mate that's awesome!! I've already started making edits for my characters so I'd be happy to get to use them in the maker. I'm doing a snake tail body, it's been super fun so far!
And no worries bud, I'm happy to help! I've been in a similar place before struggling with health and finances so I just thought "here's an awesome artist who deserves less stress today!" I'm already repaying the generosity other people have given me in the past when I was the one suffering. It's good to pass on some happiness!
I will do my best to honor your generosity as well and pass some happiness to people in need! I know how life sucks hard at times, having a helping hand is never too much. Thank you so much once again for all your kindness.
I have just cleaned up the code, now adding a few tooltips and the update might be online yet today. :D Oh yeah, I have also written a very short manual on how to add stuff.
Hello, sorry to bother you this way! You generously submitted for the Canadian Wildfires Fundraiser, and we're in the process of getting the bundle approved. Will you please check the community section of the jam to find the bundle approval link + further information from our lead organizer? Thank you so much! https://itch.io/jam/canadian-wildfires-fundraiser/community
They are supplemental right now - you can use the Printer without the other two and same goes for the other two.
The assets for both workshops are included in the Printer but as Godot’s resource files, not as raw PNGs. Once I figure out a good way to have the Printer reading stuff on the fly both Workshops will become obsolete - since you will have access to all its content straight from the Printer. There is also the plus that with reading stuff on the fly you will also be able to add your own files to the Printer, making it even more flexible.
It will be once I clean up the code and make sure that external paths are being built properly. Then I will provide a very simple documentation regarding folder paths and name conventions in order for custom graphics to work properly! :) I plan to get that up in running on the next week, hopefully.
Edit: In other words, not only external files will be accepted as the end user, by buying this tool, will also have access to all the contents of both the Char and Face Workshops combined. I believe this tool is at its best when you can do fine editing once the sprite is out and those two packs are key for that.
Yep! Here it is right after downloading and unzipping. This is showing hidden files and folders as well.