Live Mapping: Character Artist 3
Loopysue
ProFantasy 🖼️ 41 images Cartographer
This week, Ralf will be taking a look at the Character Artist add-on for CC3+ to build a character and a monster, and create a paper standee for printout.
Come along to youtube on the day to join in the live chat here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A35xcjcvKiw
Or watch it any time here on the forum:*
*This thread is not monitored during the live show, but is a place where you can chat about the event and ask questions.
Your local time for the event is displayed in the forum side bar.
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Comments
This is great. And I wish there more add-ons for this style.
30 minutes :)
Just finished catching-up with today's video, as I wasn't able to be there for it live.
I've used Character Artist quite a bit over the years, and it was a shame to discover there are no plans to update or expand it, if perhaps understandably so, given it is something of a "luxury" add-on, compared with the primary mapping purpose of CC3+ in general.
Reviewing the video so soon after it was posted means the chat wasn't available to view (it sometimes is lost anyway, if the video is later edited before its final YouTube posting), but I don't think it was mentioned there that there is also the original Character Artist Pro, which has many more drawn-symbol options than CA3, and is much easier to draw your own additions onto, because it uses the far simpler vector drawing style. I suspect many now wouldn't feel it to be "pretty" enough, compared to the more modern hand-drawn version, unfortunately, but it is a versatile tool that shouldn't be ignored - to me, at least!
In the chat, I asked if the style had any animal companions or familiars, and was told it doesn't. But now I'm wondering if the two Token Treasury add-ons could be used for that? I don't have those yet, so I don't know if those tokens can be used without their borders, nor whether they have suitable pet symbols. For those of you who do have the Token Treasury symbols, what do you think? Do they work well with Character Artist?
Also, one thing not mentioned in the video that I recall: I've seen some folks here illustrate their maps with characters in the margins, like the map's villain. But I have also seen some of you create beautiful illustrations using overland map symbols to create a background for their characters. Just wanted to throw out the idea that CA can work well with other mapping styles and doesn't have to be a solely stand-alone thing.
Royal, I just tried, no go, as far as I can tell. The Token Treasury symbols backgrounds are varicolored, not transparent. If they were you could do it with some size adjustments, and fooling around with backgrounds.
The Token Treasury symbols backgrounds are varicolored, not transparent
That part is easy to fix. Just explode the symbol and delete the background.
Unfortunately, they all come with a simple outline frame in the image itself, which cannot be deleted easily (without modifying the image itself in an image editor, which is perfectly fine as long as you remember to not overwrite the original, and remember that no one else will have that modified image, so you can no longer share the .fcw file with anyone [And redistribution official ProFantasy art is not permitted, so you can't share the modified image file with anyone either], but you can of course always share the final export of your character)
The token treasury images are usually cut off in various ways though, so I don't think most of them will work very well on a character portrait unfortunately, at least not as part of it, but maybe more used as an inset in a corner or something.
This is a very quick and dirty example of a very long-ago Monk character I ran solo back in the mists of time (about 1978?) who ended-up with a pet stirge, just using some basic CA3 options and the Stirge in a fancy circle from TT2, no labels, no tidying up, just a 10-minute rush-job:
Res is lousy, but it's really just to give an idea of how you could do this for a familiar or pet - if the image exists. Slap a couple of labels on, get everything neatly centred, frame resized and fully finished, with some nice sheet effects, and it would look perfectly acceptable, I think. You could even replace the wooden rectangular frame with a fancy oval one from one of the TT sets for the main character, say!
The token treasury images are usually cut off in various ways though, so I don't think most of them will work very well on a character portrait unfortunately, at least not as part of it, but maybe more used as an inset in a corner or something.
I totally understand why new additions to Character Artist are impractical, especially given that every weapon and item of clothing has to be designed in multiple ways for body types, arm positions, etc. Plus, I suspect that relatively fewer customers bought Character Artist to begin with. But it occurs to me that forward-facing (as opposed to top-down) creature symbols could be a surprisingly versatile Annual. In addition to using them with Character Artist (as pets, familiars, companions, foes), customers could use them on isometric overland maps (or isometric city maps like SS6) -- like a Wyvern's Eyrie. 😉 They could also be used with the Perspectives add-on, and as embellishments/ornamentation to dungeon maps. A thought to add to my loooooong list of musings....