Creating a custom face (3 ways)

In this blogpost, we'll be:

To create a character in a story setting can be a task on its own. Making the character come alive is another thing altogether. In this blogpost I will be demonstrating ways you can give your character some life by personalising them to their own characteristics.

To get started in creating your own special characters, here are 3 ways you can do it!

Overview of tutorial end results.

Creating a custom face

Applications required: maplestory.design character design saved in layers & editing software of choice.

In general, any editing software that can provide the user to crop, colour, draw, etc. would be a good starter. Even Microsoft Paint could be of a great use.

Applications such as Keynote can also be handy if you're in need of a simple animated text. I will go into details on that later in the post.

To create your character, open up maplestory.design and create your character of choice. Make sure to save them in both the normal and layered spritesheets.

Tutorial on how to create your character: https://youtu.be/vFjsUB-Su9c

Poses/ Faces- you can create them yourselves by arranging the various body parts, or simply download pre-made poses provided by the lovely artists on Deviantart.com. Simply search for 'maplestory custom poses' or 'maplestory custom poses' and a variety of options will appear.

To edit a character's mouth/ facial expressions, open up your character in your choice of editing software.

1. Moving pupils.

Moving pupils can help to emphasize a point, such as 'oh what's this person next to me up to' to, 'is that a shadow in the corner?'

To move pupils, select it and drag it across- like so. Do the same for the other eye.

Make sure to fill in the blank space with white. Here's how it should look like.

To make the character smile, draw a couple of pixels- like so.

Here's the final product. This step takes a little more in terms of figuring out what looks correct- as we didn't put the character together in layers.

Final product

2. Changing expressions without layers.

To change expressions without layers, here's a simple way of doing it. I'll use mouths to show the steps.

First, import the character's png, and the mouth you created or downloaded online.

Import the character and the mouth.

From here, you would want to select the mouth on the character layer.

Selecting the mouth.

Once that is done, colour pick the middle area of the face skin colour, and cover the mouth on top. You can also choose to delete the mouth and fill it up again. Both ways work.

Filling in the colour.

Moving on, you can adjust the mouth to the size and where you wish for it to be placed at. Here I added a blush layer. You can easily make this, or obtain it from online sources.

Adjusting the mouth

And that's how you change facial features with a simple photo. It might be harder for other facial features such as the eyes as the surrounding skin area can be hard to colour in.

Here's the final product:

Final product

3. Replacing facial parts with layering.

Layering on the character's individual components can be easier than the previous option as it requires less work (if you exclude the importing of layers).

I will use the mouth as an example again.

The first step is to import the layers onto the character and select the mouth.

Import your layers

Next, you will want to select the mouth and delete it. This won't affect the surrounding pixels as it's a sole layer.

Select and delete the mouth

After deleting the mouth, import your new mouth you wish to use.

Import your new mouth

From here, simply adjust to where you think fits! Simple ain't it?

Here's the final product:

Final product

And that's how you edit a character's face. Isn't it easy?

Now you're equipped with skills to edit better!

Watch the video linked below for a better explanation, if this isn't clear-cut for you.

TUTORIAL LINK: https://youtu.be/2cpwZUC9wsU

To put them into a scene, download or create your own background and place them in~

Applications recommended (both free & paid)Windows: Microsoft Paint, Paint.Net, FireAlpaca, Krita, Clip Studio PaintMac: Keynote, FireAlpaca, Krita (works better on windows), Clip Studio Paint

Good luck, and all the best! ♡

Do share your designs with me on my tumblr~

https://sleighbeiie.tumblr.com/