Have an original character in mind that you want to bring to life? There are many online avatar makers out there, each catering to different types of creative individuals, whether they are tabletop RPG players, writers, or anime fans. Here we have compiled a list of our favorite ones that you can start using online for free!
1. Storior
Storior features stunning artwork that has been drawn piece by piece in-house. The 2D character creators have in-depth customizations and are easy to use on both mobile and desktop devices. As of now, Storior has more than 1,000 customizations available with useful features such as repositioning artwork, rearranging layers, and changing colors.
Because the character is in full body, you can customize every aspect of them from head to toes. From physical appearance to clothing and items, even the canvas itself can be decorated with fireballs and ice spells.
Based on the first released designs, the clothing and items are suitable for characters in fantasy settings, especially for Dungeons and Dragons players. Whether your character is a charming bard or a fire-wielding sorcerer, Storior has you covered with a wide range of weapons, armor, and magical spells. If you’re looking for an anime-style character builder, Storior could also be a great fit for its mix of Japanese and Western art styles.
The site is free-to-play with no character creation limit. When you finish customizing your character, you can download it into a PNG file and share it on various social media sites.
In short…
- Customizations: There are only Female and Male character creators available at the moment, each with many beautiful customizations to select from. If you want to be notified when new designs arrive, subscribe to Storior’s newsletter here.
- Ease of use: The character creator is easy to use and is specially optimized for mobile devices.
- Navigation: The website’s navigation itself is simple. Due to its only two available character creators, they can be found quite easily.
- Best for: RPG tabletop players, DnD players, anime/manga fans, fantasy writers.
2. Heroforge
Heroforge is definitely a go-to place for creating custom miniatures. They have launched two successful campaigns on Kickstarter (1.0 launch and 2.0 color feature), each obtaining more than $300,000 in funding. Tabletop RPG communities, such as DnD, Pathfinder, and Warhammer, love their platform.
Ordering physical custom minis aside, you can create a wide variety of characters in Heroforge such as human, elf, demon, werewolf, dwarf, gnome and dragonborn. The library of customizations is enormous. Clothes range from medieval to cyberpunk style. Weapons that characters can strap to their back or hold in their hands. Even the character’s pose can be customized down to every twist and turn.
Due to its advanced customizations, it might take a while to get used to all the settings. Going through all the customizations to find what you want can be both fun and time-consuming. Nevertheless, you can use the search function to find what you want. Once you’re familiar with it, you can create really amazing characters with Heroforge.
In short…
- Customizations: Tons and tons. Characters can be created and customized in great detail. Whatever you want in a character, Heroforge mostly has it.
- Ease of use: It becomes easy as soon as you get used to the various settings, e.g. knowing where to go and learning what features are available. The UIs are optimized for both desktop and mobile devices.
- Navigation: Navigation through the main topics is easy and straightforward. Finding the exact customization you want can be time-consuming without using the search function.
- Best for: RPG tabletop players, DnD players, miniature collector/painter.
3. Picrew
Picrew is a Japanese-made character creator website. Even though the entire website is in Japanese, that doesn’t stop people from going onto the website and starting to design their characters.
Picrew’s strength lies in its simplicity, with an easy-to-use interface. You can essentially understand which button does what by looking at the icon symbols and being familiar with character builders from other games. The speed at which the website loads from your interaction is fast, allowing for a delightful experience.
Picrew is a UGC (user-generated-content) website, meaning that every artwork produced is from the users. The platform simply provides the backend for these talented artists to showcase their work. This results in many many character creators being published, each with varying quality due to the lack of moderation. Sometimes, if you don’t bookmark the character creator that you like, it might be impossible to find it again since Picrew’s search function is in Japanese.
- Customizations: There are a lot of character creators to choose from, each with varying quality.
- Ease of use: Super easy to use.
- Navigation: Navigation through the enormous character creator library can be exhausting. Unless you know how to use the search function, going back to the character creator you previously used might be impossible.
- Best for: Anime and manga fans.
4. Meiker.io
Like Picrew, Meiker.io’s artwork is produced by users. Although the website is in English, the character builder itself can take longer to load when compared to other sites. Because anyone can upload their own character creator, you need to explore the site extensively to find some gems among them, e.g. Animal Crossing avatar and Elf maker.
The design of Meiker’s character creator is a little odd, with the customization interface being on the top right, making it harder to reach and get used to. In some artwork, the customization bar obstructed the view of the artwork.
This website earns revenue by displaying advertisements, but unlike Storior or Picrew, the frequency of ads is greater. This makes the experience quite jarring, despite the many beautiful artworks shown here.
- Customizations: Suitable for those wanting to quickly design and build characters without going into details.
- Ease of use: More optimized toward desktop devices.
- Navigation: The number of ads on the website can be distracting, making navigation a little difficult.
- Best for: Anime/manga fans, Disney fans, fantasy gamers
5. The Character Creator.org
Charactercreator.org is created by a solo developer named Frederic Guimont. According to his Patreon, he taught himself to learn programming specifically so that he could build this character creator website using his own artwork.
The artwork is drawn realistically with thick line art and flat coloring. Although this might result in the character looking slightly stiff, many appreciate the art style and continue to use the site for years.
New customizations are added regularly. You can choose any color from the color picker and randomize the design to quickly review what the finished character would look like.
- Customizations: There are lots of choices with the ability to pick any color you want.
- Ease of use: Challenging to learn the settings at first. It is much easier to use on desktop devices than on mobile devices.
- Navigation: Requires some time to get used to.
- Best for: Those who want to customize realistic-looking characters.
Conclusion
The fun here is getting to play many incredible character builders as well as appreciating the beauty of their artwork. We have all spent hours customizing our characters in video games, and the above tools have made available to us a way to see our ideas come into reality. Try them out and see what your imagination can bring.
Happy creating!
