Character Portraits

   One of the best thing about our digital age is that there are many creative people out there. Not only in the sense of geniuses, programers, designer, and artists, but also those of us that scour the web for utilities and programs that can be used in innovative ways. One of these involves how we illustrate or present our player characters. Now not everyone has a natural talent for artistic rendering or may have the time to develop such a skill. That is why I am every so thankful to our digital age and creative free spirits.... cause thanks to these great people you can find a program anywhere that can help you with what you want to accomplish!

Easy Method
Doll Makers, Dress Up, Character Portraits, Character Creation, Avatar Makers..... there are tons of free programs on the web that can help you create you character portrait. It may be frustrating at first (mostly oriented for girls), but are tons of programs out there and you need to be patient. You will eventually find an art style and genre that will fight your needs, and hopefully have enough options for you. Either 2D or 3D models are available!

DollDivine.com
This site has many genres and artistic styles. Although the site is targeted to girls, there are some options for guys there too! The Avatar: Last Airbender, Hogwatrts, and Game of Thrones programs have option for both male and female characters. Also there are some that even allow you to create animal and anthropomorphic characters too!

Dress Up Games
Another website with many options. Here you can create your own Pokemon Trainers!
 Meez.com
This website has 3D Models and a ton of character options. It is originally intended to be an Online Interactive Social Space, but the avatar creation is an invaluable tool. It is a paid site if you wish to join the community, but it does allow you to try out the character creation... in which creative individuals can find away to preview and customize there own Avatar! I only wish they made this program available to download and purchase, as this is one of the best model character creation kits out there!

Advanced Methods
This will cover the topic of more advance methods. As with Meez.com, there are tons of games that have a whole character creation suite. That means that you have the ability to make some awesome portraits by just playing the On-line games you have. There are many older Video and PC games to which have some amazing "editors" included as well that you can utilize to create backdrops and other character to portraits too! 

Character Creation Screen
The easiest method for this, but somewhat limited is to find a MMORPG, that will give you the basics of what you need to create a basic character. If you actually play one of these games, you will have access most of the time for alternate character slots, which means you can play the game and create secondary characters just for dress up purposes. Zu online, DC Online, Heroes Online, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Everquest, etc are some options. Just pick the character style you like.

Model Viewers
Now if you want total customization, there are many model viewers that allow you to access the game files stored on you PC. With the rise of Machinma, many individuals have created model viewers for various games which allow you to not only create a custom and detailed character portrait, but even full flown videos! Now you are not hacking or messing with the program itself, you are just accessing the file usually through a third party model viewer program. One program that I can recommend is Machinima Studio. This program is not only free (paid version gives you tons of extras!), but has managed to allow you to pull model creation from such games as Aion, Allods Online, fallout 3, Runes of Magic, Starcraft II, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft. Remember you actually have to have the game installed first in order to access.
Again creative people will figure out how to utilize these programs fully and freely (download the game and keep it updated...many offer free trials)

Game Editors
This method is for those games that came before the age of the internet. There are many PC games that come with Level Editors or Character Editors added in. This will allow you to create custom portraits and avatars.

Sims by Electronic Arts
The "Sims" have a multitude of options. The online community has created thousand of customs items for your scenes and character. The game also encourages you to create your own items as well. You can create Adults, Teens, Children, Pets in Sims 3, but in Sims 2 & 3 there are options to create scenes and location from almost every culture and time. It has a great level editor, and there are codes you can access if you rathr create scenes that play the game.
The Game itself has has gone through three editions, and I would highly recommend Sims 2 or 3. Sims 2 has an extensive catalog of items and really cheap. Remember not only can you create multitudes of characters and animals, but whole scenes too!

 Vampire: Redemption by Activision
At the time this game was greatly overlooked, and sadly support from both Activision and White Wolf were lacking. Thanks in part to online community, there has been ton of add-ons to the game that cover the rest of White Wolf's World of Darkness line. You can purchase this game for $5 considering it has one of the most powerful editors I have seen! You can create 3D portraits of characters suitable for either the European Dark Ages of the Modern Age. You can also create a number of custom settings as we well too, and this was a godsend because you could make your own scenes just as we do with machinma today.

Miniatures
Since most of have access to 2D printers...(3D Printers may be commercially affordable soon!), don;t forget you can create tokens, minis, and standees as well. Ever PC has MS Paint, also if you have access to other photo editors (Adobe Photoshop) or art programs, which will allow you not only to make some customization of your own, but you can make paper models and tokens. With any of the above methods, you can print out a small portraits sized for most grid maps. Check out this simple how to guide.

As a child of the 70's there were tons of paper standees you could make, and I am glad that this art is not lost. There are tons of template you can get to make towns and settings for you games. As mentioned above, creative and cunning individuals will realize you can make many of these on your own for free, but you can also purchase said paper models from a variety of companies at RPGNOW.com.