Waaa, I found a super kawaii avatar creator and it's so cool!
I was procrastinating as I always do, and I started thinking about dressing up fictional characters because that's just like me. I googled a lot and started comparing a bunch of character creators. This is the one I liked the most because it's very simplistic but it has hundreds of clothing types, colours, facial expressions, and even some flying doodles for expression! (I love the exclamation mark, the question mark and the idea light bulb.)
The creator is called charat.me. It contains many character creators. It doesn't save your characters in an online database; you have to download it and restore it yourself if you've already clicked finish or started another one or lost one. Jump to the How to save and restore avatars section below for more info.
In the end, after browsing the armoire/catalogue for a couple of hours, I decided to finish at least one character to share and that's the one you see above.
Introduction to the creator
I made a small feature index that you can see below. The app is in Japanese, sadly, and while I can't read it, it's workable if you use a browser that can translate the whole page with Google Translate. The flash elements in a couple of menus won't be translated, but the rest is enough.
Thankfully, most of the buttons are self-explanatory and if you click them you'll know what they do. ;)
I will explain some of the most crucial information.
Categories
I had honestly never seen a character creator (outside of Skyrim) with so many features! I didn't look very far, though! You will find that you're able to edit the colour of almost all elements (using the palette symbol to the right). In the categories section, you'll find underwear/body characteristics, facial features, eye shape and colours, eyebrow shape and colours.
I love the third category, which allows you to select multiple overlapping facial features that are like disguise/makeup, and pick colours for them all, the order in which they'll be displayed. If you put in a couple of hours to making an outlandish model, this editor is jaw-droppingly flexible in comparison to the apparent limitations that it seems to have at first sight.
However, you won't be able to change your character's size. They're all mini-sized. That's the niche: kawaii avatars. If you want a slightly bigger character, feel free to pick another kind of legs in the first category. ;)))
How to save and restore avatars
This section describes how to save your avatars for restoring them later. If you want to export your avatar for personal use or printing, check the How to export avatars section below.
A suuuuuuuper awesome feature in this editor is the one to restore avatars from images. Like, this seems like the simplest editor, at first sight, but it has image analysis software that can detect the elements you have picked from a simple .jpg!
If you want to restore an avatar, he's how it works.
Click the Finish & Export button once you're done. You'll see this screen:
You get 3 slots to save avatars on the website, but I don't know where to load them. Therefore, I think the simplest and safest option is to, apart from saving them there for safety until we figure out how to load them, do the following:
Click "Image download" and you'll see this little menu:
The only one of these that is .jpg is the first one, Systemic Avatar. You need a JPEG format for the restore function. Click that one and save the .jpg in your preferred folder.
When you want to load that avatar again, simply go to avatar creation, pick a name, then click the "Restore from file" that I showed in my button index above.
You'll see this screen:
Click "Select files", pick your .jpg, then click upload, then click the "Back to avatar creation" button.
How to export your avatar
This one is super simple. Just click the Finish & Export button, then click Image Download, and browse the menu there. There are two pages. The one I recommend is the last option from the second page because it downloads the biggest size, which is not very big but it's better for editing.
The ones that say "png" (3rd first page and last 2nd page) are transparent and will allow you to paste them on a landscape like I did or do some awesome editing with your kawaii characters.
I used the 3rd export option from the 1st page for my featured image (at the beginning of this post) because I was going to use it as a small part of a landscape that is barely even 1000x1000. Please note that the shadows in my featured image are made by me on an editor (3 blurred ellipses with 30, 50 and 80% opacity). I noticed it didn't have shadows when I was doing the image and didn't want to go back to picking a more shadowy colour scheme.
Other editors on the same website
This is just one of the many editors provided on the Charat website. I have only tried this one and will be trying the other ones in my free time this week. To find this one, use the link I provided before. You'll also be able to pick other editors from the bottom of the website. Note that the one that says "cat manufacturers" is also called "neko" and is basically for cat-people, a big anime trend.