Woe, Free Resources Upon Ye

Argent Dawn
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Having seen many people in Argent Dawn talk about for a lack of free-to-use art resources to use for roleplay, I have decided to make a little list of a few recommendations of my own. All of these resources that I will list are free to use, and those that need crediting to their original creators as its only payment will be listed as such.

These resources aren’t limited to just character art, but tools for personal roleplay like Argent Archives profiles , as well as event banners, guild banners, and so on. With all that said:

SOFTWARE BASICS

You might be looking for editing tools or perhaps even digital art tools that are free to use.

GIMP is an open-source, free to download photo editor similar to Photoshop, with much of the same functionality.

https://www.gimp.org/downloads/

Krita is an open-source, free to download art program created with the purpose of providing the tools necessary to any artist and hobbyist who needs an affordable option to the many art programs out there. It’s one of the best pieces of art software out there, it’s free forever, and it isn’t as unwieldy to use with a mouse as other similar software usually is.

https://krita.org/

ROLEPLAY GRAPHIC DESIGN

Besides these options, there are also artists that have made an extensive gallery of easy to use graphic design for those who want to run events, guilds, campaigns, or even just have a few more neat tools to make something nice for their character.

Sonceri (@sonceri.bsky.social) is one of these artists. They have made a compilation of resources like letters, banners, coins, wax seals, campaign banners, guild banners, and so on. While the letters/parchments do not need any additional software, since they are made through Google Slides, the others need you to download GIMP - but they provide the resources one might need for it within the files, and leaves the option for you to add more if you need anything else. They’ve also made things such as DM guides, for both WoW, WoW RPG, and World of Darkness TTRPGs.

https://sonceri.art/docs/intro

Some artsites also have artists that give tiny bits of art for anyone to use, free of charge. Sprites like those of Deviantart’s F2U (free-2-use) tag, if you are brave enough to venture into its depths, as well as many others with different tags even within the same sites. Should you find yourself unable to draw or find any resources of some small sprite to add to your character profile in a site such as argentarchives.org, it doesn’t hurt to take a look. I have found a few things this way myself!

Warcraft Concept Art. Nobody will beat you over the head for using the more than extensive gallery of concept art the world of Azeroth has been faithfully provided for more than a couple of decades. The art of every artbook of Warcraft is usually uploaded in many other places online, be it in wiki pages, or by individual artists that have worked in them. It makes for fantastic roleplay backgrounds, as well as finding definitions as to how your character might look for others to see, without straying away from Warcraft’s aesthetic.

CHARACTER CREATORS
Or, maybe, you just want to have a faithful representation of your character, but don’t care much for drawing, or scouring through decades worth of concept art? That’s fine.

Here are a few options:

Heroforge is a site that lets you create custom miniatures. While their service is mostly built for creating said miniatures and then selling them to you, their miniature creator is entirely free to use, and has all the fantasy races you’d expect out of any fantasy setting to pick from, with every part customizable and paintable to your liking.

https://www.heroforge.com/

Games such as Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Dragon Age Veilguard have released their character creators for free, and are a neat option for character references. There are also games such as The Sims 4, with a gallery of mods large enough to incite worry, which are free-to-play; and others, which, sadly, are bought for, but have excellent character creators, such as the newer Monster Hunter games, and Baldur’s Gate 3.

Picrew is a website in which artists upload character creators, though not all are fantasy-themed, and certainly not all of them are particularly themed around Warcraft’s aesthetic, but it is free, and it is an option.

https://picrew.me/en/

ART RESOURCES

Say, you’ve been trying to get into art for a while, but there’s just not enough resources out there to really guide yourself with; or at least, it’s hard to tell apart those that are truly free, and those that are just a free trial with limited options and time.

Here are a few resources if this is your case.

PuccaNoodles’ Compiled Animation/Art Resource Sheet. Self-explanatory.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQngQS6OcnUHJu9ldZoCva9749YW-dhaqfkbZtwu8Qw58rmYZeSCnye-lTQ8hT4dIi4q0Wdn3LK8ZZl/pubhtml

Art Fundamentals Playlist. Just as self-explanatory. I recommend it if you are entirely new to art, or if you have some middling curiosity for it. It’s a nice insight into the very fundamentals of art, without having to throw yourself into the crucible of trying to learn complex techniques from the getgo, and get easily frustrated and burned out in the process.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVgLT-e3jXPDgeED0pD0BPq8kY1VAZAGa

CTRL+Paint. A free library of short and simple videos on the basics of digital art.

https://www.ctrlpaint.com/

ProkoTV is a YouTube channel that provides free daily videos on art, often being about anatomy and figure-drawing, which is perfect if you’re learning art to draw your characters as a hobby - or perhaps, to make commissions in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/user/ProkoTV/videos

Drawabox has a compilation of activities and exercises that help with hammering down some of the trickier bits to learn on your own, such as perspective, complex drawings, and so on.

https://drawabox.com/

FZDSCHOOL is a concept artist-focused YouTube account made by one of the teachers of one of the most prominent concept artist schools out there. His most popular videos include things such the basics of drawing, spanning all the way into how to draw fantasy and MMORPG landscapes, sketching, character design, and plenty more.

https://www.youtube.com/user/FZDSCHOOL/videos

This is by no means an extensive list, nor do I intend it to be, and so, I’m probably not going to update it at all, but for the time being, it is a good set of resources, and entirely free, most importantly.

I hope it’s to all of you’s liking, or at the very least, entertaining to go through.

If there’s any other free resources you know of, be it for creating your own art, or compendiums of graphic design made free to use for any who might want to use it, feel free to reply to this thread with your own recommendations.

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Additionally, if you want to create visual references of your character, RPGs like Dragon’s Dogma and Dragon Age Veilguard have FREE character creation demos that work wonders for creating refs if you really don’t have the means to draw your own. Sadly Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t have a free character creation demo but I’ve used the CC as well for commissioning art pieces of my Human and Elf characters.

Sims is also a great alternative. I’ve seen a lot of people use it.

People were able to create references of their RP characters waaay before AI.

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In the case of BG3, there’s a healthy modding community that adds a great deal more to the character creation to elevate its already expansive customisation even further. I’ve made my own characters in BG3, and I’ve seen friends do the same and I’m infinitely more delighted to see those than soulless AI.

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I can recommend using the fork of the WoWModelViewer that Frostshake provides on their github in combination with Blender. Basically it allows you to extract and export any model present within the game, be it retail or classic, with small addons for Blender that make working with the models significantly easier.

There is additionally to that an amazing tutorial series made by Belvane from some years ago that covers the most important parts about working with the models in Blender.

I would say that, if you want character art, are a bit savy with computers and have a week to invest into learning the basics of Blender, you can get alot of things done through that and keep it as close to Warcraft-Style as you possibly can. Comes even with the advantage that you can render not only pictures but also animations.

EDIT: As I looked into it right now that bug with the faulty models being exported has been very recently patched. Previously there was a bug for months that prevented working with models exported from the model viewer as they were saved incorrectly.

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I would personally advise using wow.export as an alternative to WoWModelViewer, just given the spotty support that the latter receives and that export has an option to use a CDN to access different builds of the game rather than you needing them all installed on your PC. But it’s sort of a potayto/potahto deal.

Additionally, CascView can let you bring in models from Heroes of the Storm, and ReteraModelStudio for Warcraft 3 (classic or reforged) in case the WoW assets don’t quite get you what you need.

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personally, when I’m broke and can’t afford art references, I enjoy drinking pepsi. That’s just me though.

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I would have made its own little section for it separate from those other games, but the intention of this thread is to make a list of free tools that people could use. They get a special mention from the sheer number of people who enjoy roleplay that have bought it, but beyond that, I didn’t want to give them too much of a spotlight.

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If you’re after an image editing/reformatting software that’s free and easy to use, you’re welcome to try Paint . Net.

https://www.getpaint.net/

In my experience, it’s versatile, easy to grasp, and fun to use, especially the lasso tool.

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For the ladies, I’d like to add AzaleasDolls (https://www.azaleasdolls.com/) as a nice place to make characters. A lot of the dress-ups and character creators have a lot of elf and human friendly sets. Even as a commissioner of art, I still think the version of my human priestess from their character creator is the best and can’t get over it.

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If you’re someone who does digital artwork and struggles with colour choices, you can use this free tool on Adobe’s website to extract ‘themes’ from photographs or other images. It’s very helpful if you want the exact shade of old brass, or of a forest landscape.
https://color.adobe.com/create/image

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Alternatively, https://imagecolorpicker.com/ or the color picker option of most art software will do the trick just fine.

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Hopping in here to personally recommend Feyawen’s Warcraft Fonts. They have free to download fonts for all elven languages as well as Zandali, Dwarvish, Pandaren and Draenei and they’re excellent for creating resources for RP.

https://feyawen.carrd.co/

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Also on the topic of creating RP resources, you can do incredible things with the photo mode in the addon Narcissus! I have a very dear friend who is an absolute artist at creating dynamic images of rp and rp scenes using it, and it’s extremely user friendly and -within- the wow client.

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Since it hasn’t been mentioned already, and not everyone is aware, you can use the website carrd . co to write small, personal websites for your character, artwork, or writing.

In other MMORPGs, such as FFXIV, this is used in place of Total Roleplay 3 profiles, and they can be incredibly versatile tools for expression.

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Some resources gathered by midwinterhunt of Tumblr:

Presented here ad verbatim, while intended for artists, I find many of these could be useful for roleplaying purposes as well:

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of “how to draw” videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can’t make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal >species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. >Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here’s a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

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Whoever thought of the name gimp was either extremely funny or extremely naive

I myself am a photoshop man

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The Sims 4 is availiable for free on Steam, with an extensive modding community that includes World of Warcraft assets - letting you not only create your character as a sim (with mod support to let them be any race, even worgen!) but also create their home using WoW assets and any other you may dream of. Even if you don’t want to play Sims 4 as a game (which, why would you, Sims 2 is better in every single way and Sims 3 is still better than Sims 4 if you install mods to help it function) there are mods that let you pose your sims for photo shoots in game - letting you do a rather basic version of wowmodelviewer.

Plus, at the end of it, you can actually play as your character in the worst Sims game, which is something - right?

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I gladly help people if they need a banner or poster for events or other visuals (tags, headers…) for AA or carrd, just poke me on discord (madiel).

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it stands for ‘GNU Image Manipulation Program’, they knew what they were doing i’m sure

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man as a sims 4 enjoyer this hurt, but you’re probably right. Also, absolutely seconding everything you’ve said here & I’m gonna go gather a bunch of wow themed CC creators to add to this thread for people. I already know a few but I’m sure we can get a good little archive for people who aren’t familiar with CC hunting for the sims

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