SaDe is a well known name in the Earthdawn community. She accomplished several projects over the years, which all represent her unique art style. Be it the iRPG app, her great drawings for Earthdawn (Earthdawn cards) or her most recent project the ePic Character Generator. I reported last year about the generator and Sade’s plans when the program was still in development (read the article here).

Since last year a lot happened including a loss of Sade’s HDD…. But against all odds, the ePic Character Generator was released a few weeks ago at http://epicgenerator.net.

So let’s see, what can you do with the generator?

There’s a free demo available at the store, which contains a free female character that can be equipped to test the features of the program.

The interface to create the character is neatly arranged. At the bottom are categories to modify areas of the character like body, armor, weapons and background. Each category provides buttons (in the middle) for the specific sections that you want to edit. The dice button generates quick random characters.

The main menu of the program shows the different base chars that are available for the program. The demo character is of course limited and provides for example no weapons to equip the character. I was allowed to test the ePic Generator with the Elf Male Character to show you the full features of the program. Currently are the following races available for the program, but Sade told me that an other race is already in the making:

• Male human
• Female human
• Dwarf male
• Dwarf female
• Elf male
• Elf female

At the store are several packages available for each race and include male and female bodies. The dwarf and human bundles cost $8.49 and the elf bundle is available for $13.59. Currently have all the packages 15% discount. The all I one starter package includes all races, male and female and is available for $59.99 (30% off atm). The additional races and bundles can be paid via PayPal of course.

The combination options to create your character are sheer endless. For example, the elf male char offers:

• 33 base models (face expressions)
• 31 pants
• 26 boots
• 37 tops
• 19 colorable styles of hair
• 7 fully made set
• 35 special add-ons
• 51 weapons and armor pieces
• 7 token frames

All packages include:

• 5 animals
• 16 background
• 3 frames

The generated characters can be saved as png files on your PC. At the bottom corner of each generated picture is a watermark, but the mark can be removed with the Pro Version of the program.

Character tokens can also be created with the ePic Character Generator. Each base character offers a number of different frames to create your character token, for example like these:

If you want to test the demo character and download the program you'll need to register and create an account. The email that you use to register at the page http://epicgenerator.net is needed again to activate the program and to add races or bundles to your account. So keep it in mind.

I would’ve been happy to have such a Character Generator when I was still playing Earthdawn because my art skills compared to Sade’s artworks creations is –1. The creation of a character or a character token would have been much easier with this tool back then.

I have to admit that it is the best portrait generator I’ve used so far. I especially like the different styles of characters you can create, even if I mainly tried to create "Earthdawnish" characters, it is also possible to generate high fantasy-, demonic- or zombie like characters.

Even though some features are missing at this early stage, Sade and the programmers LBandy and Rawbits have done a great job with the generator. I guess they are working hard to add new features to the generator. I can only suggest to have a look at the ePic Generator and spent e few bucks to add some races to the core program.