Graphical (Super)Hero Creator/Maker Sites
There are, surprisingly, a number of impressive websites that allow you to create graphical or visual representations of your own favorite superheroes, either very close to existing ones or those of your own creation! These are particularly handy for making stand-up, counters, “action figures”, miniatures and models, which are used by a lot of tabletop roleplaying games. Oh, and for the most part, you can create heroes of any sort, contemporary everyday people to adventurers from a fantasy world.
What I did NOT expect was to find so MANY of the “make your own” style websites, and I’m not just talking about superheroes here; there are “make your own living room”, “make your own celebrity”, “make your own shirt”, “make your own normal person” (doll), pets, buildings, locations, just about anything else, some in rather unassuming places on the web. I am very impressed with the amount of free resources available to people wanting to create their own virtual scenes, people and such, but lack the artistic talent to do so.
At any rate, I’ll just give you the rundown and it should really keep you busy for… well, practically forever! Although the different sites have different methods for “saving” your finished work, I personally advise taking a screenshot of your finished creation FIRST, opening up a graphics program like MS Paint, Paint.Net, GIMP, Photofiltre or any other suitable application, paste it out of your clipboard as a new image, and save it to your hard drive.
Marvel’s Create Your Own Superhero
Actually pretty good, definitely more limited than Hero Machine though.
Hero Machine
The most famous superhero maker – it has a TON of options.
Hero Factory
More stylized and “indy” with a different take on things.
Fabrica De Herois – Blogspot Version
Spanish (?) superhero maker at a Blogspot page.
Fabrica De Herois – Official Version?
Different version of the above – more hero types, fewer choices each.
Cartoon Network’s Ben 10 Hero Matrix
Sort of bordering on superhero, it is really alien, but still a nice crisp maker.
RainbowDressup.com – Male Superhero
I’m surprised – this actually is fairly good for primarily a doll dressup site.
Girls Games 24 – Female Superhero
Female version of above.
Hero Creator X
A non-realistic cartoony superhero creator – still not bad.
Super Heroes World Maker
More like Colorforms, drop pre-made characters (Green Lantern, etc) and people into a scene. Still neat!
Super Hero Doll Maker
Basically just a “drop the outfit on the female doll” site but might be useful for a quick character.
Princess Presto’s Create Your Own Superhero
This helps teach kids English, rewarding them for correct answers by outfitting a character as a superhero.
Not strictly superhero makers here, these are nonetheless “doll” and similar makers which could be used to create more mundane characters and people and NPCs for RPGs.
Dream Avatar
Pudgy little “Chibi” anime characters, but an ok selection of items.
South Park Character Maker
Well known.
Dressup Empire
An astounding collection of “makers” for people, scenes, pets, etc.
Dress Me Up
A very large site of dressup options and categories, easily comparable to the above.
Dollzmania
Essentially a giant clearinghouse, hub and index of Doll sites.
Superhero Doll Maker
I guess this vaguely be called a superhero section as it claims, as it has a couple of recognizable super accessories.
Dressup Spot
More of the same.
Marilee’s Paper Dolls Page
Classy paper dolls, like old style line-art realistic, fairly specific. Includes Hyacinth and Richard Bucket.
I decided to make the same superhero, Armadillo Enforcer, in each of the superhero creator sites, to see how close I could get them to look – though there are similarities, each site seems to have a really different interpretation of common visual superhero elements, as none really resemble each other significantly.
Marvel
Obviously the most comic book looking, but not a whole lot of options.
Hero Factory
Stupid randomly generated comic/hero name!
Fabric De Herois: Blogspot
Only a few types, but good selection of parts, and overall quality is spotty.
Fabric De Herois: Official (?) (I made the name in PSP)
Stylized but unmistakably high quality, more hero types but fewer parts.
Hero Machine (blurry from too many jpg/gif conversions of old image)
Closest thing to a quality “universal” character generator as one can get.
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About The Author
Hey, great site, and post, this “Fabrica de Herois – Blogspot” is portuguese(Brasil), but there is an English version, whem you chose the type of hero, there is a bar over it, look for the word “idioma” and click the ball with the USA flag next to it.
Hey terrific find, thanks for posting that! I don’t know how I missed it, but I very much appreciate you adding to the article!