Graphics are a huge part of roleplaying. They’re another way to express your creativity and individualize your RP characters. Some of the best graphics for individualization are those you make yourself! Learning how to create graphics for roleplay requires a little bit of work on your end — but the result is well worth it!

Through Forum Roleplay’s roleplaying graphics tutorials, you will learn how to create fantastic graphics specially made for your roleplaying character. There’s nothing quite like custom family trees listing all of your character’s relations — or hand-colored roleplaying images that look almost exactly like your character.

These graphics tutorials are an excellent introduction to some graphics program basics. Even if you’ve used PSD templates before — it helps to learn as much as you can about Photoshop and photo-editing programs. Roleplaying can actually learn and grow your graphical-editing skills!

Programs for Editing RPG Graphics

There are several programs you can use to edit RPG graphics and follow along with the roleplay image editing tutorials provided by Forum Roleplay. Which program you want depends on what kind of images you’re working with. And don’t worry about cost — if you’re just starting out, there are free alternatives to standard graphical editing programs. Roleplayers on a budget, worry not!

• Photoshop: Photoshop is the de-facto professional graphics editing program. It has huge market dominance, and if you ever wind up working with graphics in a job — you’ll probably wind up working in Photoshop! Most of Forum Roleplay’s graphics tutorials are created in Adobe Photoshop.
• GIMP: An open-source alternative to Photoshop. If you’re just starting out and you can’t budget Photoshop yet, GIMP is the solution for you. You can still create a lot of awesome roleplaying graphics with GIMP. Unfortunately, Forum Roleplay does not offer any tutorials for GIMP presently.
• Illustrator: Part of the Adobe family and sister to Photoshop, Illustrator allows you to work with vector graphics. Although Forum Roleplay does not presently provide RPG graphics tutorials in Illustrator, learning this program can help you create better graphics.
• Inkscape: Much like GIMP is the open-source alternative to Photoshop, Inkscape provides an open-source alternative to Illustrator. Roleplayers who are just starting to make RPG graphics might find it’s best to work with a free program like Inkscape before investing in the costly Adobe family.