Welcome to Frizzy Characters: A Year in Review

How it started

Frizzy Characters started back in 2020 when Frizzy created a simple character editor using Procreate. It was initially just for fun, allowing members of her StarStable Online (SSO) club, Night Wings Nation (NWN), to design their own characters by playing around with different hand-drawn layers. What began as a small project quickly caught on, with more and more players asking if Frizzy could make custom characters for them too.

Seeing how much everyone loved the idea, Frizzy teamed up with Felix to take it to the next level. She focused on redrawing the character assets, making them more detailed and versatile, while Felix started building a whole website to bring the character editor online. The goal? To create a platform where anyone could design their own unique character with tons of options to choose from.

Even though the website isn’t live yet, we've been working hard to turn Frizzy Characters into something truly special. We want it to be a place where online gamers can easily create characters that represent their style and personality—not just in SSO, but across all sorts of online games and communities.

We’re so excited to share this journey with you and can’t wait to see what you all create once Frizzy Characters goes live!

The First Prototype

The first major milestone for Frizzy Characters was turning Frizzy‘s manual Procreate process into a working prototype on a website. Initially, character creation was done entirely within Procreate, where Frizzy hand-drew each layer, and NWN members would fill out a sheet so she could manually combine the layers to create their characters. While this method was effective, it required a lot of time and effort and users couldn‘t really play around with all the options, so we set out to streamline the process.

To make character creation more accessible, Felix developed an online version of the editor. This first prototype brought the Procreate workflow into a web environment, allowing users to create their characters directly in their browsers. The prototype was simple compared to the full feature set we’re working on now, but it was a crucial step. It helped us test how the character creation process would work and laid the foundation for the improvements and new features that followed.

Here are snapshots of that first prototype:

Hitting Performance Barriers

This section features a short technical breakdown of how the website works under the hood. If you're not interested in that, simply skip ahead.

As we transitioned from our first prototype to a more advanced version of Frizzy Characters, we quickly encountered some serious performance challenges. Our initial setup involved a single server handling all the image processing for character creation. While this worked perfectly fine during local testing, things took a sharp turn when we uploaded it to our web server. It turned out that having just two people create characters simultaneously could crash the entire server.

Felix dedicated countless hours to improving the performance, determined to ensure that a large number of users could create characters without overwhelming the system. He experimented with different programming languages to see if they could provide a speed boost, but those attempts didn't yield the results we needed.

The solution ended up being more nuanced. The character creation process involves layering many different files to compose the final image. To optimize this, we created multiple versions of each file in different resolutions, significantly reducing the time needed to compute the final character image. What started as over 3,000 hand-drawn and hand-exported file layers from Procreate was transformed into more than 30,000 optimized files, ensuring a smooth user experience. Handling this massive volume of files became a challenge in itself.

To compute these files efficiently, we implemented a serverless architecture using AWS Lambda. Each Lambda function is a small, short-lived computer that processes the image composition, returns the result and then shuts itself off. This setup allows us to handle a large number of requests simultaneously without any performance hits. Additionally, we use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to host the source image files, enabling geocaching. This means that a European user would get the files from a server in Frankfurt, while an American user would receive them from a nearby server in the U.S., ensuring faster load times no matter where they are.

These technical improvements were crucial in overcoming the performance barriers we faced, allowing us to scale Frizzy Characters so that users everywhere can enjoy a fast and responsive experience from anywhere in the world at any time.

Current Editor Features

As we continue to develop Frizzy Characters, we’re excited to share the features that are already available in the editor. Here’s what you can do right now:

1. Create Your Own Character

The editor allows you to fully customize your character with a wide range of options. You can select from:

• Skin tones: Choose the perfect skin tone out of 9 different colors.
• Clothing: Personalize each clothing item with unique overlays.
• Hats: Finalize your outfit with a matching hat.
• Eyes, Eyebrows, and Mouths: Pick different shapes and styles to express your character's mood.
• Makeup: Add eyeliner, eyeshadows, lashes, and more.
• Hairstyles: Explore a wide variety of hairstyles and a range of 69 haircolors.
• Jewelry: Accessorize with earrings, piercings and other jewelry pieces.
• Extras: Need a pair of elf ears or glasses? We got you.
• Backgrounds: Select from optional backgrounds.

Example video of editor usage:

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2. Share Your Character with Others

Once you’ve created your character, you can easily share it with friends using a share link. When someone opens your link, they can insert your character into their own character save slot. When sharing the link using messengers like WhatsApp, iMessage or Discord the link also features a preview of your character.

3. Character Save Slots

The editor includes 4 character save slots, allowing you to work on multiple characters at the same time. Your progress is automatically saved on your local computer, so you can pick up right where you left off, even if you close the website.

4. Randomize

Feeling stuck or just want to see something new? The randomize feature creates crazy, randomized versions of characters with just a click. It’s a great way to get inspired and discover new combinations you might not have thought of. However you might get scared by some creations of the randomizer… beware!

What You Get When You Purchase a Character

With Frizzy Characters, you can customize and work on your character as much as you want for free. When you’re ready to download and fully unlock your creation, a purchase is required. The price may vary depending on the specific character parts you choose—such as certain hairstyles or extravagant jewelry.

To make this more clear, the editor uses a color-coded scheme to indicate the pricing of each item. Additionally, you’ll receive a notification if your selections move your character into a different pricing tier, ensuring that you’re always aware of your character‘s price.

Here’s what you’ll receive when you buy your character:

1. High-Resolution Image:

   Upon purchasing, you’ll receive a high-resolution image of your character, sized at 2048x2048 pixels. Other than a subtle signature, this image is free of watermarks, ensuring that every detail of your creation is captured in stunning clarity—perfect for sharing or using as an avatar.

2. Custom Mobile and Desktop Wallpapers

   Upon download, we are automatically generating personalized wallpapers for both mobile and desktop, featuring your character.

   Mobile Wallpapers

   

   

   Desktop Wallpapers

   

   

3. Instagram Story Templates

   Your purchase includes three Instagram story templates. Some templates are available in a dark and light theme, giving you the flexibility to choose the one that suits your character best.

   

   

   

   

4. Animated Discord GIFs:

   You’ll get animated GIFs of your character. They are optimized for use as an animated Discord avatar or banner, if you have Discord Nitro.

   

We’re also planning to continue expanding the variety of files and assets you receive when purchasing a character. This means more options for wallpapers, Instagram stories, and Discord features in the future, so you’ll always have new ways to showcase your character!

Closed Beta: Testing with Our German Community

We recently conducted a closed beta test exclusively for our German users, where we put the entire creation process to the test. This beta phase was incredibly valuable for us, as it provided crucial feedback from real users who interacted with the editor and experienced its features firsthand.

During the beta, we actively improved the editor based on user input, making adjustments and fixing bugs as we went along.

Since the beta ended, we've added many new features and polished the editor even further. The insights gained from our beta testers have shaped the direction of Frizzy Characters, ensuring that we’re building a tool that truly meets the needs and expectations of our users.

Looking ahead, we’re committed to continuing this approach—Your feedback is vital to making Frizzy Characters the best it can be, and we’re excited to keep evolving the platform as the project moves forward.

Early Access Testing Phase

As we approach the final release, we’re planning to run a final early access testing phase. This phase will allow us to gather final feedback from users before the official launch.

The early access phase will be open to everyone, not just German users, giving a broader audience the chance to explore the editor and help us refine the experience. Tailoring Frizzy Characters to various needs has turned out to be a way bigger task than we first expected. That’s why we’re taking our time to get everything just right.

We’re also planning to implement a unique challenge for all early access users. It’s something different that you’ve probably never seen before, and we think it will make joining the website even more exciting!

Once this phase ends, we’ll move forward with the public release, which is planned for the following months.

The Journey Continues

Even after the public release, our work on the Frizzy Characters editor will continue. While Felix has many plans for even more features, Frizzy will take any wishes for more clothing personally on Instagram and add new items monthly.

We can’t wait to hear what you think! Your feedback will be invaluable as we move forward, and we’re eager to see the incredible characters you’ll create.

You can join our Discord server to chat about the character creator, share your creations, and connect with other users once the editor goes live. Here’s the link to join: Join now.

If you have any questions or want to share your thoughts, feel free to reach out on Instagram @frizzycharacterz or via email at support@frizzycharacters.com .