CadetWorld South Park Characters

Longtime CW member has Lola put her artistic talent to work to create South Park style characters for many CW members. Now, instead of continuing to make characters for members, she shares with us the tools of her trade: the dozens of source elements she uses to create the characters. Using her templates and following this guide, you can create your own South Park Cadet character for your use, whether as your profile picture, or as a custom avatar if you earn one on CW, or for any other use you wish.

At this point in time, only the Sea Cadet templates have been compiled. Hopefully Air and Army Cadet templates will come in the future, as Lola has time to create them, as well as other extra variations such as rifles, flags, instuments, etc.

The templates come in 2 choices of format: a Zip file containing the various elements in BMP format, or a Photoshop PSD which has all the elements compiled into one file, as layers. If you have access to Adobe Photoshop, this is the best choice for you, as everything is in one file, with layers that you can turn on and off. If you do not have Photoshop, you can use any basic image editor, such as MS Paint (included free with Windows operating systems), to work with the BMP files.

The following guides will help you create your very own CW South Park character. If you have any questions, need assistance, or just have comments, please use the CW South Park Characters Discussion Thread in the Stand Easy forum (you must be logged in to view that thread.)

Download The Templates

You must be logged in as a CW member to download the templates. Choose the version that will work with your image editor, the Photoshop version will only work with Adobe Photoshop, so unless you have access to that program, you will need to use the Zipped BMPs version. Photoshop users should also download the Zipped BMPs, because they provide an easy way to view the various elements by enabling thumbnails in Windows.

Click here to go to the download page.

Using The Zipped BMPs Version

The instructions for the BMP versions apply to most standard image editing programs. We will use MS Paint for our examples.

1 - Create a folder somewhere on your system (eg, in "My Documents") to work with the files. Call it "CW South Park Work" or something similar. Save or copy the Zip file there. Unzip the Zip file. You will now see a folder containing all the BMP elements.

2 - Open Paint (Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Paint.) Then, open Paint again. You will now have 2 copies of Paint running. One will be your "master" canvas that you will build your character on. The other will be your "work" canvas, used to open the various BMP files, crop them, and copy them for pasting to the master canvas. In the Paint window that you designate as your master canvas, go to File -> Save As. Save the blank file in the working directory you created above, with a name like "My South Park Character." Make sure to save it as a 24-bit BMP file type! You want to keep the master file as a BMP file until you are completely finished it. If you convert it to a JPG format, there will be some loss of quality due to compression. The edges will appear more jagged, and the images will be harder to work with.

3 - Locate the folder created when you unzipped the Zip file. Open it, and click View -> Thumbnails. This will give you a thumbnail preview of each image. Scroll through them to get an idea of which elements you want to use for the various body parts: face, head, etc. Some elements are combined to have several versions in one file, such as the legs, arms, chests, etc. For those you will have to select the specific section you want. Make note of which elements you want to use for your character.

4 - Using the work canvas, open the first element you wish to have as part of your character. You will need to work through the creation process logically, ie, you will need to select your head before you can paste a face on to it. It makes the most sense to start with the head, insert a face, attach a chest, attach arms and legs, then paste on accoutrements such as medals, cap tallies, unit crests, etc.

5 - Copy the element you have just opened. This is done by using the "Select" tool in Paint (dotted square in the toolbar.) Draw a box around the element, like this:

If you want to use the entire element, you can press CTRL+A to select all of it. Once you have the section or entire element selected, copy it by clicking Edit -> Copy or pressing CTRL+C.

6 - Switch to your master Paint document. Paste the element by clicking Edit -> Paste or pressing CTRL+V.

7 - Switch back to the work Paint canvas. Open the next element you wish to use. Repeat the copy and paste process to build your character from the elements. Keep saving your work as you go along so you do not lose any progress.

8 - When you have the character the way you like it, save the master document as a BMP file once again. Then, if you need to convert it to a JPG or GIF for use as an avatar, etc, choose File -> Save As, and create a new copy as a JPG or GIF.

Some Important Tips!

Use the View - Zoom for close up views when selecting.

As mentioned, some elements have several pieces in one file (arms, legs,etc). You will need to select just the section you want to copy, like this:

Make sure that you keep the selections tight to the desired objects. Any white area in your selection will get pasted over the master document. If you have trouble selecting tight to the colours, zoom in closer. If you still cannot get it right, don't worry, you can always paint out the white with the paint tool in the master document.

You will notice that some pieces, when selected, do not paste correctly over the face when selected in a rectangle. Using the Free Form Select tool is not an option, because you end up with white in the non-selected areas. What you will need to do is select in small pieces and match them up, or select a smaller area and then use the paint brush or line draw tools to draw in the rest yourself. For example, if you choose a face with glasses, and copy the entire face, you will see the edges of the selection will paste over the hair. Instead, copy like this:

Paste that onto your master canvas, like this:

Then using the line draw tool, or the paint brush tool, extend the line of the glasses arms to the edge of the face:

You may have to hit undo (CTRL+Z) a couple of times until you get it just right.

If you are using a facial expression without glasses, you can just select to a point in the middle of the pupils, then when you paste it into your master canvas, you can line up the pupils. When you select a mouth, you can again select up to the pupils to ensure that the mouth lines up properly.

Lola has created the Sea Cadet cap tallies with most of the unit names on them. Select "RCSCC" from the first BMP file and paste it onto the cap. Then select your unit name from the correct BMP file, and paste it on as well, lining it up to the RCSCC.

You can also create your unit crest by selecting the blank crest that matches your unit's crest shape. Paste it on to the chest. Then you can manually make a version of your own crest by using the paint brush tool and painting it in. It does not need to be exact, since it is going to be pretty small. If you have a real electronic version of your unit crest, you could also shrink it down and paste it in and save yourself the trouble of hand drawing it.

Using The PhotoShop Version

(This guide assumes you know most of the basics of Photoshop, such as working with layers, making selections, using various tools such as the paintbrush, text tool, etc.)

1 - Create a folder somewhere on your system (eg, in "My Documents") to work with the files. Call it "CW South Park Work" or something similar. Save or copy the PSD file there. Make a copy of the file for backup purposes in case you delete something from your working file. If you also downloaded the Zipped BMPs to easily preview the layers, save or copy the Zip file there. Unzip the Zip file. You will now see a folder containing all the BMP elements.

2 - When you first open the PSD, you will see something like this:

You can see that a few layers have been turned on: a head layer, a chests layer, the legs layer. You will note that these have been roughly lined up where they would end up being used.

2 - Make sure your Layers window is open (Window -> Layers, or press F7.) You will see which layers are active (have an eyeball icon beside them.) You can turn layers on and off by clicking the box to the left of the layer.

3 - If you also downloaded the Zipped BMPs to easily preview the layers, locate the folder created wheno you unzipped the Zip file. Open it, and click View -> Thumbnails. This will give you a thumbnail preview of each image. Scroll through them to get an idea of which elements you want to use for the various body parts: face, head, etc. Some elements are combined to have several versions in one file (which will be one layer in Photoshop), such as the legs, arms, chests, etc. For those you will have to select the specific section you want. Make note of which elements you want to use for your character.

4 - Activate the layers you wish to use for your character. You will note that the layers have been stacked accordingly so that faces appear above the heads, etc. You should not have to move layers up and down in the layer window.

5 - You may need to make some selections and move pieces around a little bit or crop out / erase parts of elements for layers such as the arms, legs, etc. PS Users will not have some of the same problems Paint users have, as many of the elements have had the white sections removed, so they should not have white sections from the face elements appear over top of the selected head element.

6 - For Sea Cadet Cap tallies, you can either copy and paste from the pre-made cap tallies, or add your own text layer and type your corps name. Make sure to sample the yellow font colour from one of the pre-made tallies, and use a Times Bold font:

7 - When you are finished, save your character in PSD format so that you always have a master copy to go back to. Then crop the canvas to a size that just includes your character:

Then use the Save for Web feature to save a JPG or GIF copy. Go to File -> Save for Web:

In the Save for Web editor, choose the file type and colour depth you want. If using GIF, you should use the transparency setting and choose Diffusion Transparency. That way your character will not have any white area surrounding it if you display it over a background image or colour. You can also resize the image in the Save for Web editor.

Click Save and save your web-ready version of your character.

Build Your Own CW South Park Character!