Mannequin: An upcoming 2D anime BUST & FULL BODY Character Generator

I was going to keep this site to myself in fear of it's potential to become the yanfly of anime busts in the RM world, i reaaalllyy was, but truth be told based on the website's activity and their social media accounts the project itself seems like its quite daunting on the devs and i fear without enough support it could go the way side.

today i show to you, if you talented people haven't heard of it already: Mannequin.
it is literally, a full-body 2D anime Character Generator made specifically to help indie game makers (mainly of VN & JRPGs) create prototype or official character Busts to use in their games, all characters made with Mannequin are permitted for free & commercial use.

Check it our Here: https://ar14.itch.io/mannequin

the program is available now at a discount for $12.99, from what i've read the demo version is not much different from the official version (demo will not let you export files BTW) and after testing out the demo i can say this generator is FARRRRRR more female friendly than male. and the program is in EARLY ACCESS aka BETA mode so options are LIMITED if your going for a fantasy medieval game. ofcourse if your decent at photoshop you can find work arounds.

for example, i added wings to this character i made when i opened mannequin for the first time today, the process from start to finish took me all of 45 minutes, 35 of it playing around with mannequin, 3 to google commercial use friendly wings & 7 cutting out and editing the 2 images together:


i read they were suppose to launch their patreon back in August and that has yet to come to pass however they are active on social media and simply have not brought up anything about patreon since there announcement in july, this leads me to believe as a dev myself that their bogged down with work and could use a boost.

maybe im late and everyone here knows about it already, and maybe the tools not sophisticated enough for anyone to use yet. but i'm gonna support this group and buy it right after i post this thread, i think you all should try out the demo and see if it can, if nothing else, be a useful "prototype" for you to help illustrate your ideas, i know i will. (P.S i read any subsequent updates to the program will be free for buyers and there tacking on a custom library im guessing for ppl to add their own contributions like we do with the "parts" for the character generator on RMMV)

I love it when it comes to create female characters, but for male it's kind of dissapointing. Also, there are no options of facial hair or age lines... yet...

My aim is to make something like this, but my programming skills are nil. It looks like this gen is still being updated after all these years, so maybe you could send in feedback to them about the males?

First of all, i want this style too. As female options are well-balanced in my opinion, now they only have to add male options.

I do not own (yet) the software, but seeing the steam community threads they have already been told about male hairstyles, age lines and more options. For example in my case I'm going to ask if they can add a buttoned Lab Coat. The problem is they have issues with the templates and so they are trying to "slow down" the creation of assets in order to improve templates.

I tried the demo, but the problem is the male resources, i can't even make my main male character because of the hair!!! That's my drawback. I would buy it for creating the female characters but I would have to wait (idk how much time though) for creating the male ones.

Would you be able to inform about the updates they made as you purchased the software?

in all honesty i hit the same wall as you and decided to go a more traditional route and hire artists, thus i have long since retired this program before purchasing the full variant (re-reading my original post was funny anddddd a bit cringy lol) but yes after 3 years for them to still lack male character options is a bit discerning! albeit last year made things difficult for everyone, hopefully they canboost production this year a bit!

If you want this style but with less restriction as Mannequin is quite limited right now, I recommend using Vroid Studio. (Edit: I forget to tell that it is 100% free)

Mannequin's style is similar to an anime 3D one, while Vroid create exactly that. You just need to take screensoots/renders of the character on the poses you want, and you also have more angles available than just frontal.

Vroid doesn't have a lot of clothes options either, but using textures, you can transfrom them into different things. The Hair option can also be used to create other things like animal ears, wings, and tails (and anything you can think about if your skill is high enough, there are videos in english about this).

You can take the screenshoots directly on VROID (Warning: No alpha background so pick a chroma one to easy delete later). Or exporting a VRM File and using it on Unity or Blender to take renders, which may have higher quality, and the setup to llow the improt only needs to be done one. Again, youtube have tutorials.

Depending on the parameters you can get a style more similar to Mannequin (default) or far more anime one.

Note: Importing it first on Unity even if you want to use Blender adds a shader that gives even more anime feeling given that the character has settings to look animesque when exported.

Here an example taken from some tests I was doing on Vroid. I may end up using this character for a game (or not, but better be safe), so I put a watermark on it.


This is just a random image I have taken from the character without any special setup except antialiasing. When taking captures on Vroid you can configure the parameters like the light, background, wind effects, animation, pose, expression, and post-production effects.

Here is one taken in Unity, although on T-pose as I was just testing lighgning (also with watermark)




All Vroid characters conserve animations and expressions from VRoid, so making expressionsets isn't a problem at all, they can also be used to make CGs and/or cinematics.

Once getting used, I think using this combination is really good to get good characters, it is jsut that the info about it in enlgihs is dispersed through youtube as most information about Vroid is in japanese.

Maybe I can make a guide from creating the model on VRoid to Unity included if I have time later, and explain everything better.

@a3xgf Thanks for recommending VRoid
I should give it a try, it looks very cool. However, you mentioned that "clothes" shall be added as textures... is it as in 3d modelling? (I am more into pixels...)

The clothing is more similar to pixels than 3D modelling. The 3D modelling in VRoid is done almost all using slides like a character generator even the clothes parameters you chose between some options and modify parameters (hair is an exception, but it is done like painting. Still, that is the most complex part and the one that allows more customization on general, like horns and animal ears, not just hair), there is no need to mannually model anything nor make the UVs like in traditional modelling.

The texture is 2D, and the alphas are used to hide parts of the model given the clothes the shape you want. To get cool clothes distances from standard ones, you need to be able to edit images, draw, but the requeriments are far lower than designing a whole character in 2D, and the clothes can be easily reused on other characters with other poses.

You can export the default textures of the program and paint on them on an image editor before reimporting them. You can also do it on Vroid, even painting directly on the model, but I consider that harder unless it is just for small fixes, whcih I still prefer on image editor.

Did you the suit on the image of my previous post? The base model for that was a Long Coat with a defualt white texture and nothing else, but with a proper 2D texture it turned into something different.

The program is user friendly, but like with everything, if you want to make complex characters you will need to build up some experience. I have been using it for years for other purposes. It was only after I tried Mannequin than I thought if using it for RPG Maker.