Coat of Arms Creator
In addition to typography, heraldry is another of my hobbies. I had this idea for a coat of arms generator. You click a button and you get a randomly generated heraldic shield with blazon. I’m creating it in Flash using Actionscript 3. It’s pretty basic so far, but coming along nicely.
Version 6 features:
- many field divisions
- all of the common tinctures, colors and metals
- several uncommon colors (stains and colors particular to certain countries or regions)
- five furs
- all of the common honorable ordinaries
- all of the above weighted to rarity—for example, common colors appear a certain percentage more often than rare colors
- a blazon for the arms that is working … pretty well
I need to add more charges, but I haven’t quite figured out how to manage multiples of a charge or how to determine whether those charges are within an ordinary or over it, etc. I also need to add subordinates. Sigh … so far this is still fun. The presentation also looks leaves a lot to be desired, but that can be fixed later.
UPDATE!!
I’m posting a functional version 8 on here, even though it isn’t really finished. by not finished, I mean not every design generated will look very good or even be “right” according to the rules of blazoning. the blazon is pretty good except for the stupid a/an article determination. Oh and it doesn’t have a pre-loader, so just be patient.
If you are wondering what happened to version 7, I had added some textures, but it was too much. Version 8 has the proper font embedded and I fixed the ermine texture. Still not happy with the vair however. I think I’m going to start over and do this a little differently and give the user some control, not just randomly generate the arms. I’m working on the flow but it’s kind of a bitch; field divisions, line decorations, ordinaries charged or not, etc. Stay tuned.
Without further ado:
Popularity: 100% [?]
Hey! Why not letting the user create the coat of arms by selecting the heraldy (or via some wizard?)
Looking cooL!
Thanks! That is definitely on the long list of things I want to do. I actually added a creature/object layer in my next version. I only have three in so far (for testing really) and the problem I’m still working on is placement in the case of a division of the field (i.e. per pale a dragon dexter and a sword sinister, as opposed to per pale a dragon over all). It can be done, but it creates so many variables to juggle.
I’ll try to update this with a newer version this week. Although it won’t yet have the ability to choose the elements of the arms yourself, it will have some more interesting variations in it.
A cool application! Thank you
Looking forward to the new version.
Hi Jeff – super item never seen before. Makes really marvelous, amazing coat of arms in ***** quality. Where can I get a copy of it? Best Regards from Bavaria/Germany Norbert
Hi Norbert. I’m 80% finished with version 2, which will have more features, both in the variety of arms, customization capabilities, and ability to print and possibly save to high resolution if i can get that working. For now, please use the version on this page as best you can.
It has taken me a long time to get as far as i have on version 2, mostly because of the lack of time I have to dedicate to it, but also I’m learning this as I go. Version 2 is vastly more complicated than the current version. I have considered uploading a “version 1.5″ that has some new stuff in it just to have something new up. I may still do that. As for when version 2 will be complete … that’s a tough call. Hopefully soon. That’s all I can say.
Thanks for your interest! I’m glad you like it. Can I ask what you are using it for? I get a lot of RPGers using it, and it appears that quite a few SCA folks are using it as well. Just curious.