Smaller version of a coat of arms created with the software. It has the new shield and scroll shape and one of the new charges.

I released an update to the Coat of Arms Visual Designer software last night. You can access it on the same “Design Software” web page.

This version has a nicer default shield shape.  (The prior default shape didn’t start to curve until further down the length of the shield, but also the curve was not as smooth.  This is closer to the classic french design.) Other shield shape options will be added in time, but for now one can also choose a “Lozenge” (used by noble women) or a plain rectangle.  (To switch shield shapes in the software go to the “Tools” menu and choose “Set Shield Shape.”  Related to this change, many divisions and ordinaries have special behavior so they look more centered.  Because this new shield shape (and many others) cut away the sides of the shield toward the bottom, to make some divisions and ordinaries look visually centered, those divisions and ordinaries need to be shifted up when used on these shield designs.  I’ve done that in the most common cases, but I may have a few more to do.

The old and very rectangular name/motto scroll was replaced with a much prettier and curvier scroll based on a scroll from a public domain image.

Finally, 15 new charges were added.  14 are animals:  Squirrel erect sejant, stag at gaze, stag lodged, stag statant, stag trippant, talbot passant, talbot rampant, talbot sejant, talbot statant, wolf courant, wolf salient, wolf statant, wyvern erect, and wyvern wings displayed.  One new charge is a symbol: trefoil.

Coming next: More charges (this time I’ll try to address some of the long overdue requests, but this last time I wanted to do a bunch so I picked some that were relatively easy), more divisions/ordinaries, more shield shapes, and maybe borders, supporters or a downloadable version of the software.  (However, I will probably only try for one of those last features per new release.)