Coat of Arms Visual Designer Update
My Coat of Arms Visual Designer project is improving steadily. In the past few weeks I’ve added support to quarter the shield, do counterchanging of ordinaries, add and customize a name or motto on the design, save the design as an image on your computer, nearly doubled the number of graphics available and more.
I think the software (which runs in your web browser) has many different uses, some for heraldry experts and some for people with a casual interest.
For a game setting, you may want to create a coat of arms for the key nobles in the game or maybe for each government or for other key organizations. Players of knights or other noble characters may want to create that character’s arms. Outside of gaming, you may want to create a personal coat of arms as an avatar for message boards or you may want to recreate an ancestor’s coat of arms.
The arms in the screenshot took five minutes to create, with no drawing ability required. The controls are simple and a similar design should only take 15-20 minutes for even a novice to create once the user has gone through the short tutorial.
If you are interested, take a look at the examples to see what’s possible, then open the instructions in one tab/window and then open the software designer in another web browser window.
Main Page: http://www.inkwellideas.com/coat_of_arms/
Note: The design shown in the screenshot is particularly “busy.” In fact, many heraldry experts might disapprove of it. However it is designed to show what is possible using the software. (In this case, creatures, quartering, furs (patterned backgrounds), ordinaries, divisions and counterchanging.)
Can we use the end products (the heraldry designs we create) for commercial purposes?
Hi Josh,
The short answer is I think you can and I don’t have any issues with you doing so, although if you can add a link/credit (to http://www.inkwellideas.com/heraldry/ ) in your book or website that would be appreciated.
The long answer is most of the graphics come from a very old book. If you look at the charges page (http://www.inkwellideas.com/heraldry/index.php?title=Charges) you’ll see a superscript “1” or “2” (and more numbers later if I use other sources) for each animal/symbol charge. These identify the images as being from that book, or custom created by me. Again, I have no issue with you using mine nor could I claim copyright on the ones that I feel are in the public domain. But you may want to confirm that the book’s images are in the public domain. My best research tells me that you can use those images and they should be in the public domain. That’s based on a couple of factors:
-The book with those images was published in 1909 in the UK. UK copyright for publications at that time is life of the author + 70 years and the author passed away over 70 years ago.
-I have not been able to pin down what year the illustrator of the book passed away (in case the copyright of the images goes by his death) but based on his date of birth I feel it is very unlikely it was within the past 70 years.
-I’ve seen several facsimile reprints by different publishers that point out that their version is a facsimile of the 1909 version of the book. This indicates to me that they checked into the copyright and were satisfied they could reprint it.
-I’ve seen the graphics used elsewhere throughout the web.
Right now you’ll only be able to save a version of the arms that is about 400 pixels wide. As I’m sure you realize, that’s ok to print if the graphic will be two inches or so wide, but it will get choppy if you try to make it much larger.
However, I’ve converted all of the source graphics I’m using to SVG, so they scale nicely. There’s no way to save large versions of the designs currently, although that is something I’m working on. If you’d like to get large versions (2000 pixels wide is what I’m planning) let me know and we can work something out. (joewetzel at gmail dot com)
Thanks for the quick reply and info.
Greetings! I cannot find another way to email you. I was using your fabulous coat of arms designer and I cannot find my design or get it back onto the page. Also I tried over twenty times to create an account so I can upload whatever I saved. Could you help me?
Unfortunately, if you leave the web page the program runs on, you’ve lost your work.
You can save your design as an image (a .png, which most image viewers will read) by going to “File” and selecting “Save”.
Currently there isn’t a way to save the raw resources of your design in a way that you can edit them later. I’ll add that feature as I have time and if there is enough demand, but there are some technical hurdles to overcome first.
My hope is that the software is easy enough to use that you can recreate a design if needed in less than 20 minutes. (Much less than that if you are very familiar with the software.)
You can email me at joewetzel at gmail dot com.
Thanks for giving the software a try!
Hi, I just wanted to thank you for such wonderful program. You must be a really good programmer. I am using it for my personal use and have fun with my family designing one for everybody. It’s so easy to use… even my 5 year-old boy was able to design his own coat of arms!
Best Regards,
Carlos