I started playing around with RPG Maker XP last week and it sparked a flare of interest in 2D sprite/charset/chipset making.  One of the annoying things though that I found was that the program came with a rather limited set of character sprites (around 100 or so) and I got to thinking...hey, what if I wanted the blue haired girly to be the one wearing the maid outfit instead of the short brown haired girl? Or what if I wanted to use the cool looking suit of armor that they stuck on that weird lookin green haired guy on the cool brown hair guy? So at first I was like, Well I can just do individual edits as needed.  A good idea in theory, but not all that practical in the long run as I'd have to stop and devote a whole bunch of extra time and effort every time I'd want to make a new charset.  So then it hit me...a character sprite generator! http://www.backwater-productions.net/_images/_Scraps/Char_Maker_Previ... Teh awesomeness of such a beast would allow you to create a near infinite number of unique characters with very little effort and would also allow game makers with little to no graphic design skill the ability to generate great looking custom characters for their endeavors, thus increasing the overall quality of game play. Why the peeps who made RPG Maker didn't think of it in the first place I dunno...I mean it's not exactly like it requires some huge level of skill.  Basically I'm taking all of the existing outfits and hair pieces in their sprite collections and then adapting them to my _base_ models and faces.  The end result is massive customization...near infinite too as the release version of the character maker will allow you to shift the hue, saturation and lightness on almost every single _object_ (it's a lil tricky though because you don't want ALL of the colored areas shifting in a piece). Some of the outfits and hair pieces I did from scratch though, like teh bra and panties.  It's especially neat because there's all sorts of extras, like if you want the character to have elf ears, or kitty ears and tail, or fox ears and tail, angel wings, demon wings, mermaid tail and currently I'm trying to come up with a decent looking satyr, bunny ears and tail and harpy extra. The other part I really love about the art of sprite making is all the _object_s 'n such: http://www.backwater-productions.net/_images/_Scraps/Sprite_Sample.png At the risk of sounding a bit effeminate, I guess you could liken it to a boys (or unisex) version of a doll house.  But it also combines the customization and manipulation that you get from say building a town/city/castle/space station/etc/etc/etc out of Legos. There's also quite a bit of nostalgia in the art as well, at least for fellow children of the 80s like myself who grew up playing such games.