This is a collection of cleaned up character bases in the style of the Liberated Pixel Cup:

• Many fixes and corrections have been made, and the color counts of each sprite have been reduced to reasonable numbers
• There are headless versions of each body type (adult male, adult female, muscular, pregnant, teen/androgynous, and child); each body type can be mixed and matched with several different heads (e.g. human, orc, wolf, boar, minotaur, skeleton, etc.) (as of version 3.0)
• Head and hand positions are the same between all body types (except child), meaning that most hats, hair, tools/weapons, etc. can be used with both male and female sprites (as of version 3.0)

What is this submission and why is it necessary?

The Liberated Pixel Cup was a contest in 2012 to create a bunch of stylistically coherent free/libre artwork (and also free software games using that art). Since the contest, artists have continued to create artwork in this same style.

One product of the contest was a set of humanoid bodies and modular clothing, weapons, etc. which could be layered to create different characters. These "character bases" were expanded during the contest and afterwards to add different body types (e.g. pregnant characters), species (e.g. orcs, wolfmen), and animations (e.g. thrust, bow shoot, etc.). Along the way, there were some inconsistencies, problems, and mistakes in these bodies, which made it harder to combine assets together or just caused strange glitches in the animation.

This submission compiles these "character bases" (e.g. the bodies and heads), fixing many problems and eliminating inconsistencies, with the goal of providing a solid and consistent base upon which further assets can be built. 

If you're looking to use or explore this artwork, the Universal LPC Spritesheet generator app and repository are a great place to start---the generator includes all the artwork provided here, plus hundreds of articles of clothing, weapons, tools, and other objects that can be used together to create characters. 

Summary of changes

• "Version 1.0" (2012): we are retroactively referring to the bodies developed circa 2012--2013, during and shortly after the original Liberated Pixel Cup contest as the "version 1.0" bodies.
• "Version 2.0" (03/2021): collected numerous fixes and corrections to the original bodies
• "Version 3.0" (10/2022): separated modular heads from headless bodies; harmonized the position of heads and hands between male and female/pregnant/teen bases; added run, idle, and sit animations; added several new heads

See CREDITS.txt in the download for a full list of changes and fixes.

Note: The version 2.0 bases are included for historical interest and comparison only---all new assets should be created using the version 3.0+ assets.

Animations and bases unique to this submission:

• Child slash
• Child hurt
• Child sit
• Child minotaur and boarman heads
• Pregnant cast
• Pregnant thrust
• Pregnant slash
• Pregnant shoot
• Pregnant hurt
• Pregnant sit
• Muscular cast
• Muscular thrust
• Muscular sit
• Male sit (original base)
• Re-designed lizardman head

Compatibility with clothing and other existing assets

These bodies from version 2.0 onwards introduce several breaking changes compared to the previous bodies from the original LPC contest era. However, as of version 3.0, essentially all existing clothing has been updated to match the new bodies. In some places, this required only 1px frame shifts; in other places, sprites were significantly re-drawn and improved along the way. The second preview image summarizes which frames were changed on the female, pregnant, and teen bodies, compared to the version 1.0 bases.

This updated clothing can be found in the Universal LPC Spritesheet generator app and GitHub repository.

The LPC Revised Project is an independent effort to rework the LPC pixel art assets. As of this submission (10/2022), there are some differences between the LPC Revised bodies and the character bases provided here, although some animations are the same and thus some clothing/assets can be shared:

• LPC Revised currently has two body types: "Feminine, Thin"---equivalent to "female" in this submission, and "Masculine, Thin"---equivalent to "teen" in this submission.
• The walk, jump, and sit body animations from LPC Revised are identical to those provided here. Clothing for those animations are from LPC Revised.
• LPC Revised uses smaller heads than the heads provided here.
• LPC Revised uses a different run and idle animation than those provided here. 

The main reason for these differences is that this project attempts to maintain compatibility between as many existing assets as possible. Additionally, this project aims to make it as easy as possible to create new clothing/assets for these bodies; we have therefore selected or created animations that minimize the complexity of motion and thus the number of distinct frames that would need to be drawn for each animation. 

Attribution

See CREDITS.txt within for detailed attribution of all assets. 

This submission was assembled as a collaborative effort between BenCreating, bluecarrot16, Evert, and pvigier, with additional feedback and contributions from castelonia/Herodom, MedicineStorm, and others. Thanks also to chadmandu for financial support.

This collection will continue to be updated, so please let us know if you would like to be involved. Please let us know if there are any existing characters, animations, etc. that you would like to see cleaned up and added to this collection or if you notice any errors that we haven't corrected yet.