Minecraft: Creating a custom skin for your character

(More about Minecraft ‘seeds’…) (Get Dr. Zoidberg skin…) (What’s seed 404?)

The main character in Minecraft is a cheerful chap but if you play multi-player or you just fancy a change you may want to change the way he looks. You can change the complete texture for the character model but remember you can’t change any of the model itself.

You can edit the file in any image editing program – but there is one that has been designed specifically for creating Minecraft characters. It’s called SkinEdit and has been created by the community.

It shows you each specific are of the body (and hat area) to keep much better track of what you are drawing. There is also an animated preview showing you what the finished article will look like.

SkinEdit - Set up your skin and see it animated straight away

The hat area can be used to add around your head. I have used it for my glasses and to exaggerate the messiness of my hair. You could use it for an actual hat, a beard, a mask or even a larger head! You can see the basic selection of colours in the screenshot  above – but you can choose any colour you like from the HSB tab.

Once you have created your new character skin you need to upload it to Minecraft’s servers. You can do this by logging in to your account and using this page.

This will allow you to use your new skin where ever you go on your adventures. :)

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You can also replace your skin locally. You need to replace the default char.png in .minecraft\bin\minecraft.jar. You to need to put it in the mobs folder. You can use WinRar to change the files inside a .jar like you would with any other compressed archive. Changing this will affect all in-game characters that might use the default skin like any guests on your private multi-player server!

Your .minecraft folder is located at C:\Documents and Settings\[Account name]\Application Data\.minecraft\ for Windows XP and below and C:\User\[Account name]\Application Data\.minecraft\ for Vista and Windows 7. However, the Application Data folder is hidden. You can try typing %appdata% in the address bar of Windows Explorer to get there, or enable the showing of hidden files and folders in your settings (click here if you need to find out how).

Here you will find your save files, any screenshots you have taken (Press F2 in game) as well as the main program files for Minecraft.

The default Minecraft player texture. You can use this as a base for create a version of yourself or anything you can think of. There are some links at the bottom of the page with many custom skins based of famous characters from TV, Film etc

Links:

• http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Skin – The minecraft wiki page on custom skins
• http://minecraft.net/skin – Upload a custom skin
• http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?p=52970 – SkinEdit (skin editing software)
• Downloadable skin resources
  • http://www.minecraftskins.info/
  • http://www.minecraftskinshare.com/
  • http://www.minecraftskinner.com/
  • http://www.minecraftskins.com/
  • http://minecraftgallery.com/category/minecraft-skins/