Hello, my name is Flint Webber, and yes, I am that duck you see in the game and ALSO a Beta Tester and Community Manager for this game. Welcome!

I keep seeing people post in the discussions that they wanna know how to get their skin in the game or how to make one, well, this guide should help you out in all of that!


Game Version: Early Access 1.0.20
Guide last updated: 9/22/21

Programs
-Any Software that lets you edit PNG image files with a transparency layer.
My go to recommendation is GIMP, but your welcome to use any software that you wish for this.
-Notepad [If you are going to edit the placement of things in anyway.]
This is mostly needed for editing the .JSON file that I'll be talking about later on.


Files
Shown here is how a character folder is set up.
-Icon: This will be the image shown to the player when scrolling though the list of characters in game.

-Skin: This is where main body goes.
Shown here is a Template that you can get from in game and where the parts of the body are at in relationship to everything. The blue dots you see are the center points of the image and are needed for when you get to the advanced portion of this guide.
Clicking on Export Skin Template in game will get you a zipped folder with the Template from above with some extra items in it to help get you started. [Note: If you send this to your downloads folder and don't see it at the top of your most recent, look lower down into your files where you saved it, as it's copying the file from it's place in the game folder to the new place, and thus doesn't give it a new date.]

-Mask: This is what is used to tell the game to NOT make something into the blueberry color during a blueberry stage. [AKA, you would paint a mask over a shirt and your eyes, as they would not change colors when you turn into a berry.]

The .json file is also needed, but you do not need to make one for our first step.

So there are two ways to get your character into the game.

New Skin
When you click on the new skin option, this is what you'll see.
From the part before this one, you should at least have three PNGs.
At this point all you have to do is click Browse next to each option for the skin, the mask, and the icon, making sure to choose the right file for each.

You can use the blueberry slider at the top next to the preview to check and see if your mask is accurate or not.
Shown here is how it looks after I uploaded my files into the game.

The arm spacing adjusts the spacing of the shoulders.

After everything looks good, make sure you name your skin the name of the character [Numbers and Special characters are not supported] and also name the Author [in this case, I named the artist of the skin, Creature Unknown.]

Then you have one of two options of how you want to save it.
Save Locally
Want to make this character for yourself, Or want to play around with it and see how it looks in game before shipping it out to the workshop? all you gotta do is click on this, and the game will save it to the local Mods folder for you and you're done!

Save and Post to Workshop
So you wanna share your creation with others? Cool!
So from here, just enter in a Title for the steam workshop [Character name works best.] and give it a short description [Who made it, Who the character belongs to, etc.]
Then you can set the settings for who can see it on the steam workshop.

And PLEASE Read the workshop terms of service before uploading.
And after you do that, just click on Post to workshop and it will open up a new page with your skin made there!

Upload JSON
So, Someone made you a skin in game and they are sharing you the finished work? Sweet!

With this option all you have to do is make sure all the files are together in the same folder [and are correctly called to in the JSON files, see Advanced] and just upload the json file, then it should automatically bring you to to the new skin screen, but with your character finished on the preview plane. From there just follow the steps above from where you can choose to save it locally or post it to the workshop.

So you uploaded your skin, and you saw that parts of your head or arms was clipping into other parts? Or you have a much more massive tail that wouldn't fit in the space provided by the template? Or you wanna get wild and change where everything is at on the skin sheet? Well then this section will help you out with your issues and such!

Breaking the JSON file down
With each character, you get the following json file.

-SheetName: This is where you would put the name of the Skin file that is in the folder with the json.
Same with IconName and MaskName.
-Displayname: This is the name you would see for the character
-AuthorName: This is the creator byline you would see in game.

Behind the scenes
-armOffest: This is the same slider you would see in game for the arm spacing.
-Sprites: This is where the game calls for the parts of the body for the game to use for the character.
Names of Sprites are shown here.

Sprite Tags
-Name: The name of the part being called.
-x and y: These two tags are calling to the BOTTOM LEFT PIXEL of the selection of that part As seen in the example above, x is 0 and y is 512 for the body, so it's on the far left of the image, and at the bottom corner of where the body's box is at on the template.
-width and height: Much like the x and y, this tells the game this is how big that bounding box is. For the body this should be the same value for both, but for the arms, head, and other parts they'll be different. These are the values you would edit if say your ears are getting clipped in game and you don't know why.
-xPivot and yPivot: This is where that blue dot comes in on the template skin.
Each of these values point to the 'center' of the body, head, and Upper body on the template skin, but can be moved around as need be for your character if say, you have a bigger tail.
Notes:
-As of this build, moving of the tail attachment point is not yet in the game.
-The Upper Arm pivot points are at the shoulders, and yes,this means that the Right Upper Arm is MIRRORED, Same goes for the LEFT Hand. [and if I'm wrong just let me know in the comments.]
-The skin PNG and the mask PNG MUST BE the same size, else they will not line up in game.
Congrats! If you understood this, you can now do some advance editing of the skin and fix some issues with it!

Alright! Hopefully that should help clear up most of the process to making a skin for the game and some of the details behind it all!

If you have any questions feel free to list them down below in the comments!

Other than that, I wish you a fun time creating and uploading some good characters for the game!