Archive of Our Own ^beta

I don't know about y'all but one thing that really fascinated me about Unicorn Overlord was the heraldry. Super fun game in a lot of departments, but being a history/flag/Crusader Kings 3 nerd, the heraldry stood out. It adds a lot of character to this medieval world, and it also gives an easy visual representation of relationships and such. If you're at all interested in making or posting custom Unicorn Overlord style heraldry (utilizing the actual images, not screenshotting on your Switch) then this guide is for you.

Special Thanks: I wouldn't have been able to get the files without the excellent work of rufaswan on vg-resource.com. Their work with scripts and tutorials let a lunkhead like me open the files, and their work seems phenomenal overall. https://www.vg-resource.com/thread-38430.html

Step 1: The Files & Tools

First, you're going to need to get your hands on a photo editor of some kind. The one I use is paint.net and in addition to being free I find it a bit more intuitive than the (equally free) GIMP. Of course, it comes down to preference, so pick the photo editor you like best. I'd just recommend one with the ability to work with layers.

Get the actual heraldry files from this Github: https://github.com/otblock57/UnicornOverlordHeraldry. Admittedly, I don't understand Github perfectly, but it's posted there for transparency's sake. You can download it as one big file by clicking the green Code button and pressing "Download ZIP". 

I'd recommend setting up a folder or two for this purpose. One to hold all the templates and a separate where you can save the finished product. The Github means you don't have to sweat accidentally overwriting something important like my initial heraldry edits though, so you can do whatever you feel.

Step 2: Basic Heraldry

This method can, in theory, be done entirely without using a Switch, but I've brought mine over to the desk just to check which heraldry each character uses. You'll want to check the heraldic presets for each character and the presets for the ingame organizations, if you're devoted to canon accuracy. Otherwise, roam through the Charges (the fancy heraldic name for stuff you put on the shield) and find something you're interested in. This can be a bit of a trick, considering the templates are all white with touches of black on transparent backgrounds, but it shouldn't be too much trouble.

Open in your image editor of choice. If the heraldry you're going for has a white charge, you can skip this step, but if you need to change color, you have two options: either the recolor tool built into paint.net or perhaps a plugin like AlphaColor. For recolor, you basically just want to click on the white after selecting your color of choice before changing the entire image. Upping your brush size can make this quicker. Despite what the image below shows, you don't want to stop mid-color change, because the color change tool doesn't like the borders left behind by the coloring. It also tends to be a bit funky with the borders of the charge which is why you might prefer a tool like AlphaColor that keeps the transparency so everything is nice and smooth. Download here: https://github.com/friedrickjoel/AlphaColor/raw/main/AlphaColor.dll and you want to drop that dll file into your Program Files\paint.net\Effects

See above: Recolor (partway through) and AlphaColor

For the background, I recommend adding a layer below and then just filling that with the paintbucket tool. After that, you can merge layer down and get your basic heraldry. Unfortunately, adding a background also tends to show any funkiness you might have missed in a previous step. (See again AlphaColor) Color choice both here and on the charge is again, your choice. And if all you're looking for is the basic heraldry, you can stop here and save the file in whatever end location you please!

Charge on upper layer, paint-bucket fill on bottom.

Step 3. Fancy Stuff (In-Game Look)

Well, that's all well and good, but what if you want some of that in-game fanciness with a shield and supporters and crowns and whatnot? We can do that as well. I've found it possible to do the whole thing without much more work than drag and drop and some finagling at the beginning with paint tools. The first step is the tricky one and involves picking your shield frame of choice and opening it in a second tab. Or you can put it in another layer, whatever. From there, you want to utilize the Canvas Resize tool to make the 192 x 192 shield image 384 x 384. This might create white space, magic wand and delete it so you get something like the image below.

Make a layer below the shield outline and put the heraldry design into that. (Or you can have the shield frame on a layer above your original heraldry, whatever.) You might have to scale the image a bit, and you can hold shift while dragging the corner to keep it as a square. This is also where you should become very familiar with the bar on the bottom of the screen: Selection top left is going to be your best friend in keeping everything tidy and properly ordered. If you're really concerned you can do a bit of math to keep things properly centered. The upper left of a simple, 192 x 192 heraldry should be at 96 Y to keep it centered, but you can fiddle with location and such according to your taste. You probably want your fancy heraldry charge part completely inside the shield, uncropped.

Now here is the one finicky part. I would love to hear if there's a more efficient way to do this, of course. This is where layers are your very best friend. You can trace out the edge of the shield with an eraser tool or fill in gaps on the heraldry layer. Once you have the unneeded area separated from the important part, you can use magic wand to select and delete. You will probably have to fiddle with the magic wand's tolerance value (upper left, under toolbar) to get everything tidily deleted. You could settle for the fancy shield, or we can go further beyond!

Above: My process of trimming heraldry to shield. First image shows the 384-pixel square image.

My best friend in the whole wide world.

When I assembled my fancy arms, I broke it down into several layers (which can be merged down at your leisure, or saved that way in case you want to replace a supporter or whatever). The layering is important because otherwise you'll get things like transparent pixels in the supporters writing over the heraldry you worked hard to make, which is no good. This is also where we see the triumphant return of our friend Selection top left. I usually open the object I want in another tab and Ctrl-A and Ctrl-C to select all and copy. Ctrl-V in your shield on the appropriate layer and if necessary, drag to the right spot. 

1. You want to place your compartment- the little castle thing or platform sitting under your shield- at upper left coordinate 0, 192.
2. The helmet is usually best at 96, 0. This keeps it at the top of the image, but sitting above the middle. This and the compartment can fit on a layer above the shield pretty tidily. Their sizes are too small to mess with each other. 
3. Left support is good basically straight out of the gate. That bad boy (or gal) is exactly where they need to be. Your right supporter can be copy-pasted in a similar way, but you'll grab the left edge and drag to the right side of the image. A bounding rectangle of 192 x 384 is just right here.
4. The crown's x position (first of the two numbers) is the most important. Considering that the image is 96 x 96, half of it is 48 pixels across, and since you want to be 48 from the center you'll sit around 144. Y value (relating to height) will probably be negative. Again, you can adjust this as you please, just make sure to keep it in a layer above the helmet.
5. The scroll is something you kind of have to adjust by feel. Top left x value is at zero, but height is whatever looks good for you. If you're changing color, you want to pick your color of choice as primary and then go at the white, just sort of waving your Recolor brush around with a nice big size until you get all the white. The recolor tool is a bit funky at times (color can depend a lot on where you start) and you might need to up the tolerance a bit to catch any bits of shaded scroll. Still, recolor keeps those nice bits of shading.
6. With all that done, you can save. Note that if you've got layers up, paint.net will save as a pdn file. This can be good if you want to keep a partially assembled shield saved for quick adjustments, but you'll need to flatten (either with merge down or using the flatten tool when you save as png) to get a typical image format. From there, you can post on a hosting site- I use a Tumblr- and link into your fic or whatever you please. 

Step 4. Fancy Stuff cont. (Or: How Getting Hitched Could Change Heraldry)

If you are a shipper like myself, you'll be glad to know you can express marriages and such in heraldry. For this purpose, I will discuss a few ways we can combine Cornian and Drakenhold arms, to represent the marriage of a certain character who really seems like the sort to keep her own arms even after she got hitched. What follows may read as asinine petty politics crap, but it is absolutely my jam, so let's go:

1. Dimidation: consider this baby's first marshaling (method of sticking two coats of arms together). To show the power of marriage, we saw these coats of arms in half and slap one-half from each partner on the shield. Typically, due to the Middle Ages being pretty patriarchal, you will see the husband's arms taking pride of place on the left. The left from our perspective- or dexter, the shield bearer's right- was more honorable, perhaps based on the custom of the most honored guest sitting at the host's right. However, you may notice that dimidation looks a little... funky. Add to this the historical confusion it caused (like not being able to tell if a diagonal on the right was part of a bend or a chevron) and this style went out of fashion. My typical method is literally just to select half and copy-paste (upper left and bounding rectangle size are your best friends here). 

2. Impalement: Like dimidation, but including the whole of the arms in each half.  The result can look a bit squeezed, unfortunately, but you can try to select and copy-paste a thinner slice of the heraldry if you like. I'm the sort who sits down and does the math to make sure the selection is absolutely centered, but you can do it more by feel if you like. I'd also like to note courtesy here: if you have two living things (like lions, unicorns, dragons, etc.) you can turn the one on dexter to face the other. This can represent a marriage or alliance and is a break from the usual rule of thumb of having the charge facing dexter (viewer left). To impale the simple way, copy the whole shield (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, click and drag the left or right sides of the image to half the length) or do selections that cut out empty background space if you want to cut down on squeeze.

3. Quartering: separate a shield into quarters, put the shields you want to include in each corner. My example here is a bit off because I have the wife's arms in upper left (pride of place) but you could come up with a heraldry justification if you so pleased. Imagine, say, that this particular line eventually comes to rule in Cornia, they might give the Cornian unicorn the distinguished place because it's the country they're ruling. Again, this is a matter of copy-pasting, a simple method being to start with one of the coats of arms and then use the canvas size tool to double both length and height to 384 while keeping the shield in the corner instead of center.

4. Inescutcheon: Essentially a shield inside a shield. This avoids the issues of dimidation and impalement, although scaling and stuff might get finicky. It can look weird. When you're combining with escutcheon you can have a marriage case and a territorial case. For example, consider that Virginia was invited to Drakenhold as part of a scheme to press a claim on the Cornian throne- if I'm remembering correctly- so a Drakenhold prince who came to rule Cornia might have their arms, the Drakenhold dragon, placed over the Cornian unicorn. (Although it would be weird of him to use those arms while in Drakengard, wouldn't you think?) If a woman is the last of a family and the only person who can use their arms, you might have her place her own arms in a shield on the man's, to represent the man's 'pretence' to leadership of said family. A son of such a union might quarter his arms (father's and mother's with escutcheon, you can imagine how this could look). This seems to be an English thing though, as far as I can tell, so heraldric traditions might vary. 

Above: Dimidation, impalement, quartering, inescutcheon. Of course, you can chose a different shield shape for inescutcheon, different arms, etc.

Heraldry Historical Trivia and Such:

This section is just a brief discussion of the historical context. Unicorn Overlord (and the power of paint.net) give us more colors to work with than traditional medieval heraldry, which include: white, gold, blue, red, purple, green, and black, plus some furs (patterns like vair and ermine). There are additional stains and a lot more colors in modern heraldry, and I'm sure somebody in the Unicorn Overlord verse could magic up nice dyes or whatever, but it's an interesting historical note, and relates to another historical tradition called the rule of tincture that you might want to keep in mind. In a historical context, you want your heraldry distinctive- because the point is recognition- and you definitely don't want it turning into muck. The rule of tincture might help with this by preventing 'metals' (white, yellow) and 'tinctures' (the rest) from touching themselves. That is, no white on yellow or red on black. Of course, this rule has been disobeyed, see Jerusalem and Albania, and there are exceptions for vair/furs and an animal's proper colors, but it's something you could consider while fiddling with your arms. Rule of tincture also doesn't apply to a mixed color charge (both metal and tincture) or the claws of animals.

I hope this guide might prove useful! Have fun, y'all! (And of course, I'd appreciate advice on improving the guide and historical corrections if any are needed.)