Creator Recolor Guide

A 10-step Aseprite workflow that walks creators through producing outfit variants compatible with the built-in Mana Seed Character Base. Drop the result into Settings → Asset Packs and your visitors see your art on every Canvas they walk through.

Who this is for

You already own Seliel the Shaper’s Mana Seed Character Base and at least one outfit pack (Forester is the canonical example below). You have Aseprite (or another pixel-art editor that opens .ase files). You want to ship a new outfit variant — for example, a cyberpunk-themed Forester with neon-magenta stripes — that your character can wear on Ensemble.

This guide pairs with:

• docs/ASSET_PACK_IMPORT_PLAN_2026-05-01.md — the format spec and pack registry.
• docs/R14_PLAN_2026-05-02.md §4 — the directive that originated this workflow.
• docs/grand-plan/CREATOR_ECONOMY.md — why creator-uploaded packs are the load-bearing v1.1 marketplace primitive.

Time budget: 3–6 hours for your first variant. Subsequent variants are 2–3 hours once the pipeline is wired in your head.

What you need before step 1

• The Mana Seed Character Base purchase from itch.io (the .ase outfit canvas file lives in the download).
• At least one reference outfit pack — e.g. 21.10a - Forester Pointed Hat & Tunic 2.1a.
• Aseprite 1.3+ (older versions work; recent ones have a friendlier layer panel).
• A free directory inside bin/dashgen/static/packs/<your-pack-id>/ or a separate folder you’ll zip and upload through Settings → Asset Packs.
• Seliel’s using the outfit canvas.txt open in another window (it ships in the same download). It’s the canonical source of truth; this guide is a friendly walkthrough on top.

Step 1 — Open the outfit canvas

Open Mana Seed Character Base Outfit Canvas.ase from your purchased Mana Seed pack. This file is the canvas — it has every pose Seliel’s base supports laid out in a grid, with the bare body sprite pre-rendered as a reference layer.

Two things to confirm:

1. The layer panel on the right shows a stack of layers, the bottom-most being the base body. Don’t touch the base body — it is the calibration target for all outfits.
2. The page tabs along the bottom (Aseprite calls them “frame tags”) show pages 1, 2, 3, 4. Page 1 is the front-facing idle/walk; page 4 is the four-direction walk we ship in v1.0. Other pages are deferred.

If you see any of these warnings — “missing palette,” “could not load .ase” — you have the wrong file or a pre-1.3 Aseprite. Fix the source before continuing.

Step 2 — Reference an existing outfit

Extract 21.10a - Forester Pointed Hat & Tunic 2.1a (comp. v01).zip (or whichever outfit pack you’ll use as your starting point). Inside, you’ll find a small .ase file per body part — 1out_for_v01.ase for the tunic, 5hat_for_v01.ase for the pointed hat, plus optional accessories.

In Aseprite: File → Import Sprite Sheet is not the right tool. Instead, copy the layers directly:

1. Open 1out_for_v01.ase in a second Aseprite window.
2. Right-click the layer → Copy Layer.
3. Switch back to the outfit canvas → right-click the layer panel → Paste Layer.

You should now see the Forester tunic stacked on top of the base body in the canvas. Verify the alignment looks correct in page 1 (front idle) and page 4 (4-direction walk). If the colors look wrong, you accidentally pasted with a different palette — undo and re-paste.

Step 3 — Create your variant layer

Pick a 4-character outfit ID for your variant. The convention from Seliel’s docs is lowercase, alpha-only, descriptive. Examples:

• fcyb — Forester Cyber (cyberpunk-twist Forester)
• cmag — Cloak Magenta
• vsui — Visor Suit

Then create your variant layer:

1. In the layer panel, right-click → New Layer.
2. Name it exactly 1out_<your-id>_v01. The leading 1out_ is the body-part prefix; _v01 is the version stamp. Both are required by the manifest parser.
3. Drag your new layer to sit just above the reference outfit you imported in step 2 (so you can paint on top, then turn the reference off).

Repeat for any additional body parts you’ll customize. For a hat variant, the layer is 5hat_<your-id>_v01. Body-part prefix codes are listed in Seliel’s using the outfit canvas.txt — 1out for outfit, 2eye for eyes, 3hai for hair, 4cap for capes, 5hat for hats.

Step 4 — Recolor the body of your outfit

This is the load-bearing creative step. Use only the colors from mana seed, sprites.pal (Aseprite ships this palette inside the Mana Seed pack — load it via Palette → Open Palette).

Why the palette discipline matters:

1. The base body, hair, and accessories all draw from this palette. If your outfit uses off-palette colors, the variant will render but will visually break the cohesion that makes Mana Seed feel like Mana Seed.
2. The palette has hand-tuned cyberpunk-friendly slots: bright magenta, hot cyan, electric lime. The cyberpunk-twist isn’t a stretch — Seliel built the palette knowing creators would push it.

Process:

1. Hide the reference outfit layer (eye-icon) so you see only your variant.
2. Pick a base color from the palette for the bulk of the outfit.
3. Block in the silhouette on page 1 (front idle) first. Don’t worry about other pages yet.
4. Once page 1 reads at native 32×32 scale, copy the silhouette to page 4 (4-direction walk) and adjust per-direction.

For the cyberpunk-twist Forester referenced in R14 §4.1: a deep-violet base, neon-magenta accent stripes, and cyan piping along the seams reads as cyberpunk-Forester without abandoning the Forester silhouette.

Step 5 — Add cyberpunk-style accents (optional)

If you’re aiming for the cyberpunk-twist that ships as the v1.0 brand signature, three accent moves work at 32×32:

1. Neon piping — a single bright pixel along seam lines (shoulder, hip, sleeve cuff). Magenta or cyan. Visible at native scale.
2. Holographic shoulder pad — replace the brown leather shoulder strap (Forester default) with a 3×3 pad in cyan with a single magenta highlight pixel. Reads as “future material.”
3. Single accent band — a 1-pixel-tall stripe of a contrasting palette color around the chest or thigh. Cyberpunk-future shorthand at sprite scale.

These are optional. Plenty of cool variants don’t lean cyberpunk; if your aesthetic is forest-druid or cottagecore-baker, ignore this step. The point is that the palette is rich enough for any pixel-art language you want to speak.

Step 6 — Repeat for the hat layer

If your outfit changes the body, the hat must change too — or the matching combo rule fails and the renderer falls back to the default hat.

Match the version-number convention: outfit _v01 pairs with hat _v01. Seliel’s docs explicitly say “yellow outfit v03 + yellow hat v03” — the _vNN stamps must match across body parts, even if you only redrew the outfit. (The hat in v03 might be identical to v01; that’s fine. The version stamp just guarantees the variant pair is intentional.)

For the cyberpunk Forester:

• New layer 5hat_fcyb_v01 (or whatever 4-char ID you picked in step 3).
• Recolor the Forester pointed hat with a matching cyan visor band.
• Add a single neon-magenta pixel as the hat-tip accent.

If you’re shipping accessories — capes, eyes, hair — repeat for each of those layers too. The minimum for a variant pack is one outfit + one hat if your character wears both.

Step 7 — Test animations in the canvas

Aseprite’s preview window (View → Preview or Ctrl+P) plays the active page as an animation. Use it to sanity-check:

1. Page 1 (front idle) — the variant looks right standing still.
2. Page 4 (4-direction walk) — every direction reads correctly. Watch for mid-walk frames where the magenta/cyan accents disappear because they’re too small to survive at 50% silhouette. If they vanish, bump them up by one pixel.
3. No clipping — the variant doesn’t extend outside the body silhouette in any direction. Mana Seed’s body is hand-tuned; if your variant extends past the original outline, animation frames will break.

If anything looks wrong, fix it now. Once exported, debugging in PNG sheets is harder than fixing in .ase.

Step 8 — Export the sprite sheets

Follow the canonical recipe in Seliel’s using the outfit canvas.txt:

1. File → Export Sprite Sheet.
2. Layer dropdown → select your 1out_<id>_v01 layer (only that layer; not the base body, not the reference outfit).
3. Frames dropdown → “Selected frames” → page 1.
4. Output → <your-pack-folder>/char_a_p1/1out/1out_<id>_v01.png.
5. Click Export.

Then repeat for page 4: same layer, frames “page 4,” output char_a_p4/1out/1out_<id>_v01.png.

For v1.0 we ship pages 1 + 4 only (front idle + 4-direction walk). Other pages exist in the canvas but aren’t yet rendered by Ensemble’s sprite engine. Don’t bother exporting them.

Repeat for the hat layer (5hat_...) → char_a_p1/5hat/ and char_a_p4/5hat/.

End state: you have 4 PNG files, one per (page × body-part) combination.

Step 9 — Drop the PNGs into your pack and update manifest.json

If you’re contributing the variant to the built-in Mana Seed pack:

bin/dashgen/static/packs/mana-seed-character-base-default/
  char_a_p4/
    1out/
      1out_<id>_v01.png       <-- drop here
    5hat/
      5hat_<id>_v01.png       <-- drop here
  char_a_p1/
    1out/1out_<id>_v01.png    <-- drop here
    5hat/5hat_<id>_v01.png    <-- drop here
  manifest.json

If you’re shipping a separate pack (your own creation, not a contribution to the built-in), the same tree but with your own <your-pack-id>/ root, and you’ll zip + upload through Settings → Asset Packs in step 10.

Then add your variant to manifest.json:

{
  "id": "mana-seed-character-base-default",
  "format": "manaseed-1",
  "outfits": [
    { "id": "for", "name": "Forester", "body": "1out_for_v01", "hat": "5hat_for_v01" },
    { "id": "<your-id>", "name": "<friendly name>", "body": "1out_<your-id>_v01", "hat": "5hat_<your-id>_v01" }
  ]
}

The id field is the 4-char ID from step 3. The name is what visitors see in the character creator — make it human-readable.

Step 10 — Test in Ensemble

Last step. With the PNGs and manifest in place:

1. If you’re contributing to the built-in pack: run bash bin/dashboard-generate.sh /tmp/dash-out from the repo root and open /tmp/dash-out/character-creator.html in a browser. Your variant should appear in the outfit picker.
2. If you’re shipping a separate pack: zip your pack folder, open Settings → Asset Packs, drop the zip into the upload zone. Preview-before-commit will show you the 4-frame walk preview. Click “Use this pack.” Open the character creator. Your variant should appear.

Walk a Canvas. The chromatic-aberration rim that R12 added on cool themes will automatically layer on top of your variant — no extra work. Cyberpunk-twist is a renderer feature, not a sprite feature.

If your variant doesn’t appear:

• Re-check the manifest schema. Body and hat IDs must match the PNG filenames exactly.
• Re-check the file tree. Pages and body-part directories are case-sensitive.
• Open the browser console. Pack-load errors surface there with a precise reason.

Once you’ve shipped one variant

You’ve now done what every Ensemble v1.1 marketplace creator will do. The same pipeline — Aseprite → manifest update → pack upload → sprite renders — is what indie pixel artists like Seliel and Modern Interiors creators will follow when the marketplace opens. Welcome to the creator economy.

If you produced something cool, please consider showing it off on Seliel’s community forum — credit her work, share yours, keep the patron-of-the-indie-economy flywheel turning.

This guide is part of the public Ensemble documentation. It originated as part of Round 14 brand-completion (2026-05-02). Improvements welcome through the standard PR flow.