Video Game Coloring Pages: Turn Screenshots Into a Custom Book

Last updated June 9, 2026

Printing your favorite game as a coloring book is a great excuse to spend an evening away from the screen with the world you already love. It also makes a brilliant gift for a gamer, especially a teenager who thinks coloring books are for little kids until the first page is a boss they have beaten forty times.

Who this is for

The core audience is parents of children who enjoy building, racing, role-playing, creative sandbox games and multiplayer adventures. It also fits teenagers who would reject a preschool-style coloring book but enjoy pixel art, maps, custom controllers, achievement pages and graphic-novel treatment.

Gift occasions include a gaming birthday, a customised party favour, Christmas, completing a difficult game challenge, a first family co-op campaign, a tournament, a new gaming setup, a screen-free travel activity and a memory book for online friends, provided personal identifiers are removed.

Why it makes such a good gift

It is personal in a way merch never is. You choose the exact moments: the first boss, the favorite mount, the ship, the base they spent a hundred hours building. Screenshot a shared co-op session and the book becomes a record of playing together. Print it for a birthday, a tournament, a new gaming setup, a long trip with no console, or the end of a first family co-op campaign.

Turn the screenshot into a story

A screenshot becomes a meaningful page when you turn it into the child's own narrative. Before uploading, ask a few questions together and write the answers into the captions:

• What did you build? A base, a vehicle, a track, a level or a skin.
• What problem did you solve? A puzzle, a boss, a race or a team objective.
• Who played with you? A parent, a sibling, a friend or a team.
• Which avatar or equipment choice says something about you? The colour, the class, the costume or the custom design.
• What was the funniest mistake? A crash, a fall, a friendly-fire moment or a surprise explosion.
• What achievement made you proud? A first win, a difficult challenge, a rank or a creation.
• What would you design in the next level? A new map, enemy, vehicle, house or game mode.

The answers become captions, page titles or a short story thread running through the book. The result feels less like a screenshot dump and more like a graphic novel of the child's year in gaming.

Choosing your images

Bright, high-contrast shots with a clear subject convert best. Bosses, characters, vehicles, landscapes, and items all work. Dark scenes, motion blur, and heavy particle effects turn muddy, so pause the game, hide the HUD if you can, and grab a clean frame. Photo mode, if the game has it, is the single biggest quality upgrade available to you. Your own in-game creations, custom characters, and built bases are the strongest source of all, because they are genuinely yours.

Building the book

Screenshots need a little more curation than photos, because a game frame is often busier than it looks. Memories in Lines turns each frame into printable line art and then assembles the pages into a real book.

1. Crop before you upload. Trim to the subject, then drop the set into the workspace, JPG, PNG or HEIC.
2. Test two styles. Detailed linework holds architecture and mechs; bolder styles work better for stylized or low-poly games. Regenerate anything that comes out too dense.
3. Caption the moments. Add the boss name, the run number, or the date you finished it, then set the page order to follow the playthrough.
4. Print it. Download free to test at home, or order the printed edition, 10 to 25 pages, $29.95 with free delivery.

The step-by-step guide shows the full flow.

Want to start without uploading anything?

Want something printable straight away? The free coloring pages library has over 500 printable pages sorted by theme, no account needed.

• Characters
• Travel Adventure
• Road Trip
• Birthday
• Music

Useful as filler pages between the screenshots in a gift book.

A quick word on copyright

Game characters are the most heavily protected material in this whole series, so it is worth being clear. Copyright is mostly a commercial rule: printing a single copy at home for yourself or your family falls under fair use or a personal-use exception in many regions, though it varies by country. Selling or distributing pages built on a studio's character is where you run into trouble.

The useful nuance is that copyright protects a specific design, not an idea. A plumber in a cap, a blue hedgehog, a spartan in power armor: the archetypes are free, the exact characters are not. A genuine reinterpretation with your own proportions and details is new work. A trace is not.

If you want to be extra careful with a book you plan to share, open-source games publish characters under free licenses: Tux from SuperTux, Surge from OpenSurge, Battle for Wesnoth units, OpenClonk Clonks, Hedgewars hedgehogs, Xonotic characters, 0 A.D. units, and Flare RPG heroes. Always check the current license and credit where required.

Planning to sell? Start from the list of public domain characters you can safely use, or build the book from your own in-game creations, which nobody can dispute.

Can you sell game themed pages through print on demand?

This is where the copyright question gets sharp. Print on demand coloring books are easy to publish, but KDP, Lulu, and Printify all require that you own the artwork, and pages traced from a copyrighted game will get a listing removed. Original scenery, your own characters, and photos of your own setup are safe to sell; recognizable game characters are not.

For a personal copy of your favorite game moments, none of that applies. We print and ship a single custom book for you, no platform account and no listing review.

Frequently asked questions

Can I make a coloring page from a game screenshot?

For personal use, in most regions yes. Selling pages built on a protected character is a different matter and needs a license.

Can I sell a video game coloring book?

Not with recognizable protected characters. Open-license characters, public domain material, your own in-game creations, and your own original designs are all safe to sell.

Does redrawing a character make it fine?

A genuine reinterpretation with your own design choices creates new work. A close trace of the original design does not.

Which screenshots work best?

Bright, high-contrast frames with a clear subject and no HUD clutter, ideally taken in photo mode.

Can I include my own in-game builds?

Yes, and they are the best option. Your custom characters and creations avoid the question entirely.

Keep going

• Fairy tale characters
• Fantasy characters, dragons and knights
• Cartoon characters from photos

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Make your own coloring book with Memories in Lines, free to try, no account needed for your first pages.

This post is general information, not legal advice. Copyright rules vary by country.

Free tools to use with these pages

• Fantasy skin tone palette generator: pick believable colors for elves, fae, orcs, dragons and other non human characters.
• Skin tone palette generator: matched shadow, base and highlight tones for human characters.
• Color palette generator: build a full palette for a whole scene.
• Mandala generator: add decorative filler pages between character pages.
• Coloring page enhancer: clean up and upscale a page to 300 or 600 DPI before printing.
• Photo to coloring page: turn any photo into line art in seconds.
• Marker swatch sheet: test your markers before you commit to a page.

Related guides

• Fairy tale coloring pages
• Fantasy character coloring pages
• Cartoon character coloring pages
• Video game coloring pages
• Public domain characters you can sell
• How to make your own coloring page