UI and Customizable Characters

-First question, I recently stumbled on a way to create a custom JPanel(image) and custom JButtons(own images) and paint them to a JFrame which holds a game board for painting 2dgraphics. Is this an ok way to have a UI the custom JPanel with my Custom Buttons on it?
-Second Question, what is the basic concept for character customization for sprites etc, like a basic image for a player and then being able to eqip armors and stuff, what is the logic etc behind doing so?

Thanks in advance =D.

Hello, your described way is called custom painting (overriding components pain or paintcomponent methods) and is common way to make GUI with image as background. You just need to make custom painting to component you want and then add that component to (in your way) JFrame and it will show it. Unless you set layout to null you shouldn’t notice any weird behaviour.

What I mean is that, is this an acceptable way to make a UI, atm I pretty much I have a frame which has a Panel which holds buttons which open up different menus"character screen, abilities, settings" instead of me drawing a rectangle I just used a JPanel on the bottom of the screen that Is static and whenever I add a game Panel eg board it gets painted with it.

That’s quite fine for now since you’re a beginner in games/graphics. Later on however, it is best to completely avoid Swing and make your own buttons.