Making avatars

[rontifu]

Soooooooo.... I tried my hand at an animated avatar for the first time ever.

I'd be curious to knows some tips and tricks people might have for avatar making. It's one thing that I wanted to do for a long time, and I guess now I learned the (VERY LOW) basics XD So of course, I want to improve myself. I'm using GIMP (BTW, anyone knows how to write in GIMP with different fonts? Couldn't find it O.o )

Here's the one I did this morning. It's Ichumon related, yeah

[Lion]

@rontifu ,
I will be updating this for you.

Make 4 layers and label them like soo.

Inner Border : Right Click > Select > All >THEN Select > Shrink> 1 (Fill with a darker shade of the background) > THEN Select > Border > 1 (Fill with white, layer opacity :40%ish)
Border : Right Click > Select > All >THEN Select > Border > 1 (Fill with a darker shade of the background)
IMAGE : INSERT AVATAR IMAGE HERE
Effect : I used Noise, for a nice effect (filter, noise, Hurl ) (Randomization = 100%) (Opacity 12%)
Background : Fill with a gradient for example use these colours (#4d2287 / #7144ae)

Then MERGE ALL layers.

[Gohawk]

[…] I'm using GIMP (BTW, anyone knows how to write in GIMP with different fonts? Couldn't find it O.o ) […]

If you have the text tool active there should be a button right to "Font:" in the lower half of the toolbox. Click that to select a new font.

[rontifu]

If you have the text tool active there should be a button right to "Font:" in the lower half of the toolbox. Click that to select a new font.

*facepalm*

Holy heck, now I feel REALLY stupid XD

thanks for pointing this out

[Lion]

@rontifu , A nice place font fonts = http://www.dafont.com/bitmap.php

If you need any help, drop me a mail. I love using gimp.

[Martyn]

@rontifu
Here is some of my recommendations:

Use the 04b03 font for avatars, 8px and instead of 'strong' replace it with 'none'.
When making a border, it's always better to do it with the pencil tool. Use it at 1px though.
If you place a white border inside the first one, then place it as overlay.
Never merge layers, instead place them in groups individually.. as then if you mess up, it can be fixed easily.
If your image has a white background, then use the magic wand tool and refine it.. so that it blurs the white dots on the item.

That's how you end up with this - c:

[Aesop]

There are tons of pixel fonts that work well. You just have to find the right size for them to look nice. You shouldn't limit yourself to one font.

[rontifu]

Well, I know NOW that little fact. XD

I didn't actually USE a font for my first avatar. it's letters that I put there with the pencil tool, because of my stupidness in not finding the text tools XD


Thanks @Lion and @Martyn for your ideas. Those will be useful for me

[Corleone]

Or you could draw them yourself using the pencil tool, like I do.

[Drea]

An easy way to make inner and outer borders is to make a base, then use the layer effects "stroke" and "inner glow." Set the stroke to 2px inside black (or a dark color.) You can set it to multiply if you have a texture that you want shown through, or change the opacity. For the inner glow, set the size to 1px and the choke to 100%. Again, mess with the blending modes if you want, I use overlay usually.

The cool thing about this is that then you can erase to make funky looking borders and stuff without having to ever manually draw your outlines. If you make a mistake, you can just pencil in the base color again and the layer effects will redraw the outlines.

The result:


BooPets obviously needs spinning toothbrushes everywhere >_>:... but the borders, those are the important part.