Tips and Advice on Avatar Making

[Alexandria]

Due to the great success (30 pages at last count!) of our TRF Members Make Avatars thread, many members would like to try their hand at contributing to this thread and ultimately to our Avatar Gallery. However, since this does not come naturally to everyone, and because TRF members are such a helpful group, here is a thread for those experienced and experts in making avatars to help others with tips, suggestions, advice and the like. And for those who would like to learn, post your questions here.

[tbhrc]

Here is a little tutorial. I use Adobe Photoshop 7, but it is pretty much the same with every other program like:

Gimp Photofiltre

Always try to use images without watermarks, that makes it a lot easier.....








It's okay if the size is not exactly 80x80, 79x80 or 80x78 is also okay, just make sure that the bigger side is not larger than 80......

[Alexandria]

What a great and very detailed session you have provided tbhrc! Thank you for doing this. :)

[HRH Mims]

Yes, thank you very much, especially for photos. I tried Photofitre and that program is really the same like Adobe Photoshop. It's much more easier, and creating of avatars is funnier
thank you very much again tbhrc!

[...JuAnItA...]

Thank you, tbhrc!

I made some avatars are made by photos with watermarks but the watermark is in the midlle of the photo but if i enlarge the photo i can see the watermark. Is there any problem if the avatars have 80x78 or 79x80?

[tbhrc]

No I don't think so, because you actually won't note that there is 1 pixel missing. But if the size is 40x80, I honestly think that's too small. And another tip, always remember to sharp your avatar, (you'll see the difference), and to change the brightness if they are too dark.

[Alexandria]

Originally Posted by ...JuAnItA...

Is there any problem if the avatars have 80x78 or 79x80?

There is no problem with avatars that are 80x79 or 80x79 pixels in size, as our maximum avatar size is 80x80 pixels.

However, avatars which are proportionately noticeable in size, such as 60x80 pixels or something similar to that, will unlikely be included in the avatar gallery due to the consistency with the rest of the avatars in the gallery.

Avatars which are made with fuzzy or blurry images will also unlikely be included in the avatar gallery because the quality is not sufficient -- who wants an avatar of their favourite royal if it is unclear or grainy?

Avatars that are made using images that include the torso of a royal are also usually unclear as one is trying to include too much in such a small-shaped image. That is why mostly avatars are of faces.

[norwegianne]

Originally Posted by tbhrc

No I don't think so, because you actually won't note that there is 1 pixel missing. But if the size is 40x80, I honestly think that's too small. And another tip, always remember to sharp your avatar, (you'll see the difference), and to change the brightness if they are too dark.

Sharpen it once and it's usually okay, but if you sharpen it more times than that, it can often become grainy.

[HRH Mims]

I'd like to learn how make "changing avatars". Where are more pictures in one avatars. Well, can someone help me?

[RhapsodyBrat]

Originally Posted by mims111

I'd like to learn how make "changing avatars". Where are more pictures in one avatars. Well, can someone help me?

they're in GIF format. you can create them with Adobe PhotoShop or Adobe After Effects. indeed, maybe someone can help us create GIF avatars? :p

if there's anyone who would like to try Corel in making an avatar, i can help out with simple avatars.

[Lady Jennifer]

What if you are having problems adjusting the pixels? I've been trying & everytime I fix one- the other one changes. For example- if I put 80 in the width- the height changes to 85....then if I try to put 80 in the height the width changes to 75

Ok so I was messing around in Microsoft Paint & was able to cut the size down but it would be nice to use Photoshop to size it- using Paint is such a guessing game.

[Alexandria]

Originally Posted by Lady Jennifer

What if you are having problems adjusting the pixels? I've been trying & everytime I fix one- the other one changes. For example- if I put 80 in the width- the height changes to 85....then if I try to put 80 in the height the width changes to 75

I use Corel to make my avatars and one of the options when sizing it is to maintain the ratio -- therefore if you're adjusting the width, the height automatically accomodates whatever size you've set the width to. If you unclick that option, you can set the width and height to whatever you want.

[HRH Mims]

For avatar making is the best program photofiltre I think. I tried a lot of, but this is simple and it has a lot of tools and functions. and it's for free too.
Lady Jenifer when you are marking avatar, are you holding SHIFT? By pressing shift, you'll do a square.

[Lady Jennifer]

No I hadn't been using Shift. I did find a way though in Photoshop to make the pixels 80x80 & the moderator size avatars (you see I made the avatar I'm using- I like to keep things simple )

Originally Posted by mims111

Lady Jenifer when you are marking avatar, are you holding SHIFT? By pressing shift, you'll do a square.

[Madame Royale]

Hi,

I have uploaded my avatar from my computer and its not showing up. Would
anyone know why?

It has uploaded as it shows in my user cp, but its not showing on the forum.

Thanks for your help.

[HRH Mims]

Hello Madame Royale!
try this thread: Avatar questions and issues and you will see, that you are not the one, who has this problem (me too ) Try avatar from Avatars gallery, or you can put your avatar to thread TRF members are creating avatars and maybe Alexandria will upload it.
Good luck

[Madame Royale]

Thanks Mims111

I'm not really familiar with how to do all that so if one of the administrators could do it that would be great.

Thanks again.

[suturegeisha]

Not sure how useful this would be to anyone, but I thought that I'd post it anyway.

Adding a border to your avatars

Borders make your avatars look nice and clean, and they're very easy to do.
[This tutorial is for Adobe Photoshop- the particular version I am using is 7.0. I apologize but I have no experience with other programs so I can't tell you how to do this in Corel or PSP. Sorry!]


1] Select the avatar you want to use. I am using this nice one of Princess Mathilde walking with Prince Emmanuel.




2] Go to the Layers palette [if you can't find it, go to "Window" at the top of the screen and click it, and in the drop-down menu point to "Layers" and click it to make it checked. This will display the Layers palette]. Right click on the "Background" layer and select "Duplicate Layer".



A dialog box will pop up so that you can rename the new layer. For the sake of sanity I kept the name the same- "Background copy".



Right click on the "Background copy" layer in the Layers palette and select "Blending Options".



A dialog box will pop up. Check the box that says "Stroke" on the left-hand side at the bottom. [Note- make sure that you actually physically click on the word "stroke", otherwise the menu will not come up]



In the "Position" drop-down menu, select "inside".



Click on the rectangular box next to "color" [in my case the color of the box is red].



This will bring up the color picker. Select the color you want to use- in this example, I am using black.



After clicking "OK" on the color picker, you will come back to your original dialog box. Slide the selector by the "size" option over to "1" if it's not already there, and click "OK".



Ta-da! You're done! You should now have a nice border around your avatar. Looks nice and clean now, eh? ^_^

[suturegeisha]

Here is the finished product of my work in the post above:



But you can easily play around with the border size and colors to make it look different! Here is a white 3 px border [to change the px size of the border, slide the "size" selector in the stroke dialog box to whatever size you'd like]:



How about 3 px pink?:



Or, 3 px black [shows up a little better than 1 px]:



Play around with it, have fun, let me know if this tutorial was helpful at all.

[HRH Mims]

I'd like to help too Photofiltre is almost the same as adobe photoshop, nut for me is work with it much more easier
I choosed this pic of MM- http://www.fotoknudsen.no/archive35/...RhcGuyY.jpg?69
1. First, mark place from where you'd like to create avatar and crop it ( menu: Image/ Crop, or simply press Shift + Ctrl + H )
Tip: When you are choosing avatar area, try press Shift. that will make for you only square and your avatar will be not so mis-shapen.
2. Resize your avatar ( menu: Image/Canvas size or press: Ctrl+H width and height should be the same. Resize on 80 x 80 pixels. When you dont have the same height and width, pay attention on line: Preserve aspect ratio
3. sharpen avatar (menu: Filter/ Sharpen/ Sharpen or press triangle on Toolbar )
4. Now, lets make something new. Go to menu Filters/Aged efect/ Sepia
5. menu: Adjust/More shadows (apply twice)
6. and now the last: menu: Filters/Frame/Simple frame Width 3 pixels, color white, opacity 100

Instead of effect sepia you can use effect Old photography . Then your avatars would be like this:
Picture from MM was scanned from norwegian Elle by member of TRF Emma69 (Thank you )