Someone at Skritter HQ, I forget who -- George, maybe? -- makes great Avatars for the masterminds that are employed there. Any chance the artist is willing to share his technique? Honestly, I think they are very cool, and would love to try making my own. Could you give us a few tips? That way, I could trade out my "happy cardboard" (which I stole from you guys), for an avatar that I'd draw myself.

Scott draws the avatars. He starts from a photo, then draws over it with his Wacom in Photoshop or GIMP or some such using his awesome skills of an artist. He can tell you more of his secrets if you scratch his soft underbelly.

We used to have them as possible prizes for the contests, but not too many people were interested.

Bah, I was interested but I had to choose between a t-shirt! You made me choose!

interested...

Whew, been a while since I've gone through the forum posts. Sorry for the slow reply! I'll be happy to explain my process.

I just drew an avatar for one of our interns, Maksym (and I've got a couple more intern avatars to do) so I'll tell you how I did that one. For tools I use GIMP and my bamboo fun tablet.

1. Setup: Start with a big empty canvas (At least 1500x1500). Find a photo of the person you want to draw and put it in as a layer over the background. Crop and scale that layer until the head and shoulders fill the canvas. Lower the opacity to about 50% for that layer.

2. Lines: Create a new layer on top of that. Use a medium sized brush tool set to black to draw the lines. If you're using a wacom (recommended!) have the pressure sensitivity only affect the brush thickness (by default on GIMP it only affects the opacity). Experiment with what lines you want to draw to make a nice outline. Occasionally hide the photo layer so you can see the lines against a white background to see how it's going. Once those are done, make the brush two or three times thicker (there's a scale setting in GIMP) and try making some of the lines thicker to give some variable weight here and there.

3. Basic colors: Add a new layer between the line and photo layers. Maybe using the eyedropper tool on the photo, put in a few flat colors (though sometimes the reference photo isn't good a source for colors, depending on the quality of the image). Like for Maksym's I started by filling in three colors: the hair, the skin, and the shirt. Once you're done, hide all the layers except the color layer so you can easily fill in any gaps. Then put back on the lines layer and make sure the coloring is filled in the lines well. Could probably speed that process up by doing some selection tools and the fill tool. When that's done, turn on the transparency lock so you can no longer draw outside of the designated area for that layer.

4. More colors: Using the brush tool with an even larger brush size than before, add more to the colors. The skin is particularly tricky. For me, either the skin looks pale like a zombie, pink like a pig, or having dirt on it. Experiment with various colors and complexions until it looks good, basically :) Also use the dodge/burn tools to add shadows/highlights. Occasionally refer to the photo for ideas on how areas are colored and shadowed. During this step the colors will be varied but not blended together. I usually unfocus my eyes to "blur" the image to get a better sense of how the coloring will look after the next step.

5. Smooth coloring: Use the smudge tool to blend the colors together to varying degrees. It's particularly useful for making hair strands by doing long smudges. Use short distance smudges for most everything else, but play around with the smudge tool to varying degrees.

And that's the summary! All in all it usually takes me one or two hours to do an avatar. If you're interested I could take a few screenshots while I'm doing the next one, to go along with the instructions.

Hey, thanks, Scott! I hope it's even easier than it sounds! : )

The screenshots are a great idea.

Also, if you ever do offer it as a contest prize . . . I'm in. I do like my shirt, and I wear it with pride . . . but I think I'd like the Avatar even better. Perhaps not many were interested when you offered it the first time around, because we weren't convinced Scott could work a miracle -- and actually make us look good! haha.