I've been asked before and I typed this all out in a PM so I decided to just post it..
Avatar Tutorial
Well it's pretty difficult to learn how to make complex avatars right from the start.. but if you want to just try making a simple avatar to start off with, you'll need the program Animation Shop 3.. try this link to download a trial version:
http://www.jasc.com/products/trialreg.asp?pid=003
Ok so to start off..
01) I always begin by making a border around my avatar. So go to File -- New... change the width to 125 and the height to 125. Make the color black (or whatever color you want the border to be). Open this up and save it. Then do the same process again, only changing the height to 123 and width to 123, and the color to white (or any color you'd like). Open this up and save it. Then drag the white/your color picture on top of the black picture and place it dead center (this creates an even border).
02) Ok so now I like to open the video and pick out parts of the video that I want to use. I usually watch the video at least once before to get an idea of what I want to use. To open the video in the program, go to File -- Open -- (Your video)
A box should come up.. under "range of frames to import", select frame range and select 1 to 2000 (this is so the program doesn't freeze.. you could try opening up the enitre video, but I don't recommend it). Once you're finished with this section of the video, you can do 2000 to 4000, 4000 to 6000.. etc.
Then under "Sampling", check "take one sample for every" and select 2. Click ok.
03) So now a part of your video should be open. Go through and pick out portions that you like. I try and pick out a frame where the artist/group is looking at the camera.. just use your own judgment. When you like a certain frame, click on it, and drag it out.
When you like a certain animation, click the first frame of it, press select on the keyboard, and then click the last frame of the animation. This highlights the entire animation. Now drag this out too.
04) Use the crop tool in your toolbar (scroll over the icons and a box should pop up saying which is what) and cut out the excess space around your person. Just box them in, and click crop. Do this for your animation too.
05) Now, you can make borders around your pictures. Just look at the dimensions of your picture (it should say at the bottom of the program), and add 2 to the width and height.. so if your picture is 50x50, you want the border background to be 52x52. Create this border the same way as step 1, only this time your picture is like the white frame that you first created.
Save the entire picture. This can then be dragged onto your main avatar frame (the one with the white box and black border).. just position it where you want it. Do this for all of your pictures.
06) Add text to the animation and any other little designs you may want to add using the paint tool.
07) Now comes the tricky part. To create a border on your animation, duplicate the first frame of your animation by right-clicking, and drag it onto your main avatar frame, positioning it where you want it to go. Then using the paint tool (make sure the thickness is 1 in your toolbar), pick your border color, zoom in on the frame, and draw in the outside border (outline the animation picture).
Once you finish that, right click and duplicate the frame to however many frames your animation has. Once you've done this, highlight all the frames of your duplicated avatar AND the animation, and drag the animation into the box you've created.
**Make sure that you do this step AFTER you are happy with the way your avatar looks. You can't go back and add other things (like text for example) without re-doing the entire thing over.**
Remember to save often as well.. losing an entire avatar is extremely frustrating.. trust me
This is just the beginning step to avatar making. Once you get this down, you're ready to make even better avatars ^_^
Ok so that was lengthy but I hope it helped.. lemme know if you have any questions.. good luck.
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Welllll my last thread got deleted..
So here's this one.
10 Years - Wasteland
My favorite song from 2005 <3333
Nothing special... I'm out of practice.