How To Make An Avatar

In the last 5 days I’ve recieved emails from 2 6teen.ca forum members on how to make avatars. Also an additional 2 members in the threads are wondering how to go about making an avatar. For this reason I’m going ahead and making a tutorial for them.

There are other ways and different software combinations to use. I don’t consider this an end all solution.

This tutorial will be rather indepth to limit the amount of questions I will recieve from confused users. So lets begin…

What you’ll need for this tutorial
Video Files – Jude’s Putfile Page
My Tutorial on Downloading Video From Putfile – Check out the thread here
Photoshop – Free 30 day trial
PowerDVD – Free 30 day trial

Also you’re probably going to want some cool fonts (not required but jazzs up your images). I recommend DaFont.com. Other people will recommend other places but this place has the BEST categoried fonts.

“Why can’t I just use Windows Media Player to grab screenshots?”
Windows Media Player does not allow for screenshots. Don’t believe me try it. Open a video in Windows Media Player and while its playing hit the print screen (PrintScrn) button on your keyboard (the key to the right of F12). Now go into Photoshop or MSPaint or whatever and go Edit>Paste.

This is what you’ll get as a screen grab:

So lets use PowerDVD
Download the PowerDVD trial from the link above.

Open up PowerDVD and you’ll see:

Next you’ll have to change some configuration settings in PowerDVD.

Click the Configuration Button:

You will see this. You’ll have to click Advanced now.

Make your settings like I have here:

Accept the new changes and exit configuration.

Need Video
Next you’ll have to take your video that you can grab from the link above and load it into PowerDVD (easiest way to do this is to just drag the video file onto PowerDVD)

Understanding PowerDVD
Here are a few keyboard shortcuts that you should know to make your life easier:
Spacebar = pause
C = take screenshot (snapshot)*

*By default screenshots are stored in: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\CyberLink\PowerDVD\Snapshot

You can now make screenshot at 160×120 pixels
I chose to make a screenshot of Jenny From The Penalty Box (I’m a huge fan of Jen’s so I chose her for this tutorial)

I recommend taking a screenshot (snapshot) when the character is the main focus. NOT when they are in the distance.

Now you have your screenshot, so lets open Photoshop
Open your screenshot into Photoshop

Now its finally time to make your avatar.

Click File>New (alternatively ctrl+n) and plug in the following options:

Drag your screenshot into the new 100×100 file. Align the image how you want (I aligned Jen to the right in mine but you can put yours anywhere you want)

Next you’ll probably want to add some text. I suggest using a cool font from the link I provided at the top of this tutorial.

After adding some text you can add a few other tweaks to show off your skills or just stay with the image text formula. Here are a couple other avatars I’ve made:

Now your done and can head on over to Photobucket.com to upload your image. Take the link that Photobucket gives you and use that in your forum profile options for you avatar.

Congratulations you’ve just made yourself a cool avatar.

Also if you want to check out some other avatars by myself, head here

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Hope you found the tutorial useful. Post any comments or questions here and I’ll try to get to them.