Jump to content
  • entries
    552
  • comments
    4,590
  • views
    164,506

Avatar


Kevin Owens

654 views

I like to think that I know a thing or two about avatars. After all, my rotating avatar contains over 900 avatars as of this writing. As such, I've spent quite a bit of time making them. While some of my earlier ones lack some of the finesse of my newer ones, I like to think that gives me some expertise when it comes to avatars. Here are two pet peeves of mine that are easy fixes and have no excuses.

Resize your images. When BZP displays an avatar that is bigger than 64x64, it automatically scales it down for you. Unfortunately, it looks awful after the scaling. All you have to do is open the image in your editor of choice, scale it down, and save it. It looks a lot better Consider the following:

Resized with MSPaint: 64.png

 

Resized with BZP: ..'...64x64bzp.jpg

 

It takes less than a minute to do and makes your avatar look a lot better

Add a border. Go into MS Paint or whatever and draw a black box around your avatar. It looks better that way.There's no excuse for not doing either of these. All in all it takes less than three minutes and keeps your avatar from being an eye sore. Please, save my sight and just take the time to implement these simple steps.

 

</3

22 Comments


Recommended Comments

Problem with MSPaint is that you need a calculator to accurately scale to a specific size. You might wanna include instructions for that.

Link to comment
Problem with MSPaint is that you need a calculator to accurately scale to a specific size. You might wanna include instructions for that.

I remember doing that forever until I found the wonder that is Image > Attributes.

 

;3

 

~EW~

Link to comment

Resizing, yes. Borders? I don't quite see the need for those, at least for photographs. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

 

:music:

Link to comment
You are the King of Avatars. You have spoken the truth.

 

~EW~

 

:kaukau:I always considered that to be InnerRayg.

 

As for me, meh, I just let Bioni-Cool Jack do it all for me and I made my Avatar good by just keeping it for such a long period of time (Has it been over a year now?). Well, I guess there were periods when I would have no avatar, and I also switched to a Kaukau smiley and a picture of Spock, but this current one has been my "main" avatar. I guess I consider consistency an important thing to take into consideration when it comes to Avatars.

 

Anyways, Rabit Janus Fangirl (I don't know what to call you), I will agree that making mistakes in earlier avatars definitely gives you expertise. You make mistakes, so of course you can easily inform people on what not to do, and you yourself have learned from them. I hate to bring up the whole Abrahan Lincoln inspirational story about failure, but...Well, okay, it's overused, so I won't.

 

Good advice. I will always agree with the bit about the border. There are very few exceptions to when they don't make an avatar better, and you'll know them when you see them.

 

Your Honor,

Emperor Kraggh

Link to comment
Resizing, yes. Borders? I don't quite see the need for those, at least for photographs. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

 

:music:

I tend to notice that a black border, generally a thin one, tends to bring out the picture more, make it more... framed and clean looking. Though, that could just be me there, and my liking of framed images XP

Link to comment
Problem with MSPaint is that you need a calculator to accurately scale to a specific size. You might wanna include instructions for that.

I remember doing that forever until I found the wonder that is Image > Attributes.

 

;3

 

~EW~

That just crops off the right/bottom sides to the size you specified. Completely different than scaling.
Link to comment
My avatar is of an Avatar!

(and I resized it with BZP because I was lazy :P )

Looks just fine though.

 

biodsavresizedbzp.png biodsavresizedmanual.png

 

the one on the left is BZP-resized and the one on the right is Photoshop-resized.

 

I know it's subtle but there is definitely a difference.

 

 

maybe I'm wrong but I believe the few moments of effort it takes to manually resize something is worth it if it means not having your avatar look all rough and jpg-ish.

Link to comment

But also remember that while you may appreciate a more finely tuned avatar, someone else may not really care at all. If so, just be happy you have a pretty avatar and laugh at their silly looking pixelated art. :)

 

~EW~

Link to comment
My avatar is of an Avatar!

(and I resized it with BZP because I was lazy :P )

Looks just fine though.

 

biodsavresizedbzp.png biodsavresizedmanual.png

 

the one on the left is BZP-resized and the one on the right is Photoshop-resized.

 

I know it's subtle but there is definitely a difference.

 

 

maybe I'm wrong but I believe the few moments of effort it takes to manually resize something is worth it if it means not having your avatar look all rough and jpg-ish.

Touche.

I Would Have resized it myself, but then you told me it was an evil avatar that sucked the life from forums, so now I have this placeholder.

Link to comment
Guest
Add a comment...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...