Creating Your Own Siggies, Avatars, and Other Images 101Part of the fun of belonging to a forum is seeing how creative you can be with your profile and posts. While PA hopes you spend
at least as much time on the content of the text, we know how much fun it can be to add a little eye candy as well. The proper siggies and avatars can help you make a statement about yourself, and a celebratory graphic is a nice way to congratulate a fellow member for their accomplishments.
Because this could be such a vast topic, I am going to split it into two sections. The first will deal with finding the graphics you want to use. I’ll assume you know all about downloading and uploading and Image Hosts and the like, but if not, please refer back to these tutorials:
How to Add Graphics to Your ProfileImage Hosts and How to Use Them on PAA Note About SizesPlease don’t make anything you can’t use! Refer back to our
PogoAddiction Signature Template--remember that your total graphics cannot exceed that space!
My typical sigs tend to be about 300 pixels long by 250 pixels high; you could go as far as about 360p long, but 250p is the limit on height. In essence, you could go as far as about 750p long, but that would mean you could use just
one huge siggie, given our PA image restrictions. Avatars are typically anywhere from 75x75 to 125x125 at the outside. Making them any larger would mean those goofy scrolling arrows and who wants that?
Image SitesBefore we go further, please be aware that some arts sites require permissions and/or payment for some of their work. That is the correct and polite thing to do! Some sites offer royalty-free images and others watermark their work so you can’t use it without permission. Make sure you’re using work you’re allowed to use.
And of course, you can snag pictures and graphics off the web by simply right-clicking and “saving as” to your own hard drive (Try doing that on one of our pogo badge images on the PA home page. That’s another example of image protection). Don’t neglect your own photo album! I’ll bet you have some lovely and funny images to work with there!
Here are some sites with great work:
http://artistthatallow.blogspot.com/http://blackepiphany.50webs.com/http://www.fortunecity.com/rivendell/rhydin/959/http://www.enchanted-art.com/pages/freegraphics.phphttp://www.gifs.net/gif/http://www.glitterglobe.com/http://snagdepot.com/http://www.glassgiant.com/ http://www.inmagine.com/http://www.deviantart.com/ (some beautiful work, but remember to ask permission or pay up!)
PSP TubesTubes refer to layered images that are manipulated in PaintShop Pro
http://psptubesfree.com/index.htmlhttp://www.jumbo-psp.com/my-tubes-index.htmhttp://www.web-of-dreams.com/dreams/psptubes.html#http://www.mypsptubes.com/Ready-Made Avatars and Icons:This is simply what it says—great avatar-sized graphics for your avatar space. There are also the much smaller icons, and note that you cannot upload icons that will go into your PA Icon space. That is something we need to do internally. If you see a great icon you think we should add, PM it to me and staff will discuss the addition.
http://www.123icons.com/http://www.iconarchive.com/http://www.iconator.com/index.phpLettering and Name Sites:http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/stone/27/names/names.htm?http://www.sylviasglitter.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/index.htmlhttp://www.123glitter.com/animated/* If you have sites you think would be a good addition to these lists,
by all means contact me and we’ll check them out! *
Topic: Creating Your Own Siggies, Avatars, and Other Images 101 (Read 319 times)
