It’s Halloween. Ah, what a great time of year. Halloween is the start of the holiday season. Before you know it, New Years will be here and we will be gearing up for CES and Macworld. Before we get ready for 2010, let’s have a little more fun in 2009.
With the start of the holiday season, also comes the traditional customization of many websites around the net, trying to show their festive sides. Many sites will take on an orange motif for Halloween, and red and green colors come Christmas. I, will not. To show my holiday spirit, I will be customizing my avatar instead. While doing so, I will share the “how-to” used to create the various avatars.
Starting with Halloween, I decided to go with a Zombie avatar. To get us started, I will explain how I used a free online service to accomplish this look. For other upcoming holidays, I may use other mediums such as Photoshop or The Gimp. This method, however, will use a website service called Picnik.com.
No registration is required for this project, but premium services and options are available. After pointing your browser to http://www.picnik.com, click the “Get Started Now” button. Doing this brings you to a tabbed interface that will have many common photo editing options. After uploading the photo I wanted to use, I jumped over to the “create” tab.
The create tab is where you will be creating you Zombie avatar. On the left column of the interface, select Zombify 2.0 which is under the Reanimated subheading. This brings up brush options that recreate decaying flesh tones. Play with this, get happy with it, and select Apply.
Your Zombie has a taste for blood? No problem. Scroll down the left hand column and select Face Paint, which is under the Other subheading. This will give you brush options that will simulate blood on your face. I also used the fading slider to tone down and blend the blood into the rest of the face. Play with this, get happy with it, and select Apply.
Ready to save out? Okay, here is how to do it. Once you are happy with your image and ready to save it out, select the “Save & Share” tab, which brings to a screen that provides options on name, size, file extension, and compression. After deciding on these options, click “Save Photo” and you are done!
Now you can give you Myspace, Facebook or Twitter avatar a ghoulish look for the start to the holiday season. Next month is Thanksgiving, and I am looking for ideas on what look to shoot for. Send your ideas my way; I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with. I want to see your personal creations too. Just post a link in the comments section for me to check out.
This article was originally published by Daniel Vining on http://www.danielvining.com. Contact Daniel via email; dan@danielvining.com or send a tweet to @danielvining. Happy Blogging!
