Oooh~ Wow! This is a fantastic guide! Thank you for posting all these awesome tips. biggrin
Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2015 6:14 am
⌠☆ミ⌡
Great guide! heart I also want to say to new Gaians - Have fun with your avatar! You may post in the avatar forums just to find people may not like your style. Other people are very helpful. If you like what you make, that is the most important. 3nodding It's okay if you do not have a lot of gold. You can still make something wonderful!
What a wonderful guide <3 i just began using dual colored eyes in my Avi but i change my outfits/scenery with the events/holidays/or my mood. It's lots of fun! i remember how hard it was to get started though. whee
XD I wondered why there were suddenly posts in this thread. Luckily, I checked the guild announcement before replying. Thanks for the shout out!
Darkerdemons
Oooh~ Wow! This is a fantastic guide! Thank you for posting all these awesome tips. biggrin
Aw, thanks. I'm glad to hear it.
YuukiPinkuu
⌠☆ミ⌡
Great guide! heart I also want to say to new Gaians - Have fun with your avatar! You may post in the avatar forums just to find people may not like your style. Other people are very helpful. If you like what you make, that is the most important. 3nodding It's okay if you do not have a lot of gold. You can still make something wonderful!
⌠☆ミ⌡
Thanks! And that's a very good point. ^ ___^ I usually repeat over and over that overall cost doesn't matter. I skimmed my thread and saw that I only make that comment at the end. u .u; I'll have to fix that.
ArsenicRaevan
What a wonderful guide <3 i just began using dual colored eyes in my Avi but i change my outfits/scenery with the events/holidays/or my mood. It's lots of fun! i remember how hard it was to get started though. whee
Ooo~ yeah, I love the idea of keeping something the same (like eyes). Especially dual colored eyes. I mean, they just always look good in art. @ w@ Plus, keeping something the same (be it base or theme) can help others recognize you even if you change your avatar often. I remember how hard it was for me too. And I know I keep saying this~ but getting started in this economy too? Yikes. D: I mean, it was hard when I started. But... at least most people looked like newbs and it was easy to blend into the masses. XD; We really need some makeup and leg/arm mods in the gold shops. <.< >.>
ShiroKitsune9
WOOT IM A LOVE NINJA! rofl
Hahahaha, and so you are! Your avatar is so fun. o wo
Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2015 2:37 pm
Since the early days of Gaia, we've always used user-made tools to create dream avatars.
It's hard to remember a time before Tektek, but it existed. I used two other tools before Tektek, but Tektek certainly swept away the competition and provided many services for Gaians. Tektek was a fan-made site that assisted Gaians with many of our daily Gaian activities. One of which was having a tool that allowed us to create avatars off site, save those images, keep a list of items used and give an estimated value of those items.
Goodbye, Tektek; I will miss you. Tektek.org will be taken down on March 24th, 2015.
Due to that, I've removed all references to Tektek from this thread. I've also given suggestions on how to create dream avatars in a world without Tektek. More suggestions are welcome. If/when Gaia creates another tool for this, I'll update the thread again.
I added 3 extra posts and removed one post. This guide officially fills all 15 posts on the first page right now. (Used to be 13.)
I was going to add a blurb about Gaia's new Avatar Builder, but it won't be easy. I forgot that I dedicated so many posts to creating dream avatars using the dress up page method. This will require some shifting of posts to accomplish it.
When the Avatar Builder is more finalized, I'll add a blurb about it. As of now, I find it glitchy and cumbersome.
Gaia gave us a teaser on May 15th and first released it to the public on May 19th. Since then, they've enabled it, disabled it and have been tweaking it.
Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 6:51 am
smile
Charlotte Eliana Leontine
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Darkerdemons
Destructive Daredevil
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Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 1:34 pm
sdrawkcab
ninja Do you have tips for making detailed avatar faces or know of a good place to find tips?
The most I've ever used are probably Eleven Eleven as well as Godina items in combination with Kitty March. Working on a friend's avatar and I want to improve my face styling skills, lol.
Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 11:43 pm
Darkerdemons
sdrawkcab
ninja Do you have tips for making detailed avatar faces or know of a good place to find tips?
The most I've ever used are probably Eleven Eleven as well as Godina items in combination with Kitty March. Working on a friend's avatar and I want to improve my face styling skills, lol.
XD You've probably finished your friend's avatar already, but > <
In general, for the face, you're usually good as long as it's expressive. And the level of detail and layering should roughly match the rest of the avatar. Like, a very complex avatar should have a 'complex' face where a lot of the bare skin is also covered up with details. And a simple one should have a simple, plain face. Then again, a lot of simple avatars only look cool because the face is very complex...
There are overall categories of things that can be added like eyebrows, eyelashes, a nose, mouth, mustache, beard, freckles, moles, dimples, scars, tattoos, shadow, forehead jewelry, third eye, nose rings, glasses, eye patches, dirt, blood, you name it. XD Anything to fill in the emptiness of the face~
I love the godina items as cheap eye shadow. And XD I used to love eleven eleven for being cheap, but dang, it's pricey now. *tries the combo* And~ I see what you did there. Nice face. ;3
Okay... trying to think of some specifics. Oh! Under-eyes. XDD That's just what I call them. There are more, but these are the two I can think of: They layer under other eye contacts. Depending on the eye combos you use, it blends in well and just looks like extra, detailed makeup without all the work. (The recolors work as well)
And depending on what you're doing, changing the shape of the face can help
Lamenting Lucie is awesome~
Cutting the eye shape is great for when you have all those older contacts that are all just... too large.
If you find that the forehead looks too empty, I usually try to fill it by adding a circlet, a third eye, a forehead jewel or glow, a shadow, bangs... Here's some examples:
And XD I know this isn't the face, but~ adding a slight shadow on the torso is often a finishing touch that makes it all look polished and brings it together. The briar rose items do this cheaply. (It doesn't need a deep neckline.)
Face mods can also be a good option since all the contacts and noses and makeup and everything can come as one package. Some mouths layer over other mouths. This is useful for when you dislike the mouth of a face mod orrr want to make the face a bit more unique All of the talker mouths work also. And the Heart of an Alleycat items have great lips. They all have lip rings, but the doll doesn't.
All in all, if you ever need inspiration, the Make-up, Injuries & Facial/Muscle/Bust Definition is the best place to skim through. I use it all the time when I'm thinking of a certain pose, but can't remember what item it would be. Like~ "I swear I have some sooty dirt face item... Oh! there's the pose XD *clicks for name of item*" But~ it's also good for seeing all the stuff that exists. @ .@
x --x;; Decided to play around with faces a bit to test what I was saying. Don't mind me. Gonna edit this post so it makes more sense. <.<;;; ..... tomorrow, hopefully. I've gotta get to bed now tho.
Basically goes with the pics in that album. I realized that I committed a cardinal sin and had crappy eyebrows in some of the example faces. Which is XD exactly what I'd suggest to avoid, but.... I'm so used to seeing my crappy base eyebrows that I forget that they're there. > < .... So I made sure to add hair/eyebrows to the examples after that.
Also, I think a lot of it just boils down to starting with eyes, etc that have good quality detail. I kept gravitating towards my good contacts and not my older, less detailed items.
It's also just about knowing what cool face items exist that you can use (see the makeup/bust/injuries/whatever it's called thread linked in the above post.
Also~ one trick is to have the eyes stand out and not match the rest of the outfit.
A couple examples:
Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 12:51 pm
sdrawkcab
XD You've probably finished your friend's avatar already, but > <
In general, for the face, you're usually good as long as it's expressive. And the level of detail and layering should roughly match the rest of the avatar. Like, a very complex avatar should have a 'complex' face where a lot of the bare skin is also covered up with details. And a simple one should have a simple, plain face. Then again, a lot of simple avatars only look cool because the face is very complex...
There are overall categories of things that can be added like eyebrows, eyelashes, a nose, mouth, mustache, beard, freckles, moles, dimples, scars, tattoos, shadow, forehead jewelry, third eye, nose rings, glasses, eye patches, dirt, blood, you name it. XD Anything to fill in the emptiness of the face~
I love the godina items as cheap eye shadow. And XD I used to love eleven eleven for being cheap, but dang, it's pricey now. *tries the combo* And~ I see what you did there. Nice face. ;3
whee Still working on the avatar. Run into some issues with color schemes that have limited items / hard to match. (Been bouncing between Dew Drop and Stormy Dew Drop items).
I use the Kitty March mouth / Godina makeup combination a ton for feminine avatars since it's easy and Godina items used to be (or are) released often in Kindred or Daily Stamp CIs in many different colors.
Going to see if this image works... e.e (One of my old avatars - not the one I'm working on.)
Wow eleven eleven certainly went up. Probably tied to the fact it is no loner a free item grant - wasn't it a freebie once?
Wow. This thread is older than I remembered. Anywho, I've been itching to write a mini guide on some item tips... but it dawned on me that it'd fit well into this guide. I'll update the images and some of the text as I go.
Edit; This thread was set up mainly as a guide based around "dream avatars" buuuuuut I'm gonna tone down the dream avatar talk since... that isn't as prevalent nowadays as it used to be
1/24/23 Edit:
thread goal: how to look stylish and avoid that phase of looking like a newbie. ... people don't really do dream avatars anymore... they moreso quest for individual items. So this thread is gonna switch from the goal of dream avatar... to the goal of dream items...
.... this thread is gonna be a mess for a bit
Thread summary: This topic will cover the basics of how to customize your avatar and how to get items. It'll also give a quick summary of various Gaian styles to help point you on the road of looking "stylish" asap and leaving that "newb" look behind. In the early days of Gaia, there were much fewer items available. Styles were more limited. And a lot of the popular (good-looking) items were super expensive because there were so few of them compared to the amount of users. People usually made one good outfit that they stuck with, usually called their "dream avatar." It often took months... even years to save up or find a seller. In some cases, with some items, that's still the case. However, there are usually a lot of alternatives you can obtain in lieu of the expensive items... orrr just to wear while you save up (quest) for your goal items.
... how to look stylish. a somewhat subjective thread, lol. don't worry, I'll keep this topic generic as I have for.... the majority of my years on Gaia. This'll be fun. >3
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