How To Make Avi's/Sig's/Tables?

[Belle]

Hey. So I am back again after my long, long absense, and as usual, I am asking questions.

I was wondering how you guys make avatars, sig's, and tables. Do you have to have a special art program on the computer or something? I never really do digital-art, but (Not boasting or anything) I am skilled with pencil and paper, for my mother is an artist. I want to learn how to do these, so I dont have to nag you guys to do it for me Maybe once I get the hang of it I will make stuff for other people.
So how do you do it?

[Dawali Amara]

Hi! Yes, you need a program to make avatars and table images. I use photoshop, and a good free artwork program is called GIMP. Both can fix colors, put lyrics on images, and all kinds of stuff!

I generally go on the web and find a picture that I like, and make sure that the copyright is okay for me to use it, and then I tweak fur and eye colors to what I want it to be. It's nice to search for the species' latin name for good and proper hits; for avatar images for Dawali I always search for "Canis rufus" since that's what "Red wolf" is in latin.

For tables I just flip through sites like flickr and some of the sites listed on our resources page, and try and find images that suit the mood I want, and/or are just inspiring for a table in themselves. Sometimes I will have a particular quote in mind that I want to use for a table, and will go looking for an image in particular. Either way, I find an image, tweak colors that I like, throw some text on, or maybe just the character's name, and then upload it to a host.

I use Photobucket as a host, as it's free and quite reliable!

If you would like to get an introduction on how to do things in GIMP, here are some good guides:
GIMP help section in English
GIMP Tutorials overview
A site full of GIMP tutorials

[Belle]

Ahhh I see! Thanks so much! I am editing photo's this very second!
Thank you!

[Dawali Amara]

No problem!