Lamma-gung asked me to explain how to make Avatars, which is what the pictures under peoples nicknames are in the forum.

I have already made a lot of these and Gung has/will put them in the profile section's avatar gallery.

So far there is:

• Chinese theme (15)
• Adventurous ladies (20)
• Drunkards (15)
• Zodiac chinese and western (40)
• Fantasy/Sci-fi (35)
• Thunderbirds (15)
• Kids/C-BeeBies (30)
• Wizards & Witches (20)

That's 190 to choose from plus Lamma-Gung's too, and probably more to come. You can use them from here:
http://www.lamma.com.hk/forum/profile.php?mode=editprofile

I will keep adding more, but if you want to make your own here's how....


BASICS : Making an avatar.


The avatars are measured in pixels (px) and in kilobytes (Kb). The pixels are the dimensions of the avatar graphic and the kilobytes measure the file size.

For this forum Avatars can be 100x100px in size with a maximum file size of 10Kb.



If you make them too wide or too long they will be squished to fit and look all distorted. If the file size is to big they will be rejected automatically by the website. At least I think that will happen, I'm not sure. Try it and see. If WebDog and Gung have not set the limits properly you will be able to make the message board go all wonky by adding stupidly big graphics. LOL.

OK so this is how you can get an avatar graphic if you are not going to draw and scan in your own. I am no good at explaining stuff usually so I will just make an Avatar right now and write down everything I do as I do it.

I will make the avatar in two stages. First getting something to work with then second (optionally) playing with it in a graphics program.

Are you all sitting comfortably like in "Watch with Mother"? ok lets begin.

STAGE 1 : Finding a graphic to work with.

I am going to use a search engine to find a suitable graphic so I need to think of a keyword to find the type of graphic I want.

I think I will make an "alien" avatar so I will try keywords like alien or space monster to see what comes up. First I need to go to a search engine that can find graphics and pictures. That's easy as I have one on my Hongkong Gateway Page. Click the link below and it will open in a new window.

http://www.web4uk.tv/gateway/portal_sta ... y=Hongkong

Next in the search engine bit, I click the "Pictures" radio button, type in Alien and click the little magnifying glass to start searching.

Now I'm looking at a page of graphics that have aliens amongst them (this is a good engine to find pics on). If you don't get pics you can use immediately try clicking any of the tiny Picsearch (1) etc. links that appear at the end of each of the graphics Brurb.

I will try clicking one now.

Now I'm looking at a page of graphics in a table. At the bottom there are links to tons more to look at. I will look at the next page by clicking NEXT.

OK I'm gunna pick this one from the next page.



The graphics displayed in my search engine are about 128x128px. If you don't want to use a Graphics program, and just grab it as is, if its square, you can as it will probably squish down and still look ok. Just check the size first to be sure its not too big a file. like over 10Kb or 10,000 bytes. To check the graphic put your mouse over it and click the RIGHT button. When the little menu pops up LEFT click properties. The graphic i chose above has these properties.

SIZE: 5281 (thats 5.2Kb)
Dimensions: 113 x 128 pixels.

Oops! Its not square. I guess I'll have to crop it in PhotoShop or something. If it was square and you are a lazy type, all you would need to do next would be to...

1/ click CANCEL to close the properties box
2/ right click your mouse over the graphic again
3/ this time choose "save picture as" from the menu
4/ save it to your PC

Those of you who aren't going to mess with the graphic in a graphics program can just go to your profile and try using the avatar now. If it's no good go get another one. To be honest, though, unless you spend ages finding a ready made graphic almost exactly the right size to use, it won't look really good. If possible get a graphics program to mess with it so it comes out better, or ask a friend to help you out. You can send it to me if you like and I'll make it look as good as I can.


STAGE 2 : Messing with the Graphic.

I use PhotoShop to mess with graphics but any graphics program will do.

For instance:
Download PhotoPlus 5 (6.79 Mb)

A fully-functional, professional quality, bitmapped graphics editor; features include powerful image export optimizer, editable text, comprehensive image enhancement, image export optimizer, image slicing & image maps, etc. Requires free on-line registration.


The first thing I want to do is get the original graphic not the little one displayed in the search engine, so I just LEFT click on it. When you click, usually the little graphic is still shown at the top of the next page that appears, and the original graphic is somewhere on the rest of the page in the bottom frame. Scroll down to find it if it is not right at the top already.

To get a copy of the original graphic just RIGHT click on it and save it to your hard disk.

This is the original graphic I'm now going to use.



This time the graphic is a GIF type file. I will have to change this before I start messing with it.

Right. I've now saved my graphic to my PC and fired up Photoshop and loaded the graphic.

The first thing I do is change it from an indexed color GIF to an RGB file. This is so I can adjust the levels properly if I need to. Next I'm going to crop it to get the bit of it i want. I'm going to crop it narrow and long, you will see why in a minute.

Now it looks like this...



As you can see it is much too big and not square so now I'll fix those things in two moves.

First I change the image size, I make sure the constrain proportions button is checked then change the width to 100 px. Now it looks like this..




It is still not square so next I change the canvass size. I make sure the existing image stays at the bottom of the canvass then change the canvass height to 100px to make it square.



So now it looks like this and it will almost certainly be under 10kb if you save it as a 30-40% jpg right now. So you're all done if you want to be. (I just checked it is 8278 bytes or 8.2Kb)

There are still a few things you can mess with though. This is what happens when you adjust
: Color-Balance : Hue-Saturation : Sharpness : Brightness-Contrast :


So now you have a usable avatar, but I like to be kind to Lamma-Gung and WebDog so I try to make my Avatar files as small as possible so the website works quicker for people with slow connections. This is called "Optimisation" and if you can "optimise" your graphics for web use, it makes a really big difference to the loading speed of the page, and the amount of bandwidth the site requires.

To make it smaller, I swap it back to index color GIF format.

If I can, I use an adaptive 16 color palette. The less colors the better. At worst I use a 32 color adaptive palette but never use more colors than 32 or you are probably better of with the JPG version. NOTE: Photographs are often better as JPG images and cartoons text and graphics with solid color areas are often best as GIF graphics. This is because of the different compression techniques each of them use but we shan't go into that because its really geeky.

OK I'll try it now and see how it looks. This is it below in 8 color GIF format



Well thats it. Not too much loss of quality (except the yellow eye went gray)and I managed to only use an 8 color palette which means it should be really small and fast loading. Let me check...

Hooray it is only 1.4Kb or 1426 bytes. That will load so fast you won't even have to wait a second.

So now I save it and go use it as an avatar on my MyLamma Profile page.

Easy-peasy. It normally takes about 5 minutes to do all this stuff even if you need to adjust color balance brightness and contrast.

If you want to make animated graphics thats another stage altogether. Maybe I will explain that another day if Lamma-Gung bullies me enough. Meanwhile you can go download CoffeeCup GIF Animator to practice with. It is here http://www.coffeecup.com/software/

So that's it. If you think it was "jolly good" of me to write all this geeky cods-wallop click here and go vote for K@ in the Cool ID competition straight away and you will probably win the Mark 6 next week. Also you will get to see what bbChriss looks like as a baldy as she will tear her hair out in frustration if I get more votes. LOL

He He


NOTE:
In case you didn't know you can change your avatar at any time on your profile page. There are also pre made Avatars available in the Gallery there, and I send some new ones up to Lamma Gung to add whenever I'm in the mood. Go see from time to time, it might save you messing about.

i'll love to try and follow yr instructions,
but i don't has a graphics program. alas!

Hi e,

Well follow the instructions in stage one and the first bit of stage two to get the original graphic and e-mail the graphic you choose to me and I'll fix it up and send it back.

Hows that?

Alternatively Download a graphics program off the net.

Download PhotoPlus 5 (6.79 Mb)

A fully-functional, professional quality, bitmapped graphics editor; features include powerful image export optimizer, editable text, comprehensive image enhancement, image export optimizer, image slicing & image maps, etc. Requires free on-line registration.


If your up for a Pro Program try

Adobe PhotoShop 7

Its a free trial version for x number of days. Long enough to make some avatars anyway.

If you don't fancy either of those you can try this "educational" site to find software on. It's worth a visit anyway.

thanks a bunch k@,
i'll try this and let u know how if i could manage it.

That's sad Gung,

I am not a graphics guru like you, I am just a makee-learnee

But I guess us cats have to stick together. Maybe "e" could detect the scent of Dog on you and got frightened off. Dogs are sometimes mean to cats. Richie Rat and Will Rogers may have been right after all.

Hey, I don't smell of Dog!

I admit to having had a delicious brunch with webdog and his lovely wife recently, but I've showered since then... at least once!

Anyway, webdog is a VERY CLEAN dog and doesn't smell at all, as he's a robot dog! Maybe a little oil odor, but definitely no dog smell!

He's also going to a mechanical check-up and oil change regularly, then through a car wash, coming out looking all shiny and sparkling, good as new!

Also, I can confirm that webdog has absolutely NO FLEAS!
That's because Sony's robo-pet experts can't make robotic fleas small enough yet...

I meant no disrespect to webDog, I'm certain webDog is a nice clean robotic dog who keeps his undercarriage well oiled.

ah-gung, as a slave to mr 3, i have to make sure if my master wishes to update his image regularly. in any case, loyalty is not for cats, but for slaves like me.

also, K@: fyi, mr 3 fears no dogs!

The venerable Mr 3. has yet to meet my wife.

1. the honourable mrs k@ is a dog???????
2. i'll ask mr 3 if he wants to fly to cheshire to meet mrs k@ when his royal highness recovers from his flu.

1. I am afraid so
2. It's ok I'll send her to you.

it seems you're rather keen on the idea of sending mrs k@ back to lamma.

I'd think she's rather keen on leaving the mischievous, troublesome Cheshire k@ herself, probably eager to run away and shout "Good riddance!" at him!

He has even spawned an entire litter of Avatar kittens recently! Just look at his new Underblurb!

Sweet e, could YOU imagine sharing your life with a Garfield-like cat like him? He's so unlike your master, the adorable Mr 3 in your Avatar!

I didn't put anything about kittens in my underblurb! Some one else did and I suspect Lamma Gung of this dasdardly deed. He is trying to make me look like a softy!

I shall be sending him a message shortly

Also, I sent you another avatar of Mr3 e, but it is not great as it was made from the old one which was a bit small to work with. Hope you got it anyway.