Avatar Creation!

Good morning everyone! The past few days in Algonquin, IL have been very gloomy. I had a few hours to kill and relaxed a bit reading this months issue of Photoshop Layers Magazine. It has great step by step tutorials (some advanced than others) of everything to do with layers. Still working on the current CS4, I plan on upgrading shortly to CS5. Anyways. I came across this tutorial and thought it was super cool, so I gave it a try. Using a self portrait of myself. I created my avatar below.

Here are a few links that are similar to what I did.

http://www.webdesign.org/photoshop/photo-editing/na-vi-avatar-photo-manipulation-exclusive-tutorial.18015.html

http://inspiringpixel.com/tutorials/photoshop-tutorials/how-to-create-avatar-movie-poster-in-photoshop/292/

The main thing here after attempting this on a picture of myself is to get a straight facing picture. You do not want to have any weird angels. The first thing is to copy your eyes and lips on separate layers. Enhancing them to fit your style. After doing that you will need to convert your image to a blue hue using hue and saturation. My next advice would be is to get creative with the dodge and burn tool. I didn't not use a animal print layer or any type of pattern. Highlight the upper part of your cheek bones and burn the lower. I also added for effect the twilight looking effect by scattering just a normal brush.

I am very happy with the results. It was my first time trying this and think its extremely cool.