How to Create a Life-Like Avatar Face
Creating an avatar is a great way to maintain privacy but still show off your individual look. There are many great avatar makers available, but they feature characters that all look alike. These avatar makers also produce cartoon-like avatars, which may not be appropriate in all circumstances. Creating a life-like avatar will give you an edge in your online profile.
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Instructions
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FaceGen
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Go to FaceGen's website to download the Modeller program. The exact website is found in the Resources section below. Download the Free Version.
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Unzip the program, and install onto your system.
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Open FaceGen. If you installed in Programs, click on the Start button, select All Programs, and then find FaceGen.
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Change the gender. This tutorial features a woman. The controls go from Very Male to Very Female, with harsher or softer features. Select the age group. This model is in her 20s. Select the caricature effect. Play around with the controls to find something similar to your overall desire.
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Select the Shape tab at the top. Under Symmetric, slide the controls to alter the look. FaceGen offers a very detailed selection process. You may notice that some of the sliders operate in conjunction with each other. This is a result of FaceGen's intuitive function.
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Go to the Texture tab, and slide the controls as you'd like. It's a good idea to only work on the Symmetric controls, unless you desire to create a skewed feature, like a smaller eye.
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Select the Morph tab, and add expression to your model's face. You can choose between anger, fear, happiness, and surprise in varying degrees.
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Pan the image to face forward, by hovering over image with your mouse. Change angles by holding mouse and dragging.
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Save image. Go to File on the Menu bar, and select Save As. Save image as a .jpg.
PhotoShop
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Download a hair brush for PhotoShop from Deviant Art. Install brush by going to PhotoShop's file folder on your computer, and saving brush in the Presets folder.
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Open Adobe PhotoShop and open the saved model file by going to File and select Open.
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Press the Magic Wand and click on the black background color. You will see a marquee line around the background. Press Del on your keyboard to erase the background color. Press Ctrl + D to deselect the marquee line tool.
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Select the Brush from the tool bar. Click on the brushes tab at the top right, and select a star-burst brush. Star-burst brushes look like they are exploding. Start drawing hair. It will look cartoon-like at first. Create another layer and change the size of the brush to a smaller size. Change to a lighter color. Start painting more strands that will work like highlights on the hair. Continue creating more layers using different brush sizes and colors, to create more depth to the hair.
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Change brush type to the recently downloaded brushes. Go to Brush, click on the right arrow and select "gorjussHAIRpack01.abr" from the list. Confirm change, and go back to the brushes tab. Select brush 1800. Change the angle of the brush by inputting angle degree or dialing the XY axis to the right of the angle box. Paint hair in a new layer. Move layer to bottom of hair, but on top of model's face.
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Hide background image to view hair. It should look realistic.
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Right click on background and select Duplicate. Erase the first background layer. Select the white background with the Magic Wand, and erase, as in step three of this section.
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Create a new layer, and move to bottom of all the layers. Take a regular round brush and start to paint a shirt.
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Right click on this layer, and select Blending Options. Click on Gradient Overlay, and find a gradient color appropriate for a shirt. Then select Bevl and Emboss, and Texture. On Texture, add a preset texture to add dimension and interest. Change the scale to mimic a fabric look to the shirt.
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Add a new layer, and move to the bottom of the layers. Add a background color by clicking on the paint bucket. Your done.
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Tips & Warnings
You can download these programs for free, but PhotoShop is free only for a limited time. Afterwards, you should consider paying the full price. This effect can be done using PhotoShop-like program Gimp. Gimp is free to use.
Make sure to save your work constantly, especially in PhotoShop. PhotoShop has a history of crashing when you least expect it.
