Forums → Art, Music, and Writing → How to: Creating An Armatar

I've seen the great armatars made by the community for the random contests Carlie hosts. I'm posting this guide so you can expand your knowledge of Graphic Arts and GIMP, AND post great armatars for the contests.

Introduction
This tutorial will be using GIMP, a freeware program you can find here. If you have any questions or concerns about the program, you can ask in this thread.

This guide will be showing you how to make a unique Armatar for AG, so that you can submit it in the current contest, or the next one. I ask kindly that you do NOT copy the exact image I will be making in this guide. It's only supposed to be an example; nothing more.

Table of Contents:
Painting & Background
Effects
Touch-ups/Submitting

Painting & Background
Before we start painting our image, we need a new composition. Click File > New, and set the Width/Height to 500X500. Click the Paint Brush tool in the toolbox, the brush should be a standard circle.

Pick the color Green, and draw a half circle on the image, (a hill) then color it in. After this, pick a brown color and color in half of the "hill". Now it should look like this. Note: Later, I added another small hill to the image, you can either follow this or not.

Choose the color green and pick a line brush. *You can disregard this step if you dislike the outcome.* Draw random lines through the brown patch.

Now we need a background. Make a new layer, a fill it with a turquoise color. Then, pick the gradient tool and drag it from the top of the hill, to the top of the canvas. It should look like this:

Now, grab the brush tool again, and pick a dark green color. Draw a bent line from the top of the hill, then add a yellow circle on it, then in the middle of the yellow circle, add a smaller brown circle.

Finally, add some clouds.

Effects
We've got our image painted, but it looks a little dull. Go to filters > Artistic > Cartoon. Mess around the settings until you find something you like. You're also welcome to try any other filter there, experiment.

Touch-Ups/Submitting
It looks good. Usually after I completed an Armatar I look over the image and I see if there is any mistakes, or if I can improve it.

Get the brush tool and pick a line brush, green, and just add some grass.

Goto File > Save As, and save it as a .PNG file. Upload the image to www.tinypic.com and post it in the contest thread.

Congratulations! You made an armatar! Good luck on your future ones!