That weirdo mod who writes all those huge posts that no one

[Vylash]

creepy avatar is creepy

[Chekhov MacGuffin]

creepy avatar is creepy

Says the person with Dahlia Hawthorne in their signature. 

[Akonyl]

it's a good lookin avatar though, where did you get the source pic/s from?

[Commi-Ninja]

it's a good lookin avatar though

^ That.

[kyuuketsuki]

hey... i read your posts....

well.... at least.... when i am actually discussing things with you...

[xpon]

hey... i read your posts....

well.... at least.... when i am actually discussing things with you...

WIN!.. this is the perfect excuses

PS: Nice avatar.

i looking the one with facing both .. but no luck..

btw.. checkov..
can you gave me the chapter names of the original picture.. both of them.....thanks

[ShiraKiryuu]

Nice new avatar Chekhov

[Chekhov MacGuffin]

it's a good lookin avatar though, where did you get the source pic/s from?

I'm having a lapse on the chapter Akai came from. The scan specifically is from a Chinese Akai fan who has the cleanest Akai scans I've seen. http://hi.baidu.com/silver1989/album/%D0%E3%D2%BB#/silver1989/album/%D0%E3%D2%BB/index/3. The style suggests red vs. black or thereabouts.
Okiya is from the DCTP scan of chapter 702 pg 15.
The glasses were freeform.

[Akonyl]

it's a good lookin avatar though, where did you get the source pic/s from?

I'm having a lapse on the chapter Akai came from. The scan specifically is from a Chinese Akai fan who has the cleanest Akai scans I've seen. http://hi.baidu.com/silver1989/album/%D0%E3%D2%BB#/silver1989/album/%D0%E3%D2%BB/index/3. The style suggests red vs. black or thereabouts.
Okiya is from the DCTP scan of chapter 702 pg 15.
The glasses were freeform.

those are some good freeform glasses then, if all you're using is MSpaint.

[Beastly]

Gorgeous sig

[Abs.]

Chek

You did that in MS Paint!? 

<3

[ShiraKiryuu]

Chek

You did that in MS Paint!?   :o

<3

Now that's what I call skill.

[nomemory]

Chek

You did that in MS Paint!?   :o

<3

Now that's what I call skill.

Agreed.

[Azu]

Chek

You did that in MS Paint!? 

<3

Now that's what I call skill.

Agreed.

Haha MTE.

[Chekhov MacGuffin]

Chek
You did that in MS Paint!?
<3

It's less difficult than you think it is because when the picture is resized later, the blockier details will become more refined, so you don't have to go nuts making everything sharp and pretty. It just takes time and patience to adjust the comped parts so they match each other in style, positioning, and angle. It was a slight problem here because the face angles didn't match exactly. Photoshop would make it a lot easier to rotate and slightly stretch various parts of the image to match. Maybe I should look into getting GIMP...

Spoiler: the image creation process, not that anyone would care, but if someone is a little bit masochistic and thinking about making an avatar in microsoft paint instead of a much nicer program, there may be useful info in here, but I doubt it.

>I chose to do the image in black and white because it would be easier to work with than color and it would look nicer and the pieces would match more easily.

>I made a screenshot of every reasonably sized picture of Okiya in the manga and flipped them all the to face the same way, so I could get an idea the variation and detail I had to work with. I then cross checked it with images of Akai from that Chinese fan I mentioned above since he/she cleaned the images already, and it would be one less thing to clean. (Kudos to him/her by the way. He/She is awesome for extensively cataloging cleaned pictures of Akai.)

>I picked the Akai image from the Chinese fan's selection that I liked best as the base, and picked my Okiya images that matched most closely. I tried to pick one of the smiley Akai images because for some reason people always say that Akai isn't as smiley as Okiya. I had plenty of happy Akais to choose from so it wasn't a problem. I almost went with sniping Akai since it is classic, but changed my mind last minute.

> I tried resizing and fitting a few of Okiya's hair styles to see how the hair would fall and make sure it would cover anything I didn't want it to cover - like the eyes, but it had to cover Akai's cheekbones. Basically I just erased everything but the hair, resized it, and dragged it over Akai. The hairstyle I liked best was comped on first and Akai's hair and beanie were removed. This wasn't too bad, although I had to make it a slight bit poofier which meant redrawing several locks of hair.

>I mentioned above the head positions didn't match exactly, so I had to play around with the position of the ear and transplant the top part of Okiya's ear onto Akai's because Akai's ear is amputated by his beanie. I got lazy here because I didn't try to match the line thickness difference.

>For some reason I was vaguely reminded of a male version of Vermouth at this stage. I think it was Akai's eyeshape with Okiya's hair.

>The glasses were done in a separate window by cutting out the rest of the face except the eyes and drawing lines on the face marking out where the middle of the glasses had to sit, the angle, and where the lenses had to start and end. I then freehanded the frames, checked to make sure the style and shape matched Okiya's, reshaped them slightly as needed, erased the guidelines and the face underneath to isolate the glasses, put them on the original face, and then added the bridge.

> I then replaced Akai's eye with Okiya's fox eye, but I honestly didn't like the effect because it made the image look too much like Okiya which wasn't the balance I was looking for. It however did prove the point to me that adding poofy blond/brown hair, glasses, and fox eyes turned Akai into Okiya.

>This whole time, I didn't bother much with the leftmost side of the image because that was the Akai half, but I readded/redrew parts of the beanie that I removed in the process, fiddled with the split line for a good forty-five minutes trying to make it not look like a helmet - and failed, and highlighted certain sections of the beanie more heavily so they would show up in the miniature sized image.

> Paint was not used to resize the image as it doesn't interpolate/scales images poorly. Instead I opened the image using microsoft preview which does do a good job of interpolation, shrank the window down to a small size, took a screenshot and pasted it back into paint.

> A few minor pixel adjustments were made on the small image to bring out more contrast in the eyes and make the hair a little less blocky. I also fixed the shoulders later.