It happens to all of us, don't deny. We get the latest NG news post from Tom and we try in vain to read what he has to say. We do it in vain because moments later we unleash our scratchy bitch selves onto our screens in a jealous rage over the cooler than cool pic that Tom has for an icon. As are all the BBS pics of the Administrators of this site, Tom's is custom made by JohnnyUtah in his usual steroid-spiked graphic novel style and it alone demands the respect of everyone on this site. The climate has come to the point that, if ever you see a profile picture like THAT, well that's a NG User to be feared and loved. Well gentlemen, let the conning begin.

Granted, you are the creator of your own profile pic, so it is entirely up to you want to be in keeping with the JohnnyUtah style of portrait, though I think that's one of the things that I think makes the badge what it is. (Note: There is one limitation to this and that is that you cannot use this picture for your BBS post since only your level icon is displayed there. That's the only drawback however)

There are three types of pictures we are aiming to create here. A Badge, a User Page Picture, and a Public Profile Image.

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1) Badge (Create this before you create the other two)

Download the meicon.fla (102kb) HERE to do it in flash (like it was meant to be done), or if you want to work in a drawing application (photoshop, MS Paint etc.) download the BACKGROUND IMAGE HERE and have your way with it.

For Flash Users.
So in creating your profile picture, you'll need a reference photo of you in the pose you want. Once you have that, import it to flash and put it in the layer put aside for it. I suggest offstage. Resize so that it's about twice as big as the stage. lock that layer. You can start your tracing over the picture using the layer above (by tracing, I don't mena rotoscoping, you should certain features follow some further advice to make it look right)

I'm sure JohnnyUtah used a tablet to draw these, and I have a tablet as well, but I settle for simple drawing with lines since my hands probably aren't as steady as his. Black Pencil, Size 1 for everything except for the torso and the hair that is not connected to the face (i.e bangs, side burns) which is size 2. Now I did not follow the style like I should have and realized too late that my head was far to boxy to emulate JU's style. The key is keep the the curves subtle and clean, getting the jaw right, and not letting the eye's or eyebrows get too powerful. Oh yea and big shoulders. I've provided both my picture and Tom's picture for reference. You can also keep the tone and brightness ratios the same even if you are a different skin color (just watch the color mixer to see the change in the brightness. Shape is more important here than shading, which you should use sparingly.

Once you are satisfied with the portrait, you can delete the photo of you, and you can resize it until it compares with the Tom picture. You can then move the new you into the frame until it looks good. Then go to to File>export image. Save it as a jpeg and make sure it matches the stage and not the minimum area required. Export it. Voila, that's your new 100 X 100 pixel Badge.

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2) User Page Picture
These next two are easy to do.
Open up a new .fla (or new photoshop doc) and have the stage size to be 212 (width) by 159 (height) which is the size of all User Page Pictures. Set the background color to #25272D which is the color of your userspace. Goto File>Import. import your badge jpeg and put it in the center of the stage. Now you can export like that. And that's your User Page Picture

Note: You can also resize it so that it is 159 pixels X 159 pixels with a little distortion. The cleanest way to resize it is to open your badge .fla and select your badge image (frame, portrait, and beams) and turn it into a movie clip. Then copy and paste it into your new file. Go into the movie clip and clean away all the excess drawing not in the frame so you can resize it properly. Then resize it so that it's fits in the middle. (159 pixels tall and wide, so there should be 26.5 pixels of background visible on either side of the badge image). Now that's clean!

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3) Public Profile Image

Keep your badge .fla open. but save it under a different name so you have two copies of the same thing. The procedure is simple on the flash side. Simply delete the Sun beams layer and the frame layer, and then change the background color to #FFB60E.

Now you have to resize it to 46x46 pixels and save it as a .gif
(I recommend using photoshop to do this since the flash .gif export is pretty bad quality, to do that just save the public image as a jpeg export of flash, open it in photoshop, and then do the resizing and converting into a gif.)
Now you have an awesome image to go along with your posts and pms and such.

There you have it, have fun making people think you're important. Enjoy!