Hello everyone! I finally managed to fix my Photoshop, so I’ll do all my avatar requests as soon as I can.
But today, I have made a simple tutorial so that you all now how to turn yourself into avatars with Photoshop. Hope you find this tutorial useful, and have some fun! This is my first tutorial, so let me know if something is not clear. You can check the final result at the end of this post, so that you can see whether you like it or not.
With all this said, let’s start.
First of all, you must find a good picture, (from you, your friends, or maybe a celebrity you like). You must know you just can’t pick any picture, the photo must be
1. As big as possible. It is not easy to work with small photos, because the quality is not as good like in a big one.
2. Your eyes, forehead, and nose must be visible. These parts of the face are really important in the transformation, because there is a lot going on there. If they are not clear, the result might not be the best.
3. A portrait (not obligatory). The problem with pictures that show the rest of your body is that you are wearing “human” clothes, and it makes the final picture look a bit strange. However, this is just a detail.
4. Skin must be “clean”. Na’vi have really nice skin, no acne, no beard, no beauty spots. If there is any imperfection in your skin, try to fix it. You can use the clone stamp, or the corrector brush.


With this cleared up, we are ready to continue.

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I chose this picture of Angeline Jolie because it has good lighting, good size, and the most important parts of her face are visible.


Step one:
The first thing you’ll need to do is (obviously) make the skin look blue. To make this happen, you need to create four different layers, opacity set to 50%, and mode set to color.
You’ll pick a nice brush (feel free to pick the one you feel most comfortable with) and start coloring the face with four different colors. In the first layer, you can use #5d7a99, in the second one, #32576a, in the third one, #3c6986, and in the last layer you can use #54809b. (The order does not really matter)
However, every photo is different, so you may want to change the colors a bit. It is totally up to you

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Lastly, I created a new layer, with opacity set to 10%, and mode set to color, and with #472a50 I went through the lips, to give them a slight purple shade.
Step 2:
Well, in this step, you are supposed to change the ears. But, since Angelina is in a strange position, the na’vi ears did not looked very good. Still, here you have a photo of the ears in case you want to use them in the future. All you have to do, is select the ear you think look more appropriate in the picture, copy it, and then paste it on your photo. Then, with the move tool, enlarge or shrink the ears until they have a good size. If the color does not match the rest of the face, adjust the hue and saturation.

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Step 3:
The following thing to do is to enlarge the eyes. As you know, the Na’vi have bigger eyes than human’s, and also, there is more space between them. So, with the “polygonal lasso tool”, placed in the toolbar select the eyes (with eyelids and eyebrows included), copy the selection, and paste them. You will see there is a new layer with the eyes, separated from the rest of the face. Now pick the “move tool” from the tool bar and enlarge your selection until it reaches an appropriate size. Use the eraser tool to erase the sharp edges around the eyes, so that you get a smooth effect, and the eyes actually look as if they are part of the face. Make sure you don’t erase too much, remember the original eyes are in the layer underneath.



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Step 4:
Well, here comes the nose. Everyone complains about how hard is to make the nose, but I think I found an easier way. If you check other tutorials, you will see they modify the nose by using only the Liquefy Tool. Instead, I recommend you to follow these steps:
Duplicate the background layer.
Pick the “Corrector Brush” (Not sure if it is called that way, because my Photoshop is in Spanish. It’s the forth one on the left, starting from the top).
As you know, the most “light” part from the nose is in the middle of it. This is because it has a lot of relief. The na’vi have very snub noses, so we need to create that effect. With the Corrector Brush (Harsh: 17%), you’ll copy the lighting in the middle of the nose, and slowly spread it all over the nose. Untill it looks this way:

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You get it? See the difference between picture 2 and picture 3. The nose looks way more snub now.
If you don’t know how to use the Corrector Brush, what you have to do is press alt, and pick the zone you want to “clone”. Once you did that, start painting the sides of the nose, and you will see the result. Do this very carefully, please take your time.
And now we are going to use the Liquefy Tool. We will change the nose proportions. Usually, noses are wider at the bottom, and thinner on the top. Well, you might have noticed the Na’vi noses have the opposite proportions. The bottom is narrower while the top is wider. Something like this

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There are many ways of doing this with the liquefy tool, use the one you find best. Basically, all you have to do in shrink the bottom of the nose, and enlarge the top a bit. Every Na’vi has a particular nose, so it is up to you how exaggerated your nose will look.

Step 5:
Now, in order to make the nose a bit more realistic, we are going to use the dodge and the burn tool, with exposure set around to 5% and range set to midtones. You will try to “burn” the sides of the nose, and “dodge” the middle. Just like I did in the following picture:

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These are all slight changes, but they all make a difference. Take your time, little things like this show the line between an amateur job, and a professional one. Try to compare the first picture with the one we have seen so far, and see the progress. Step 4 and 5 might be the most difficult steps, so you can always retouch the nose if you feel it does not look nice.
Step 6:
Now, we need to select the Iris and the pupil of the eyes, in order to enlarge them. This step is very important in my opinion.. Try to repeat the process of step 3, pick the lasso tool (or any other selecting tool, choose the one you feel most comfortable with), select the Iris and the Pupil, copy the selection, paste it, and then enlarge it. Then erase any imperfection.

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Now, you will create a new layer, opacity set to 100%, and mode set to color. Paint with any brush your new wider eyes. (I suggest using this color #D6C334, but again, it is totally up to you). Your picture will look similar to this

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We are getting there, huh? Angelina jolie is starting to look like a Na’vi

Step 7:

Now, we got to the fun part. The stripes and the sparkles.
Firstly, I played a bit with the contrast and the saturation, just to make the picture slightly darker. I will explain why later.
You will now create a new layer, with the mode set to soft light. (Leave the opacity at 100%). The color we are going to use to draw the stripes is black. That’s it, bold black. Because, in the soft light mode, black looks like a really darker version of the color underneath –which is obviously, blue.- So, the result will be a very dark blue.
Pick a soft brush, and start drawing the stripes. Don’t worry if they don’t look to tidy, we are going to fix that later.
The stripes are different in every Avatar/Na’vi, so feel free to play around with them. Personally, I tend to draw the stripes pointing to the nose (like neytiri’s).

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As you see, these stripes look really untidy, and sharp. So we will use the Gaussian Blur tool. The radium I chose was 9.7 px, but a few pixels less could work just as well.

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You see? Now we have beautiful soft stripes. We are almost done.

And now we are going to do the sparkles…*yaaay*.
Creat a new layer (mode: normal, opacity:100%), choose really small brush, color: white, and just start to paint little dots randomly all over the face. If you are not sure how to draw the dots, you can use a photo as a reference, or, follow the stripes. If you choose to follow the stripes, make sure the dots don’t follow straight lines, use the stripes as a guide, but don’t follow them too closely. Be creative.
Remember I told you to turn the skin a bit darker? That’s just so that the sparkles stand out more. The sparkles look better with darker skin.

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Step 8:

This step is not obligatory. What we are going to do is add a little bit of effect to the white dots.
Go to the layer menu, then go to layer style, and then go to “exterior radiance”.
Again, this is up to you, I recommend using the following options.
fusion : trama
Opacity: 60%
Color: #84E0DD
Size: 6 px.
Shape : (The one before the last one)
Range: 36%

When you finish doing that, it will look similar to this.


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And that’s it! You just finished turning a human into a Na’vi! That’s all I can teach you for now. Add your own personal touches, play around with some colors, contrast, hue, saturation, have fun with it! Remember that small details make a big difference in the final result. Take your time; be as tidy as you can, take the work to use different brushes, different sizes and different opacity. This is just my way of doing this, but please, experience. Try to find other ways to do this job, easier or maybe more effective ways. I really hope you find this tutorial useful, if you have any questions, suggestions or comments, please, let me know.

Final result:


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Thanks for reading this!
Sophie.

PS: Special thanks to Toruk-Makto who gave me the idea!

Karma for you
Looks good, definately going to give it a go when i have some free time on my hands!

Toruk-Makto wrote:
Karma for you
Looks good, definately going to give it a go when i have some free time on my hands!

Looking foward to see that!

It probably wont be until next week, i have a lot of things to do this week for the site and in real life, but im definately going to give it a go!
To show my thanks as well i have given you a karma point, and will be giving you another because it took you some time to put this together =)

Am I ever going to stop thanking you?

Thanks! Really great tutoriar. At last we can make something with quality.

Kallabow wrote:
Thanks! Really great tutoriar. At last we can make something with quality.

That look's like a handy description, I'm gonna try it soon (first find a decent pic of myself...)
Though I might try something different for the tip of the nose, it's still a little human, and I love the cat noses.

Laapdance wrote:
Am I ever going to stop thanking you?

Again, its not needed, we should be thanking you =)

Atokirina mì taw wrote:
That look's like a handy description, I'm gonna try it soon (first find a decent pic of myself...)
Though I might try something different for the tip of the nose, it's still a little human, and I love the cat noses.

It's a very good idea, show me the final result when it's done!

I think the best way to edit something like that is to use the Liquify tool?

Awesome tutorial, laapdance. Really excellent. Karma for that

txen wrote:
Awesome tutorial, laapdance. Really excellent. Karma for that

Thank you so much!

Hehe, told you laapdance. All thanks is to you, and you definately deserve it

Toruk-Makto wrote:
Hehe, told you laapdance. All thanks is to you, and you definately deserve it

You are a hero!

Wow, very very cool Laapdance. Definete karma for this. I have now officially gotten my laapdance tutorial!

Laapdance wrote:
Toruk-Makto wrote:
Hehe, told you laapdance. All thanks is to you, and you definately deserve it

You are a hero!

Again, your the hero here =)

dbe wrote:
Wow, very very cool Laapdance. Definete karma for this. I have now officially gotten my laapdance tutorial!

LMAO

Very good work here. Whats your price lol?

Navikin wrote:
Very good work here. Whats your price lol?

You must give up your soul...
Kidding, there's no price

Wicked tutorial!

Wow - Laapdance - I wanted to jump on the bandwagon here and commend you for this incredible step by step avatar creation tutorial! I couldn't even begin to do something like this! It looks so professional.

Outstanding!

Thank you all very much! : D

Haha, to quote Will Smith

'Somehow, i told you so; just dont quite do it.' =P

Laapdance wrote:
Navikin wrote:
Very good work here. Whats your price lol?

You must give up your soul...
Kidding, there's no price

So you dont take commissions at the time?