Art Gackt Banner/Avas

[Megumi]

I was bored last night, so I started playing with Paint Shop, because I finally found out how to do that neato grid looking thing. My friend loves Gackt, and so I have a few pics of him on my computer. I've never heard any of his music, nor do I know much about him, but all the pictures of him are very artistic and make me want to do something with them- so this is what I came up with. I love the "empty windows," I was so proud that I came up with just the right phrase to go on it. Hopefully you get the allusion. Anyways, any comments, suggestions?

[Haze]

Neato!!! Those are really nice looking. I really like the effect you used with the eyes on all of them. That white-glow is very haunting. Good stuff. I love the grid effect. How do you do that? ^^ I kind of enjoy the simplicity of all of the avi's. They are clean and smooth.

I like the banner too. The font is perfect for the whole feel of things. I also like that you can just barely see a bit of texture to the background.

I can't really say much else other than an endless stream of compliments. So there you have it!

[Retribution]

The allusion (I'm guessing) is 'the eyes are the windows to the soul,' and his eyes look empty. Thus, I can at least conclude that he might not have a soul if the windows are empty.

In any event, the avatars are really good, but I don't like the one where the person's eyes are all black. It looks REALLY creepy, but maybe that's what you were going for. Good [B]j[/B] - [B]o[/B] - [B]b[/B].

[Megumi]

Thank you both!

And yes, that was the allusion. And the picture where Gackt's eyes were black was the original, the white eyes was the one I played with to make look creepy. I guess the picture was creepy to begin with...

To get the gridding effect, I found some tutorial, but I ended up doing different stuff than them, which may actually be harder, I dunno. I used Paint Shop 7, by the way, but the settings are usually pretty similar for most versions, I think.

So, on your image, make a new layer, make it completely white, then go to Effects>Texture Effects>Tiles. Switch it to square, tile angularity to 0, border to 1, and make size whatever you want. Put intensity to 100 elevation to 90, and hit okay, then make that layer a multiple layer. That's it.

I forget how to make it any other color than black- you'll have to try to figure that out yourself, until I get a chance to play around with it again. x.x There's probably several ways to do it, maybe "fill" tool, color replacer, or playing around with layer effects.