Master the Favorite Techniques of Second Life's Top Avatar Snapshot Artists With This Sped-Up Vid

 
Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

If you have a little time this weekend, you may want to spend it watching the speed editing video above from SLer Dina Dinix. She's recordered her process editing a raw snapshot to hyper-polished perfection, and while it's not exactly a detailed tutorial there's a lot that you can learn if you want to master the processing techniques popular among many SL artists and avatar photographers.

There may be a lot to learn here, but given the speed at which it's all happening there are a few steps that might be easy to miss. With that in mind, I've got a few important timestamps you'll want to pay attention to:

0:13 

• The Clone tool is your best friend for any clipping issues.

0:17

• This section, starting with inverting colors, setting the layer to Vivid Light blending, using Suface Blur, desaturating, Overlaying and so on gets you a shading/contrast layer to make things pop.

0:32

• Some bad news: If you have the newest version of Photoshop, you won't have access to the Oil Paint filter. They've taken it out, which is a shame because it was very neat.

0:50

• Using a selected area to get a clean edge when you're hand shading is vital. Even a little bit of "coloring outside the lines" can completely ruin the effect.

1:00 

• The Pen tool's bezier curves are an easy way to add fine shading and highlights on areas that follow a simple curve.

2:15

• Those same curves are a much easier way to smooth out the more jagged, polygonal areas of an avatar (like the shoulders) than the Liquify tool, another popular choice.

2:26

• PSA: Always use ressources that you're allowed to use, like those from free stock images sites or things that you have bought that are specifically intended to be used for creative purposes. 

Of course there's a lot more to this video, so when you're watching do yourself a favor and don't be afraid to hit that pause button and go back. If you want to see more of Dina's speed edits of Second Life snapshots, don't miss her YouTube channel here.

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Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.