From Photo to Avatar: Before & After

Here's the before and after for my avatar project. Just for fun I used a picture of myself. I pretty much stuck to the guidelines I laid out in my sketch. I changed the skin color with a hue adjustment layer, changed size/shape of features and ears (basically stretched everything out and made it bigger) with Transform/Scale, adjusted lighting with Curves adjustment layer, changed the hair using a paint brush, and created some tattoos by tweaking a butterfly shaped paint brush.

Here's the "before" image:

And here's the "after" image:

Sketch for Avatar Project

Below are the basic steps I sketched out to turn my photo into an avatar image. I may end up deviating from some of what I've sketched out here depending on how things go once I'm in the process. As per usual, please click on the image to see it properly.

Chet Baker Book Cover Completed

Here's my completed design for my Chet Baker book cover, click to enlarge and get a proper look at it. I varied it slightly from my original sketch ideas, but not too much. I did a blend on the trumpet image on the back to get it to fade into the background, but I wonder if I might have faded it too much. I used the Custom Shape tool to get the musical notes to make the publisher's logo. I used Bevel & Emboss on the top line of text on the back to get it to stand out in a different way. I used Free Transform to turn to rotate the text to vertical for the spine.