From Scratch Userbars

I was told I could post this, so let's introduce what I mean by 'from scratch.' When I mean from scratch I mean everything's 100% made by you. Every single pixel was placed by you. No presets or the like. They aren't really hard to make, but some experience in pixelling will make this easier. I'm sort of a novice myself for such things, but I've had a bit of experience in pixel art (see my art thread or dA). The hyperlinked text are the images containing the current focus.

First off is to make the bar.
The bar I made is 350x18 pixels (this is at 200% zoom). The canvas is 350x96 (96 because Pokémon B/W style sprites are 96x96)

With a new layer on top of your bar, insert the desired Pokémon sprite (in my case it's a sprite I made myself) and move it to where you want it.


Next, choose how you want your colours to be. Mine's going to use the dominant colours in the sprite (the whites, greens, and blues) and make waves on the sides.

It's nothing special yet, but we'll get to making it pretty!

I made a frontal picture of Celestia next to the sprite, which is a personal thing I do. I used a new layer for this.

Shading is used here as well.

Now I'll get to her main element, which is fire (she'd be Fire/Psychic if she was a Pokémon). It's going to jet out from the blue end and stop before it hits the face.

I also darkened that side of the bar to make the fire stick out a bit more.

Now, back to the waves. I'm going to make them pretty and smooth into the colours around them. To do this, I take the first colour, set my opacity to 50%, and then start with the right of that colour (green side). Blue side is reversed.

Outline the base colour. Use the Eyedropper tool to select the colour you just made with the 50% opacity. Keeping it at 50%, outline the new colour. Repeat once more.

Take the second colour again (the one made originally with 50% opacity) and then do the same on top of the base colour.

Repeat this for the other colours (including the other side)


When both sides are done, do the same to the fire now, but don't blend inwards.


With the blending done, you can make a new layer and start adding a slight texture to it. For this, there's different ways to do this, and the look will vary.

The first way is to take your pencil tool, select black as your colour, and set the layer to 30% opacity. You then make a series of diagonal lines that slant this way: / There should be two pixels between the top pixels in the lines. The result should look something like this


Detailed zoom


A different method uses a new layer at 100% opacity. Do the exact same lines as in the first method, but make them a bright colour that sets it apart, like a bright yellow.

After doing so, swap back and forth between the main colours layer and the line layer as you take a colour via Eyedropper and set it 5 value down. Then colour the yellow according to the layer below. Make sure that the yellow layer IS LOCKED to prevent problems!


If you do it right, it should look like this


The border (the leftover black) can be coloured in with the base colours.


Almost done! Now to make a layer above the diagonal lines, change your current colour to white, and set your opacity to 20%. Make a white section like this (feel free to set opacity to 100% for a better view)


At 20%, it should looks something like this


The final part is to make the text. Make another new layer above the white shine layer, and make sure you have a phrase picked out. You can make the letters however you like but I prefer white with black outlines.


Place your text so that your letters are half on the shine and half off the shine. Or as close to the middle of the banner as possible. The big empty space I left is where I place my letters.

When you're happy, save it as a .png file for best results, but if you figured out how to fit an animated sprite onto the banner, save as a .gif file. Then upload it where ever so it's hosted and then you should be able to use it on forums!

Here's my finished userbar, by the way!


Tell me what you think of this tutorial because it took hours to write >.>

 

I forgot to mention- keep the Pokémon sprite as the top layer, or else it won't turn out right!

 

It's GIMP. Although Photoshop works too. If it has layers, it'll work.