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tip from pixelated (I also do this and strongly recomend it!)
Anyway, one thing that would be really nice to include in your tutorial - when you start, obviously zoom up a lot. Then go View>New View. Then in the new window, zoom back out to 100%. Keep this somewhere else on your screen out of the way. This is good so that when you make details when zoomed in, you don't have to keep on zooming back out to 100% to see what it looks like in normal view - so basically, you draw on the zoomed in, and you automatically see all the changes you just made on the 100% window
To start make a new transparent image and get out your pencil with the circle (01) (3x3)
Ok so the main part of the emote syle is....5,2,1,2,5 Here's what I mean:
Ok so now you have a nice circle time for some shading! the basics of shading is to make it go from very light in the top left corner to dark at the right hand edge. you can do this by using a radial gradient or use the pencil to shade it. here are the steps for both pencil and gradient:
This is the pencil methodOk so heres the gradient method:
This one's not so self explanitory. You start with the out line, take out the "fuzzy select tool" (press u) and click inside the circle, the inside should now be selcted. n\Now take the same shade of blue but make it much lighter, it should be in the bottom right hand corner of the color box. For the other color just take the same color as your base. Now take out the gradient tool (L) and change it to a radial gradient. Start near the right hand corner of the emote and drag down so it is just outside the lower left hand corner. The shading style is what really "defines" and emoticonists style so play around with it and fine your own way! don't jsut steal someone elses. These are just too get you started.
Now what brings the emote too life is the facial expression. These are what you can really play around with but heres a basic over view of the generic expressions.
Ok so tips on the face. Do this on a separate transparent paper. Use the same color as the frame and draw the face. Now duplicate the face and move the bottom down by 1 pixel. Now make the opacity on the bottom of the face to 20. Merge them down and you get the final product.
Happy-
Sad -
experiment with the facial expressions all you want but for now I'm going to give you a little lesson on tards. Tards may sound like a derogative term for someone with a mental disability but in the emote world it isn't really used as mean. All it is is someone who acts spastic or hyper. so there faces will ook something like this:
That's all I have for right now and keep in mind that these are a starting bored for you to get out there and make your own emotes, I will be making an animation tutorial in the near future. You can save these and open it in gimp, zoom in, and make sure you get what I'm doing! Good luck! :wink:
Thanks very much for sharing. 
