For the past few years, I’ve been using a photograph for all of my online profiles. The photo was taken in 2015. While it was still a good representation of me, I was ready for a change and decided to go for a big change.
Since I liked the photo, I decided I would use it as the basis for creating a cartoon avatar. Very early in my CorelDRAW career, I had drawn a caricature of myself. It was OK, but I’m just not an artist who is good at that type of project. This time I decided to work with a company specializing in it. I selected the folks at Avatoon.
They offer different packages with the least expensive under $10. I went for the color package as I felt it was still a bargain if they delivered good artwork. The photo above (without the background) was supplied as part of my order.
Within a week or so they provided me a PNG file “proof” of what they created. I approved it and soon received a fully-vector Adobe Illustrator version of my avatar. Being a graphics guy, I did make a few very minor changes in CorelDRAW. Mostly it involved moving a few nodes around to clean up rough edges. In total, I spent about five minutes on that cleanup. I also changed the colors of my shirt to match the color scheme used on our online properties. That might have taken an additional fifteen minutes.
Once I had the avatar I wanted, it was a matter of exporting it to a PNG and uploading it on various online properties. I haven’t changed them all yet, but I have changed the most popular. Overall, I’m thrilled with my new profile and there is no doubt I’ll be using it to brand myself for a year or more.
I’m surprised you didn’t use any of the color gradient features in CorelDraw to even out the highlights on your face and hair.
I think I would have flattened the ears against the head some since yours don’t protrude THAT much.
I didn’t want it to be an exact replication of the photo, I wanted it to be a caricature. So I didn’t want to use any special fills or make other changes to make it life-like.