Gull Gallery: Avatar Skins

I suppose I should start at the Beginning..
An avatar is a representation of you in cyberspace. It can be anything from a simple graphic, (jpeg, png, tga file) or animated gif. to a sophisticated three dimensional digital being that you can control and move around in a virtual simulated world.

An avatar can be anything you imagine from a bowl of soup to a fire breathing Dragon. I won't go into 3d modeling too much, but if you click on the title abave the picture of Chip midnight's torso mesh it will bring you to wiki's explanation of meshing, and will give you a better idea of 3d models and the platform in which they exist.
What I make are called skins. I use mesh templates designed for use within Second Life, (an online virtual world, or Metaverse) and I sell them on SLX (Second Life Marketplace as well as on my own sim called Gothica Skins.

In world, as in the marketplace, the commerce is global and the currency is known as Lindens ~so $ look like this L$s.
lindens are bought sold and traded just like any other market place in the world, and their exchange is known as the Lindex.
There is no actual conversion until Lindens are cashed out through something like Paypal.
Avatar skins can be created in a multitude of photo enhancing or manipulating software that allows you to work with layers.
I work primarily in Adobe Photoshop & Gimp, but I also fall back on Corel and a simple 3d modeling software called Av Painter.

Chip's Texture maps are great for matching up the seams when overlaying, but for the purpose of skins, I use baked textures such as these, that are free downloads.

I take my own renders, (hand painted layers) and overlay them to form something that looks like this

I piece the layers together, touch up the seams in a 3d modeling software called Av paint, and then upload the final textures in tga format to Second Life and viola!