Welcome to Gaia! ::

1. Pick a Base

Your road to owning a shiny new Squiddle begins here. Without a base, you'd just have a puddle of brightly colored bits and goo. And that's no fun. The bases are all the same except for the position of the Squiddle's arms. Try and pick something that'll help convey the personality you'll be going for. A shy Squiddle with its arms down, clutched close to its body? An eager Squiddle, waving at all who pass? A deranged Squiddle, arms outstretched and flailing? When you order, you simply specify A. B. or C.




2. Pick a Color

The next step is to decide what color your Squiddle is going to be. You can do one of several things. You can use the paint program of your choice to give me a hexadecimal or RGB value for a color you like. You can send me a link to a PhotoBucket or ImageShack hosted image, and ask me to match your Squiddle to said photo's colors (I will ONLY accept PhotoBucket or ImageShack links. DO NOT disguise or shorten your link in any manner when sending it to me. This is for my own protection. I don't want to open a link that'll try and harvest my Gaia password in some sneaky manner or another. No, I don't trust you. Don't ask.) Or, you can simply say "neon green" or "violet" or "soft baby blue" and I'll do my best to come up with something that looks nice in that regard.




3. Mix-n-Match Mouths with Eyes
Once you have a color in mind, it's time to give your Squiddle a personality. For fun, don't just stick with the combinations below - Let's say you like eye-style A, and mouth-style C. Or, eye-style F and mouth-style B. Go ahead and be creative - what emotions your Squiddle is allowed to convey are completely up to you.




4. Name your Squiddle
Finally, you have to come up with some moniker by which to refer to your Squiddle. You can't just call him "Hey, you!" or "Yeah, ugly one!" (well, you can if you really want to, but I don't suggest it. Squiddles have a nasty, venomous bite. It'll kill you in five seconds flat. I should know. They're always gnawing on me, pesky things). The only thing I request is that you keep your Squiddle's name under 12 characters. Any longer than that, and it'll start to look wonky.

For an idea of how your name text will look, have a peek at Glee!*, my Squiddle, on the very first post. Yes, the pink one. Don't be fooled by her sweet appearances. She isn't sane.

(If you want, you can specify something else for the text. Just mention it in the "Name" section of your order form, with some details describing more or less how you'd like the text to look. Please keep in mind that my collection of fonts is limited, and I will not go about downloading any font you wish. As such, keep your text modifications limited to color, formatting, and wording.)

1. Be considerate with your colors!
If you want a white, yellow, or some other impossibly light colored Squiddle, keep in mind that I may have to make it a little darker in order for the gradient-type shading to work properly. Darker colors work best when ordering Squiddles. I'm not saying that I won't make light colored Squiddles, though. I'm only saying that I might have to pull a few visual tricks to get them to look right.

2. Keep your Squiddle Safe!
All of these images are hosted on my PhotoBucket account. That means that my bandwidth can be exceeded at any given moment without warning. If you have your Squiddle saved to your hard drive, you can easily upload it to some other hosting in the event that mine goes down. (Actually, the polite thing to do would be to conserve my bandwidth and upload your Squiddle to your own hosting right off the bat.

3. Enable your PMs! (THIS ONE'S IMPORTANT!)
I cannot send you your Squiddle if I can't PM you. This is becoming a fairly common problem - someone orders a Squiddle, and then I have to jump through hoops to try and contact them because they don't accept private messages. So, please, if you order, either enable your PMs, or, if you really can't stand receiving private messages, at least give me some other manner by which I can contact you. I have an AIM screen name that I will provide upon request.

4. I use an "#FFFFFF (white) to Transparent" gradient for gloss on these Squiddles.
As such, if you specify a hexadecimal/RGB value for your base Squiddle color, please be aware that the areas affected by the gloss will differ (look lighter) from your chosen color value. Also, the shading on the tail will be darker than your chosen color. It's shading. It's supposed to be. For more predictable results, again, choose somewhat darker, less pure colors. Pure RGB values, such as #FF0000, #00FF00, and #0000FF tend to come out very bright (If you like bright, go for it).


5. No, seriously - what's a Squiddle?
Squiddle is just a funny way of spelling "squirrel", so that when you say it out loud, you sound a little like Natasha, from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

6. Which software do you use to make your graphics?
I use Inkscape almost exclusively. On the rare occasion that I don't use Inkscape, I'll use Gimp. Both are free, open source programs, and both run beautifully in Linux. This is important, as I would not touch Windows with a ten foot pole fastened to the end of a twenty foot pole and secured to a conga line of forty nitrile-clad lab workers supported by an intricate, five-mile-long pully system (even if the ropes I had to touch to operate said pully system were coated in microscopic, bacteria-stabbing particles and smelled like mint)..

If you want to place a link to my shop in your shop, and would like me to do the same, let me know. You can either use your adopted Squiddle as the banner, and link like this:



Or, you can use these banners:







Or, you can use these 88x31 buttons:

That's exactly what I say.

eek