Welcome to Gaia! ::

For you, when drawing/creating/recreating an avatar?
I think everyone has different things that personally works for them. But I am sort of curious as to what everyone keeps in their mind when creating artwork. 4laugh

I hope this thread is okay sweatdrop Sorry if not.

What kind of stuff that person likes. If they really like anime, maybe they would be more satisfied with an anime-style avatar (consider the genre, whatever.). If I know what the person looks like, I try to mix a little bit of that into the drawing.

personally, i like to challenge myself to make an avatar look like a character or person, something that sort of transcends the little pixel paper doll even just a little bit.

sometimes it's really hard.

i remember to just let myself go and draw and let the lines speak for itself. a lot of my work consists of a lot of 'what-ifs' and seeing if different elements work with each other. when it comes to doing commissions for people, more often than not i'm pretty much winging it as i go along. i don't have a clear vision on what i think will work best on a particular person...but if i'm bumbling along i can carve out from my sketches something that i think will be an interesting representation of them. i use layers to my advantage since i draw in photoshop and stack sketches after sketches on top and seeing what comes up. i find that if i plan too much it tends to make everything feel pretty restricting and i get bored because of it.

another thing i do try is recreating the different items in a different way. i can only draw the same loli hair style for so long before getting bored of it that i like to try a new perspective on it. and since i'm either working off a pretty small pixel base or a written description, a lot of the items leave a lot of room for imagination.