Avatar Guidelines

The following page gives an idea of what criteria you need to meet, to have your avatar accepted.

The first point to make is that it is really, really not hard to get an avatar accepted if you shoot for a 10-7. If you are getting rejected and it's not badly photoshopped, you are deliberately trying to do something without much avatar face, trying to make it look unlike an avatar face, or you're trying to do something at a weird angle.

The second point to make is that it's not necessarily about how good the design work is. The best photoshopping in the world can get rejected if the end result does not look like an avatar. Conversely, something that doesn't look that great but DOES look like an avatar, at least has a shot of being passed.

Below is a list of best to worst examples. 10 is ideal and will get accepted immediately. As the scale moves down, it's less likely to be accepted, with, as a rough example, a 5 being the cut off point.

You should not use this guide to say "My avatar looks like a 6 so you should have passed it! Look at all these 4's that you have passed!" If you think something is a 6 and I think it's a 4, tough. Don't aim to make a 6 then cry if I think it's a 4; aim to make a 10.

Since I have made this guide, the standards are increasing. You have no reason to shoot for anything less than a 7. You can see some old designs below which were accepted but will now be rejected. There is also list to find some comparisons of similar avatars; one which will pass and one which won't, so you can compare and contrast.

General tip for editing images - don't try and do the editing at the avatar size. Scale up the avatar to fit a larger image, do your editing, then resize it back down.

	10/10 An edited version of an original avatar. If there's nothing in it but avatar, it's going to get passed.
	9/10 Full face but face angle is a bit off and it's a bit grainy. Good colour matching.
	9/10 An example of how easy this can be. If you spend ages on an avatar and it gets rejected, look at this. This avatar is really nice and probably took hardly any time at all.
	9/10 This is basically the perfect "realistic style" avatar imo. Very clearly all avatar features but using a lot of real photo around it. The key point with photo realism style avatars - "can someone independent go through the list of avatars and find the one used?" For this one, in a couple of minutes I narrowed it down to image number 7, probably 7w12.jpg
	9/10 This is a great example of how you can make something look nothing like the style of our avatars, whilst clearly being one of our avatars. It has turned the cartoony look of our avs into photorealistic in style whilst still using a full avatar face.
	9/10 Very good asian avatar. Note, because we don't have many asian avatar is in game, I am a bit more generous with borderline asian avatars.
	8/10 Full face blended in really well but the colour of the face is very slightly off.
	8/10 This is an example of how to do a stylised photo well. Compare this to the similar style avatar rated 4 below and you see the issue I have... The 4/10 is better photoshopping but looks less like an avatar. I will add a section below to compare them.
	7/10 Good use of eyes and nose mask. Nearly there with the colour matching (face is a bit more orange than body).
	7/10 Clear avatar use but starting to look pretty realistic, so moving away from obviously being accepted. Full eyes and nose mask with good colour blend but still very clearly avatar features. The lack of added skin tones and textures keeps the avatar feel.
	6.5/10 Full face but the chin is virtually missing.
	6/10 If you want to cover most of the face, whatever is left showing needs to be all avatar.
	6/10 Very basic cutting out but the colours match fine and it's a whole head, so this passes fairly easily. Head is a bit too big.
	5.5/10 Pretty good blending in in terms of colouring but it's very washed out. It will always pass but you can easily just turn the contrast up a bit on this and / or put on a sharpen mask to make it look miles better.
	5.5/10 Very small and a bit pixelated. Face isn't as sharp as the head and body (needs a sharpen mask or the original needs softening). We're getting into the realm of "why are you designing it like this"? It's so, so easy to pick a square on picture, a big, clear face and copy on a good quality avatar. So why are you choosing to take a small, side on picture when it's far less likely to get accepted? That is your choice, so you have to accept that you need to do a better job to get it passed and / or it is less likely to get passed.
	5/10 Full face but the face points the wrong way compared to the head.
	5/10 Eyes and nose mask with no mouth. Cutting out at the top of the head / hair not great. The score is this low because it's ugly and because you can see the edge / shape of the avatar mask.
	5/10 Eyes and nose mask but the proportions are wrong. The area under the eyes is too big and the eyes are too small for the face.
	5/10 Side on views are hard to do because none of our avatars are side on. Obviously avatar has been used here but it's small and a bit grainy. Whether stuff like this gets accepted is going to fall a bit on a whim and my personal opinion.
	5/10 Clear face mask but the colour matching is way off. This might get rejected with a note to match the colours better.
	5/10 Clearly using avatar but it's a small face. A bit blurred. Only using eyes and nose. This is the absolute minimum you can get away with but again, don't aim for the minimum then complain if I disagree.
	4/10 I passed this avatar but more than likely it would be rejected now I have put this guide in place. This is a good example of "I can see you have used bits of avatar and it's really good photoshop work, but that isn't the point". At the end of the day, this could easily just be a stylised photo of a man. If you asked someone impartial to find the avatar pieces used for this face, they wouldn't be able to. Ultimately, it does not look like an avatar. If you shoot for this sort of style, there will be times when me and the customer / designer disagree on whether it looks enough like an avatar. Safest bet is to not design it like this in the first place.
	4/10 Compare this to the Pacquiao one above. They're kinda the same but not. This probably uses the same amount of avatar (eyes and nose) but the difference is that the avatar bits used in the Pacquiao one look more like an avatar.
	4/10 Uses avatar eyes nose and mouth but when combined, especially with lots of face lines and wrinkles, it looks nothing like our avatars.
	3/10 Eyes nose and mouth (I think) from an avatar, but the colour matching is off. The bottom of the nose also has a whopping great shadow on it, which makes it look stupid. This is a serious case of Lee Murray prosthetic face syndrome. See also example 2, example 3.
	3/10 Good looking graphically but absolutely nothing like any of our avatars.
	3/10 Has used bits of our avatar but here we've got an example of eyes just looking like black dots. This is is one of the main problems we have with submissions. People take an image which is small, cut out some avatar eyes and paste them on and they just look like black dots, because the designer is probably trying to edit it at the original avatar size, not scale it up, edit it then scale it back down. If they just look like black dots, you might as well just have used black dots.... I don't care if you actually used avatar bits, because it doesn't look like it. This mouth is fine though... That's clearly avatar, which helps. Blurry. Flying heads doesn't help.
	2/10 Full face mask but the face angle is all off, the colours are wrong and it's badly sized.
	2/10 Too small to tell what's going on (in the face).
	2/10 Loads of time and effort probably went into this. It probably uses avatar nose eyes and mouth. I have no idea because it doesn't look like an avatar at all.
	1/10 Clearly it's had work done on an original image but I don't even know if any of that work includes any of our avatars. I don't think that's an avatar nose or mouth. Maybe the eyes are.
	1/10 I don't even think this has any avatar in there.

Comparisons

	Tattoos
Clear pass	Just pass	Just rejected
Too many tattoos on the rejected one covers up most of the avatar work, making it too hard to see. The accepted avatar is a great example of how to take a a full face and "make it your own", as they might say on a shitty singing competition :) The "just pass" one uses all avatar features but the eyes nose and mouth look clearly plopped on, rather than really well blended in on the clear pass.

	Realism
Clear pass	Maybe just pass?	Honestly, not sure either way
	Just rejected
When it comes to realistic avatars, better work does not mean it's more likely to get passed and more than likely, it's the other way around. As mentioned, the rejected one was originally passed (as I did want to try and pass things that have clearly had a lot of time and effort spent on them), however, now I have explained that this does not look enough like an avatar, I hope people adjust their avatar submissions accordingly. If you asked someone random / nothing to do with this game, "do you recognise this guy?" then they wouldn't think twice about it just being a photo of a real person. To be obviously getting passed, you need the response to be a double take, followed by "that's not a real person, is it?"  The "not sure" one looks like it's made by the same person but it's not made quite as realistic in terms of skin tone. The eyes and mouth are also very slightly more avatary. The "just pass", I think the nose looks more avatary because it has less skin tones and textures added. From a distance it "could just be a photo of a guy", which is one of my criteria for rejection, so this is a tricky one. I have to set the line somewhere in terms of pass or rejected, so this is a good example of how there will always be an avatar that sits right on that line. If I move it to be more avatary, there will still be an avatar right on the line, It will just be one which is a bit more avatary than this one. The point is, try not to be anywhere near the line and you will make my job a lot easier. Specifically for realistic avatars, and I have told people this time and time again, DO NOT have the goal of taking avatar bits and making them look real. If you do that, then why bother using avatar bits? You might as well just have stylised a photo. Here are some examples of equally good looking avatars in the realistic style, but which are more clearly using avatars and therefore are clearly more likely to pass.

Old stuff that passed but probably wouldn't now

There are loads of avatars that would get rejected if submitted again. If yours gets rejected, don't waste your time sending me a list of avatars you don't like or that you think are shit. It won't make me accept your shit avatar.

Most of these were probably passed through exasperation. Generally if stuff has clearly had work on it, I wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt because I don't like people having wasted their time. However, you now have a clear guide, so if you waste your time now, it's your own fault :)

	Has had work done but I don't think it looks like our avatars.
	I don't even know what this projecting face is all about.
	This colour matching is just too far off.
	Black dot eyes syndrome.
	Deformed nose hole. Honestly, I'd probably just pass this because I couldn't be bothered explaining why it's failed but please will people stop submitting avatars with giant deformed nose shadows.
	Clearly using eyes and nose mask but it's too small and that makes it look too much like a real picture.
	I think it's just asking too much to get this to work at this angle. At the end of the day, this kinda just looks like dot eyes drawn on a photo.
	I was trying to be generous because of our lack of asian avatars but it's not good enough. It's blurry and doesn't look like an avatar.
	I passed this at the time because in my mind I thought "well, it doesn't look like a human, so I guess it must have avatar eyes nose and mouth on it". I do think it used avatar bits but it doesn't look like an avatar and it should not have been passed. It's like a crap example of why I wouldn't pass that really nice looking "realistic" avatar example above.
	It follows all the guidelines but just isn't well enough done. Again, I might just about pass this out of weariness but please try harder.
	Looks like an avatar from a different game. I don't know what I'd do if this appeared in terms of accepting / rejecting but this is basically the sort of thing that wastes my time having to ask "what is this from? which bits did you use?" etc. At the end of the day, you don't need to be this vaguely avatary when there are some really great examples of how to make a really good avatar, which is very clearly avatary.

And just a quick note to finish on "my avatar has been pending for ages".... Some people are nice about that, some aren't. If it's pending for ages, it's because it's not a clear pass and I like to keep going back to avatars to look with fresh eyes. A lot of the time, I also don't really wanna reject stuff if I know I'm going to get grief for "wasted time" or "inconsistency".

Now there's a clear guide in place, that's on you. If you want to wait and see, please just wait and see. If you want it cancelled so you can try again, PM me and I will cancel it. I will see about adding a feature so you can cancel your own pending avatars in the near future.

Update Jan '21

After receiving a load of animated gifs, I added this note;

NOTE - There is an absolute deluge of really long animated gif avatars and I don't like them, so please stop submitting them until I have accepted / rejected some, so you can see where the line is...
I don't want you guys to waste your time and I don't want to get into an argument about what is an isn't over the line again.... But essentially, people are picking the avatar face that looks the most human again (loads of them look like the same avatar is being used), and is making all these gifs look as human as possible again... As nice as anything looks, if it just looks like a gif of a real life dude, it's not going to get accepted. THEY ARE MEANT TO LOOK LIKE AVATARS, NOT REAL PEOPLE. Please keep these gifs SHORT and make sure they actually look like an avatar face. If they don't, then they won't get passed. Choose a more obviously avatar face. The less animation of the actual face the better... You MIGHT get passed if you have a moving mouth or eyes but it makes it less likely, because that stuff makes it look too real. All the stuff in the guide below.