Making a floating head (hackergotchi)
All these Planets have those floating heads around them (aka hackergotchi). Jeff gave me some instructions a few days ago, and I said I’ll write them up after having success with them – so I present the official jdub method. BTW, congratulations Jeff & Pia!
- Remove unnecessary bits out of the picture, so you just get the head
- Select by alpha (Layers, Channels & Paths dialog)
- Make a new layer
- Feather the selection (growing/shrinking before might be necessary)
- Fill with black – the black color thumbnail is mighty handy for this
- Then change the opacity of the channel, and move the shadow down to the right, to taste
I’ve found that the Drop Shadow plugin works okay as well, but its not as good as manual intervention. Estimated time for completing a head can be around ten minutes or so. Preferred size is 64×64, so scale it in The GIMP, otherwise replace 64 with 80 or so, depending on the head.
Update: Wouter Verhelst has another guide too: my head has graphics as well.
You can get free hackergotchi heads here: http://www.lakeland-printing.com/free-hackergotchi-heads-p-938.html
If you email them a picture, they will make you one for free.