(http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h61/LoomingWhisper/vamp-1.jpg)
Here's a picture of my avatar. Critique it please and don't go lightly on me cuz I'm 13. The pic is from MTG(Magic the Gathering), which I copied by hand with pencil and partially colored with PSP.
Also, I'm not sure how to make the pic smaller, I think I have to edit the original on my computer.
That's good! I recommend you color the whole thing! ;)
First thing I would suggest is halving the size of it.
Also, please don't use such a large graphic as this in your avatar. It is 400+ kb and the avatar shrinks only the size down to 60x60, it's still this large image but it's displayed at 60x60.
k, thx for the tip
Since avatars are quite small pictures, you need to have clear picture. Resizing big picture to size of 60x60 always makes it blurry. I suggest you use sharpen and curves tools in your psp while gradually making the image smaller (in PSP: image->resize).
After that it would be good to pixelate the image by hand, but I think you'll see quite an improvement even without that.
There was a good "mini-tutorial" about pixelating a larger sketch in some topic not long ago started by Penquinx (if I remember right).
Remember not to save over the original, or you'll probably have to scan it again.
Here's my avatar now
(http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h61/LoomingWhisper/avatarvamp.jpg%3Cbr%20/%3E)