I guess that's an approval score of +2/-0 (100%).
Alright, even if you never asked for the tutorial, here it is so that you won't have to ask... (BTW, I'm analogizing each step to a step in fansubbing. XD)
1. "Raws" - Get the raw file.
Well, of course you need a raw file to work on... if you're going to create the sketch yourself, by all means, but... authenticity rules. I'll make another example using the Beast OP 1:11:26 instead (this time with Gregar, or [Gr/M])
Crop this image to a square size, and blur out anything not pertaining to the image.
2. "First Processing" - Use the Plasma rendering effect.
So far as I know, this feature is only available on GIMP. Correct me if I'm wrong. Create a new layer, name it "effects", and put the Plasma rendering in there. (Selectable in Filters/Render/Clouds/Plasma...) I'd suggest generating random seeds until you get one that has all the colours of the rainbow, because this creates the most spread-out effect.
Now blur it up a little. The plasma rendering effect is too sharp in my opinion, and blurring it up will smooth it out.
3. "Editing" - Choose a layer visualization option.
Basically, when you select the layer, open the Layer dialog (under Dialogues/Layer...) and you should see a "Normal" in the layer options, under "Mode". Change this to one of the more advanced options, such as "screen" or "divide". (You could use both if you want to make one of Colonel, as it's "screen divide".)
In this example, I used "Difference", which gives it a weird but nice-looking false-colour effect. (To me, it kinda makes it look almost 3-D as well.) If you want your work to be more clean-cut, I'd suggest not using this.
4. Make another layer under that to put another effect.
This layer is the one you're actually going to be drawing / creating your own design on. The background
must be "transparency" in order for it to work. Change the visualization option for this layer to one of the advanced options as well, but I'd suggest something in the "colour modification" category (hue, saturation, color, value)
5. "Typesetting" - Make your design!
This layer should be monochromatic, because the effect will most likely look the same for different colours anyway. (If it doesn't, then by all means use different colours. It might ruin the unity, though.) Select a colour, and play around with the effect and the colour until they both look good. (With my design, black is a good colour, and either Overlay, Grain Extract, or Saturation creates a nice effect.)
While designing this layer, you should turn all other layers off.
Here's the design for mine:
This is a full image, because I was too lazy to shrink it to thumbnail size -- it's already smaller than 50 KB anyway. The reason it looks so clean is because I used paths. (Stupid ImageShack... it doesn't support transparent PNG's. I had to upload this to Trap17 and hotlink it from there. Don't worry -- this is using the bandwidth
I have, so it's not illegal.)
Step 6: "Quality Check" - Look at everything!
See if your image is any good. Here's the final product for mine, depending on which visualization effect I used in step 5:
Overlay:
Grain Extract:
(This one makes his eye into more of a slit, but some people like that effect.)
Saturation:
(This one doesn't do much unless you look at it close-up.)
Step 7: "Encoding and Distribution"
Now, shrink the entire thing down to about 128 x 128 pixels (that's the size of my avatar that I uploaded.) as a PNG file, and use it as your avatar! Schweet...
...how was that for a detailed explanation? This one didn't turn out very well, mainly because I didn't spend as much attention looking at how much people can tell that it's [Gr/M].