AFFILIATE BUTTON TUTORIAL
Here's a guide to making affiliate banners for your site, comic, etc. This tutorial is for GIMP users only. If you don't have GIMP, there's a guide on downloading it
here.
First, open a document that is either 88 x 31 (normal button size) or 88 x 16 (miniature size). I'm going to go with normal size for this tutorial. The first thing I do is pick a basic color scheme by choosing a background color. I'll go ahead and make a purple button for this tutorial. Here's what I have right now.
Typically, for a simple Pokemon site button, the only image is a sprite of some sort. Sometimes, you can incorporate an anime image instead. For this button, I'm going to do both. The Pokemon I'm using is going to be Butterfree. I'm going to place the anime image in the background by creating a new layer, and pasting it there.
Once you have pasted the image on, use the magic wand tool to remove the white space (be sure you have selected feathered edges in the tool options) by clicking it and dragging it off screen, then click again to delete it. Now, this is what you should have.
Now, make the layer slightly transparent by adusting the opacity in the layer tab (shown above) Select the layer, and then start moving the bar next to "Opacity" to the left. Here's what it should look like, or similar to:
It's time to add the sprite. Create another new layer, and place the sprite (in this case, Butterfree) in a suitable place. Then, use the magic wand tool to remove the white (sometimes black) space around the sprite. Be sure that for pixel images, you DON'T have the "feathered edges" option selected, it messes up the sprite. If the outline of the sprite is the same color as the space around it, simply go back to the site where you got it, and press "Print Screen" on your keyboard. Then, you can paste the whole image of the site there, and crop the sprite out of that. Now you have this:
Now, time for the text. On affiliate banners, it is obviously best to use small text. In this case, there's really only room for the initials. Pick a font and color you like, and slap them in there. I'm using the space with the transparent Butterfree in the background.
Now, add a border (if you don't know how to add borders, check the
basic banner guide) And you're done with your first affiliate button!
