ok, nice for a beginner

hehe, I used your second avi render as one of my first
anyway so if you're using renders then I suggest you do this for smudging:
-remember to sharpen the render
-only past in anything from the avi up to the hip
-paste the render onto a see-through background, duplicate the render (start with only 4 - you can increase it though)
-take the lowset render and take a brush set rate to 80, (try to use a brush with a lot of colour difference)
-brush that layer around the avi, don't forget to use ctrl z when you make a mistake, try to smudge it in all directions to the end of the avi
- do the same with the render above which you just smudged (rate 60), this time don't go to the far
- same as above
now remember to introduce some lightness and darkness into the avatar, use a raound blurred brush and just play around.... once done just blur it by going to gausing blur (do about 100x100) then turn the opacity of that layer down, you can also change the mode of that layer to "overlay", others work too

-do the same this time but with te light (white, sometimes other colours)
-rememer with those to usually turn down the opacity

- add a broder (ctrl a, right click, select, shrinh, 1px, ctrl i, take a brush and brush it black/white)
and text
enjoy the tips
also you can at then end make it brighter by creating a new layer above everything apart from the border, fill it with white, set the layer to overlay
you can do the same with colours but beware: never over do it (usually I use overlay 25ish on filters)
be sure to have the text close to the render and not too big or too samll
ps. sorry for the mistakes and don;t forget that this is a very quick, from heart said tut, there are other things you can do but that will probably be enough for the beginning
enjoy your time in gimp :wink: