I'm A Cartoon!
Author: Lew Aarum Manalang

One of the things I love doing in the computer is making cartoonized photos out of digital camera shots. I first started making them during the summer of 2004. I was inspired after seeing Linkin Park's music video for the song "Breaking The Habit", which featured the band in Japanese, anime form. I thought it was the most artistic creation ever done for a music video since Tool's early to mid 1990's haunting computer-generated music videos.

In order to do so, I would first need a photo I would base my artwork on. I prefer using digital camera photos because they seem much clearer than a scanned one. As seen below, here are examples I did using the photos of my friend, Maria Christina Basubas, also known as Tinay, and my pen pal Kristen Bernardo, also known as Ten Ten.

What program did I use?
The program that I used to do so is MGI Photosuite SE....

You can download the program at Download.Com. The main reason why I used the MGI Photosuite SE is because it has the coloring book feature.
In order to get to it, you must open the program and a photo file(preferably between 640x480 or 800x600). Once the program is open, click on Fun in the bar. There will be a drag down menu. Once you get there, you have some choices.

The options you have are:
1.) Body Switch
2.) Cartoonize
3.) Coloring Book
4.) Oil Painting
5.) Splatter
6.) Mosaic
7.) Crystallize
8.) Posterize
9.) Emboss

After you do so, you can now fill in the colors using the 'flood fill'. However, you must make sure that there are no 'breaking lines'. Otherwise, the color would probably spill into another part of your base.

Tip::A great way to avoid this from happening would be to draw some lines around the outlines just to be sure. Enjoy!