How to be funky .... A while back I posted about how I created my header image using BeFunky.com.

I had a bit of time on my hands so I decided to have a look at how to create a cartoon image using BeFunky. First up go to the BeFunky.com. Here's a look at the BeFunky website on April 2010.

To get started you need to click on the blue 'Get Started Free!' button on the menu at the top of the page.

When you do this you'll get to the main BeFunky image editing page. First thing you need to do is hit the Upload button and select 'Upload from PC'.

Then browse to the image that you want to make into a cartoon image. When you browse to the image that you want you'll see the upload window showing progress of the image upload.

Here's the original image I uploaded of Muhammed Ali:

When the image uploads successfully you'll see it inside the Be Funky website like this:

If you want to zoom in or out the toolbar is located on the right hand side of your screen. Here's an example of zooming into the original image of Muhammed Ali looks:

That's uploading and zooming in to you image taken care of. Now we will look at how to add effects to your image. On the left hand side of the page you'll see the be funky photo effects menu. It's very easy to add effects to your image just mess around with the different types of effects until you get the desired result. Here's how the charcoal effect looks for my image:

There's loads of other styles available too. Some examples are: Cartoonizer, Sketcher, Stenciler, Motion Picture and Pop Art. Some are free and some you must subscriber to Be Funky to use. When you choose an effect you can then format some of the settings to edit your image. To do this press the small cog button beside the desired effect. Here's an example of where I changed the colour and sketch detail of my Muhammed Ali image. You can see the setting pop up box in the image below.

When you achieve the desired effect on your image the last thing you need to do is save it. Press the Save button on the menu at the top right of the screen and select 'To Desktop' (see below).

Browse to where you want to save the image to and save it as a .jpg file. You'll see the save to deskop pop up like below and that's you done!

Here's the finished image. Obviously I didn't go into too much detail on changing the effects but it just goes tot show how easily you can create a cartoon image of someone in less than 5 minutes.

When I was writing this post I was playing about with Be Funky and here's another image I can up with using the Color Pinhole effect:

BeFunky.com is definitely one of my favourite free web apps.

I had an email today from Barry (have a look at Barry's personal site to see some of the projects he's involved in) about the caricature image I created for my header. I created the cartoon image of myself using befunky.com. BeFunky.com allows you to transform any image into multiple styles of artwork with the click of a button. There's no need to download any application as everything is done online and it's also done very quickly!

photo credit: Drew and Didi

After I created the cartoon image of myself I edited it in Photoshop to create the desired effects and also split the image into 2 pieces one for my header and one for my hand clasping over my nav bar.

What I've done is by no means brilliant but with a bit more work on Photoshop I'm sure you could come up with something very good. I did follow some youtube tutorials on creating a caricature image of myself but none of the outcomes looked anywhere near what I was able to produce using BeFunky.com in a couple of minutes.

It's great to get someone asking about something relating to something on my blog or indeed get any kind of feedback, as at least I know someone is having a look about on here

Updated: See a more in depth post on using be funky here.