The purpose of this tutorial is to show how to reverse-engineer an avatar.

Reverse-engineering is a technique where something is taken apart to glean insight how it was put together. Since it is impossible to edit a downloadable Comic Chat character file, the dreaded AVB, the goal for us is to find and take all the poses from an AVB file and make it into an AVS file for the purpose of building an avatar on the foundation of some one else's work.

Kinda sounds like stealing, doesn't it?

Table of Contents
Comic Avatar Concepts (GO HERE FIRST)
The Reverse-Engineering Technique
The Expression Preview Pane
Understanding Character Expressions and the Emotion Wheel
Finding all the Poses

The Avatar Image Ripping Process
Sizing Up the Preview Pane
Ripping the Social Poses
Ripping the Neutral Poses
Ripping the Emotion Poses

The Character Editor Overview
Verifying the Avatar Download URL
Importing the Ripped / Modified Images
Adding Additonal Poses & Emotions
Editing Your Character

References Sited
Useful Computer Programs
Avatar Related Links
Microsoft Chat Character Editor - Known Issues