Hello! No worries, the community is small. That means I can go into details with everyone. <3

Also, according to the poll, you're not the only "complete newbie", so yay! :D

I personally don't use GIMP. But I tried looking up some GIMP tutorials on LJ for you.

The first and most important thing is to create a 100x100 version of your image without screwing up the aspect ratio.

Here are two good descriptions on how to do that:

http://gimp-users.livejournal.com/365497.html?thread=1772985#t1772985

http://icon-tutorial.livejournal.com/11304221.html#comments

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any with pictures. :/ I hope you can follow those so you have a good icon base to start from. Aspect ratio is key.


Here's a tutorial that shows results from several steps and has hints on where to find some tools in gimp:

http://icon-tutorial.livejournal.com/11017182.html#cutid1



Here's the whole list of GIMP tutorials, if you want to browse:

http://icon-tutorial.livejournal.com/tag/program%3A%20gimp



Let me know if these were too basic/too advanced, and if I can help you out in any other way.