It indeed does appear to be pretty easy
If it was easy, tell me all the steps to make his avatar :P
I used gimp.
I found a somewhat high resolution picture of an easy button with a white background. This one, specifically:
I then increased the canvas vertically so I could make a 1:1 crop while also containing the entire image. (avatars at max are 75x75 pixels, which is a 1:1 ratio)
I then, well, made a 1:1 crop surrounding the button
I added an alpha channel and used the wand tool to remove that white background. It wasn't perfect, but I was going to downsize the image so much so it wouldn't be noticeable.
After that, I scaled the image down to 75x75 pixels.
I then saved it as a .png so it would retain the transparency.
It may sound complicated, but really each step is pretty... er... easy. Each step only takes a few mouse clicks if you know what you're doing. I'd say it took me 5 minutes to make the avatar.
Poll