Avatar Backstories

[Guest]

There's been a lot of nifty new avs lately, so I thought now would be a good time to go behind the pixels. What exactly is your av? Did you find it online or make it yourself? Have you altered it from the original? Is this the same av you use on all the forums/chatrooms? Is your current av your first, or did it replace an older one? Does your av go with your screen name? Why did you choose it? Most importantly, what twisted, deranged shards of your mind are revealed in your av?

It's a little embarrassing, but the inspiration for my screen alias, and subsequently my avatar, came from the mediocre 80's Chevy Chase flick Fletch Lives (I think). Fletch, the undercover reporter with dozens of aliases, is on an airliner when the pleasant, if dimwitted yound woman seated next to him asks him his name. "Nostradamus" was his snappy reply, to which she responds "Oh! I love your school, Mr. Notre Dame!". Ah-ha-ha. (The lass wasn't entirely incorrect; Nostradamus was born Michel de Notredame) Not the greatest comedy ever, I know, but I wanted an alias that I could easily remember, yet had virtually no connection to my true identity (Clark Kent).

As for the picture itself, I found it at http://www.nostradamus-repository.org. It was a statue in Salon titled "Monument to the Spirit of Nostradamus" which was destroyed by an errant truck in a storm. It has since been replaced by a huge bat wing. Go figure. Is it just me or does that statue look like a modern day NBA player?

Anyway, I croppped the pic to fit the forum and later used my crappy old Windows Paint to add the Menacing Black Cape of the Astrologer (TM). I'm not sure what my av says about me, but it looks cool.

[Nostradamus]

Grrr! I thought the log in problems were ancient history!

Actually, I can probably prevent this in future by checking before I post; I can always log in again...

Well there's my avatar, actually a department store mannequin

[starbug]

As a person who is crap at all things technological, I do not have an Avatar.

But I'd like one

How do I do it?

[Megs]

Well, mine is rather boring. I had to have my husband help me with it, b/c I have never had an avatar before. I am a huge Madonna fan, so I looked for a cool pic of her. My husband cropped it to fit it in. This pic is from the Open Your Heart video, I believe. I wanted a pic of her that wasn't so obvious. I wanted people to guess who is was.

It was a choice between that, or a screen shot of the scene in Dirty Dancing where Johnny lifts Baby up in the final dance scene. A very tough choice.

My screen name is a play on my real name, Megan. I had a friend who would add an "s" to everyone's name. Hence, "Megs". As you can see, I am not very original.

[KrokRos]

Haha... I've had so many by now. I can never deside. First I had a caricature of Ally McBeal which I found when I looked around for a cool pic to use here. Then not very long ago I had one of my own manga-drawings.
Now, if I haven't forgot it and changed already I have a pic of myself from the Medieval Week on Gotland.

Accually I'm not satisfied with this one either so maybe I'll find a better one soon.

[dTheater]

My avatar is Calvin and Hobbes dancing. I don't know why. It could've been one of a million things, but it's Calvin & Hobbes. It will probably change because I change constantly. It was originally a picture of my cat. I didn't even know what an avatar was before I put it up.

And that's the E! True Hollywood Story of my avatar.

[K-man]

Hey, great post/idea. My avatar is none other than Fred Flintstone's 'Martian conscience' THE GREAT GAZOO! I must be getting old because I can't really recite all the details about him. Truth be told he wasn't my first choice but it's the first one I could get to fit. Actually I hadn't the slightest who he was but when I was in college I once rec'd. a particularly horrible haircut and some friends began calling me Gazoo since they said I looked just like him. (helmet-head) It was only years later that I finally got the joke when I saw the infamous martrian on an episode of the Flintstones. So until I can figure out more about these avatar things I guess he'll have to do.

[ClarenceWorley]

Not really much to tell about mine. I used the South Park Studio* to create the sprite, scaled it by 50% and added the MSCL logo. I then animated it, with it consisting of 3 frames. As with most things I do, I'm still not entirely happy with it, and may alter/replace it soon.

* http://southpark.gamesweb.com/flash/spstudio.html

Then not very long ago I had one of my own manga-drawings.

I always thought your former avatar was pretty cool, and am impressed that it was your own creation.

[Nostradamus]

Wouldn't you know it? There's been academic papers written about this topic! This one was written about visual chat rooms, but many of the same concepts apply to our own humble forum. Just remember Freud's caveat for psychoanalysis: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

http://www.rider.edu/users/suler/psycyber/psyav.html

Starbug: I tried to think of a simple way to explain the avatar creation process, but I just make it seem worse than it really is. Try to get a nerdy friend to show you how, or failing that, look at one of the zillions of free ready-made avatar collections on the 'web.

Megs: That 's' makes you seem British; I often confuse you with Debs! Your av seems quite unique to me, though I confess I would never have guessed Madonna

KrokRos: Ah, a well-dressed lady holding a primitive implement of destruction... that's class! In a wierd coincidence, you are the fourth person I know of to express an interest in both Anime and historical re-creation. Makes you wonder if there's a connection

dT, Km, and CW: You can't go wrong with classic toons. I wish I had a big framed poster of Spaceman Spiff at the controls of his red spaceship, his teeth clenched as he crash lands on yet another alien planet.
IS THIS THE END?!!!

[dTheater]

dT, Km, and CW: You can't go wrong with classic toons. I wish I had a big framed poster of Spaceman Spiff at the controls of his red spaceship, his teeth clenched as he crash lands on yet another alien planet.
IS THIS THE END?!!!

That gives me an idea for a new avatar...

Speaking of Hobbes and The Great Gazoo...I ran across this comic strip:

[starbug]

Nostradamus: cool - I didn't even know these galleries existed... I'm off to the google site now.

And I LOVE Calvin & Hobbes - don't even get me started on it... first read it when aged about 11 on a visit to the USA - now, thankfully, all books are readily available over here.
I'm deeply jealous of your avatar dTheatre

[starbug]

It worked!

Although it's not as big as everyone else's...

[Nostradamus]

Starbug: You mean my advice actually helped you?!! Shocking! Well, since it worked out ok, I'll risk a little more .

The av galleries have mostly small pics because some forums and chatrooms aren't as spacious as this one. If you want to try something bigger, you can use Windows Paint to crop large images into the MSCL.com limits (150 pixels tall by 100 pixels wide). There's also a limit to the size of the avatar's file, in this case 10,240 bytes. In Paint, click Image then Attributes to see both the dimensions and file size of a picture. If the file is too big, you can try a simpler image, a smaller one, or convert a color pic to black and white. It would take too long to explain the cropping process here, but if you read the Paint help files and play with the image you might figure it out on your own. Just remember to save the cropped picture under a new name so you don't ruin the original. You can do all this with a photo editor, but frankly those programs are so complex they scare me .

On the other hand, you might just want to keep the av you have now. I can't say why, but Cheerios suit you! Maybe it's their legendary wholesome goodness...

[starbug]

Nostradamus; I tried, but I'm afraid it was all too much. My basic aim is to keep the cheerios (yeah, I think they suit me too ) and make it bigger. But the pictures on the Gen. Mills sites are way too big and I just don't have the know-how. I tried in paint to stretch my picture but it didn't work...
*sigh*

But I like my picture anyway. It's because one of my earliest memories is sitting in my grandmother's house as a small child (about 4 I think) in the USA watching early morning cartoons munching cheerios. Sometimes with, sometimes without, milk. Complete satisfaction - I could have sat there for hours...
Shamefully, the true original cheerios are not available in the UK (only the inferior honey nut and multigrain varieties) and are made by Nestle instead. It is my next mission to pressure said company into marketing the original and best here in the UK.

That, and my MSCL DVD's, and my life will be complete...

[starbug]

OK, so I just figured it out... I stupidly assumed you'd be able to drag and stretch simply by holding your mouse down and pulling. So wrong.

But I got there in the end

Resolution or whatnot lost a bit, but hey, you can't have it all

Cheers!