who has or had the coolest avatar? [Archive]

rainman::|:|

May 4, 2002, 12:49 PM

Originally posted by mc68k

I'd have to go with Beej's smoking pr0n 'tars as well. Those make me :) every time I see them.

Rower's is pretty damn cool too.

The hardcore corn one is my favorite... but bambi is a close second...

always kinda wondered what they were smoking ;)

I like eyelikeart's as well... and krossfyter's new one is nice, i love the colors...

pnw

mc68k

May 4, 2002, 12:50 PM

Originally posted by jefhatfield

i could never make out beej's avatar

what is it? It's a smoking fawn (Bambi) which rhymes with pr0n. I guess he's got some sort of theme going— corn, pr0n, and fawn. What's next, swan? I liked the animated smoke on the smoking corn.

God only knows. :rolleyes:

mymemory

May 4, 2002, 12:59 PM

Mine is the best because it talks about me.

jefhatfield

May 4, 2002, 01:02 PM

Originally posted by mymemory
Mine is the best because it talks about me.

that is so cool...good job, dude!

Hemingray

May 4, 2002, 01:09 PM

Originally posted by teabgs
I'm gonna have to go with all the ones Dukestreet made and Hemingray's. I like that one a lot. Simple, elegant, and to the point.

Hehe, thanks man! :)

I also beej's smoking Bambi. :D

blackpeter

May 4, 2002, 01:20 PM

I vote Rower. Simple. Elegant. It's nice to look at without being distracting.

Rower_CPU

May 4, 2002, 01:38 PM

Thanks for the votes y'all.

I feel mine's getting kind of stale, since I've had it for a while now...

I'm going to try an update here soon, but I hope I don't ruin it!

Geert

May 4, 2002, 01:44 PM

Great thread.

First of all, I like to say that all 'tars are great, because it shows how creative us macusers are.
+ I guess that a lot of avatars are somewhat the owners favorite.

But if I have to give grades, here goes:
Ensign, Dukestreet, Jefhatfield, Rower.
4, 3, 2 and 1.

My favorite is Rower.

eyelikeart

May 4, 2002, 01:49 PM

I always thought the Samuel L Jackson was the best....he he he... :p

I've been brainstorming to come up with something new for myself...still am not sure though :confused:

jelloshotsrule

May 4, 2002, 01:56 PM

i never got to see the sam jackson eating the burger one...

too bad i missed it. that sounds the best to me though.

perhaps a dumb question but... what do people use to make theirs? they are just animated gifs or what? which program is best...

eyelikeart

May 4, 2002, 02:02 PM

Originally posted by jelloshotsrule
perhaps a dumb question but... what do people use to make theirs? they are just animated gifs or what? which program is best...

I used photoshop to make mine from an icon...simple compuserve gif... ;)

jelloshotsrule

May 4, 2002, 02:06 PM

Originally posted by eyelikeart
I used photoshop to make mine from an icon...simple compuserve gif... ;)

thanks for the wink..... ha

so that solves the still frame problem... and the animated ones would i guess just be animated gifs. what do you more animated people use for it...

Rower_CPU

May 4, 2002, 02:11 PM

Originally posted by jelloshotsrule
thanks for the wink..... ha

so that solves the still frame problem... and the animated ones would i guess just be animated gifs. what do you more animated people use for it...

Photoshop and ImageReady. Photoshop for the initial design, and ImageReady for the animation.

krossfyter

May 4, 2002, 03:20 PM

Originally posted by jelloshotsrule
i never got to see the sam jackson eating the burger one...

too bad i missed it. that sounds the best to me though.

jelloshotsrule

May 4, 2002, 03:22 PM

ahhh. now i see..

i had gotten the impression that it was animated.... man, that was a let down! haha.

i was surprised to see you'd animated your current one kross, as i think you'd said somewhere you weren't sure you'd be able to.

looks good.

krossfyter

May 4, 2002, 03:26 PM

okay. its duke that animated my avatar. i dont have imageready to animate myself. if i did im sure i would...once i learn how to do it. but yeah thanks man.

britboy

May 4, 2002, 04:18 PM

Krossfyter's 'tar with Samuel Jackson was brilliant! Rower_cpu has a good on too.

They all add a bit of colour to the forums though. I'm looking forward to getting my own :)

Durandal7

May 4, 2002, 04:33 PM

I think that rower's is the best. I think eyelikeart should make his look like that egyptian "eye of Ra".

Mr. Anderson

May 4, 2002, 04:34 PM

We've got some nice ones, but they're all minor league to some I've seen over at

http://www.cgtalk.com

These are larger, so theres more room for detail, but the quality is unbelievable. Once I get some of my stuff going - 3D character animation - I'll redo mine. I can only hope to come close to some of the 'tars over there.

Here's are some of my favorites - these aren't scans or copies, these were all art done by the people doing the posts....

I'll also be posting a tutorial on how to make easy avatars using photoshop and image ready for the animation. I'll try and get to that later today.

Durandal7

May 4, 2002, 04:41 PM

Originally posted by dukestreet
We've got some nice ones, but they're all minor league to some I've seen over at

http://www.cgtalk.com

These are larger, so theres more room for detail, but the quality is unbelievable. Once I get some of my stuff going - 3D character animation - I'll redo mine. I can only hope to come close to some of the 'tars over there.

They have us beat. I like the Homer Simpson one.

Mr. Anderson

May 4, 2002, 05:17 PM

Originally posted by asurace

They have us beat. I like the Homer Simpson one.

The Homer Simpson one is a classic. Go over and check out some of the others, they truly are amazing

britboy

May 4, 2002, 07:25 PM

all i can say is wow! Those CGI's are incredible.

I think i'll stop playing around with imageready, before i really embarrass myself :(

Mr. Anderson

May 4, 2002, 08:16 PM

Let me set something straight here. Image ready is used, at least for what I've been doing, as a way to create the animated avatars for myself, jefhatfield, krosfyter and mischief. Theses are simple manipulations of images, nothing more. Only mine was created as a 3D animation first and then imported as single images in photoshop, then exported to imageready in the layers.

To create a nice little avatar, without animation, all you need to do is find something you like, that you can call your own, and resize it to 50x50 or less. Any extra work you do can be done in photoshop or a simillar image editing software package. Think out side the box, that's the best way. I wanted to make a statement, but I couldn't fit all the words in the 50x50 size and still have a readable image, so I made it scroll. Not all the letters are completely shown, cut off at the edges, yet you don't have a problem reading it. I managed to get away in making something that seems a lot larger than it actually is. I'll do something a little more subtle for the next one. I was just playing with the 'Show me the G5!' at the time, because we seemed to be having a thread a day about when the G5 was coming out, or what it would be, blah, blah, blah, I just thought it was funny at the time.

And like beej, he's got a great theme, and he's managed to have 4 or 5 different avatars in the past month. Have fun with it, everyone appreciates it and it makes the site a lot more colorful and interesting.

just my 2¢

jelloshotsrule

May 4, 2002, 08:23 PM

Originally posted by dukestreet
Only mine was created as a 3D animation first and then imported as single images in photoshop, then exported to imageready in the layers.

what do you mean by 3D animation in this case?

it seems you could do this pretty easily in after effects or something like that?

is the thing in the back the 3D thing (lightwave logo)? or am i not seeing something...?

Mr. Anderson

May 4, 2002, 11:12 PM

Originally posted by jelloshotsrule

what do you mean by 3D animation in this case?

it seems you could do this pretty easily in after effects or something like that?

Its basically overkill for the avatar. I had my original avatar created in lightwave (that is the logo on the sphere, but just a texture map wrapped on the sphere, not an actual object) and just modified that scene to make the 'Show me the G5' here's the original avatar.

Mr. Anderson

May 4, 2002, 11:14 PM

Here's a screen shot of the G5 animation. I rendered this and outputed all the files as psd, brought them into photoshop, created one many layered file and exported the .gif from Image Ready. I know it might have been easier to do something in Image Ready right off the bat, but I had all the objects. And since I don't have after effects, I didn't have many options.

jelloshotsrule

May 4, 2002, 11:19 PM

ahhh. well i obviously see the 3D aspect of the old one....

and now i see it in the new one...

question about maya: is there a way to do text easily?

(the lightwave text made me think of it and i hadn't seen a way in particular in maya....)

Mr. Anderson

May 4, 2002, 11:21 PM

To follow how I got the whole idea in the first place, I used the spinning sphere from my home page.

http://www.dukestreet.com/media/SphereAnim.gif

This didn't look good reduced to 50x50 so I had to start over from scratch. One of my other favorite small gif animations I did way back when on StrataStudioPro is this on for my links page

http://www.dukestreet.com/media/linkAnim.gif

I'll have a totally different one next, more like some of the things at cgtalk.com, but with the limitations here, it will be tough.

Mr. Anderson

May 4, 2002, 11:25 PM

Originally posted by jelloshotsrule
ahhh. well i obviously see the 3D aspect of the old one....

and now i see it in the new one...

question about maya: is there a way to do text easily?

(the lightwave text made me think of it and i hadn't seen a way in particular in maya....)

I'm not sure. At first I didn't use Lightwave's text tool, I would just create the text in Illustrator and import the paths to lightwave. This worked reasonably well. But when the new version came out I wanted to try stuff I hadn't done in the past to get to know the software better, so I used the text in Lightwave and found it to be just as easy.

I've not played around with Maya yet, but my guess is to do the same thing, import the eps file created elsewhere and use that. I just added a simple extrude to the letter to give them some depth.

jelloshotsrule

May 4, 2002, 11:34 PM

Originally posted by dukestreet
I'm not sure. At first I didn't use Lightwave's text tool, I would just create the text in Illustrator and import the paths to lightwave. This worked reasonably well. But when the new version came out I wanted to try stuff I hadn't done in the past to get to know the software better, so I used the text in Lightwave and found it to be just as easy.

I've not played around with Maya yet, but my guess is to do the same thing, import the eps file created elsewhere and use that. I just added a simple extrude to the letter to give them some depth.

duh! i guess i didn't think of that cause we use sgi's at school so it's a bit tough to get files from the macs to it.... not too hard, but more of a pain than i've bothered with yet... worth a shot though

good idear dukey

scott_meinzer

May 5, 2002, 12:07 AM

I just got through making my avatar (first one) but then found out you need 500 posts to have a custom on, man that stinks but does give me a reason to type replies. well this is what it looked like: (you can steal it if you want by the time i can use it i will have a new much better one)http://homepage.mac.com/scott_meinzer/iMac.gif

jelloshotsrule

May 5, 2002, 12:21 AM

i like that scott.

just 497 (as of now) posts left.... ha

Beej

May 5, 2002, 01:43 AM

Damn Duke! That's a lot of work for a 50x50 avatar! The work's paid off, though.

I just used PS for mine, then GIFFun and Image Ready for the animation.

Thanks to everyone who likes my avatar series! I like making people laugh. It sure is fun thinking up new ones in the series :) As for what's next... who knows? Well, I do, but you guys will have to wait :)

So far in the series, there's been:
Prawn, Corn, & Fawn.

If anyone can think up new ones, I'll take them into consideration. That is, if I haven't already made the corresponding avatar yet :)

I have to say I like krossfyter's current logo. I have no idea what it is, but damn, it's cool.

britboy

May 5, 2002, 04:12 AM

Originally posted by dukestreet
Let me set something straight here. Image ready is used, at least for what I've been doing, as a way to create the animated avatars for myself, jefhatfield, krosfyter and mischief. Theses are simple manipulations of images, nothing more.

that's pretty much what my point was. It was a kind of dry remark based on my not having maya, lightwave or any of the other programs that were used for creating those avatars, and the limitations of photoshop and imageready.

Thanks for the tips, showing how your avatar developed. How much time do you think it took you?

Ensign Paris

May 5, 2002, 04:53 AM

I think Rower's is the best avatar owt there, but I like them all!

Ensign

mmmdreg

May 5, 2002, 05:57 AM

I just saw Ambitiouslemon's new one for the first time...a dancing chicken? a lemon with wings on legs? whatever it is, it's mad++..it wins hands down...

Mr. Anderson

May 5, 2002, 08:00 AM

It probably took me a couple hours max. Like I mentioned, I was working on doing some things I hadn't done before with the software, so I didn't mind, and I'm happy with the results.

AmbitiousLemons is great, he had that up for a while, then took it down again, I'm glad to see he's put it back up.

sparkleytone

May 5, 2002, 08:11 AM

my fav avatar so far was AmnitiousLemon's . It was a jumping, flying lemon, and it was awesome as hell. He should bring it back.

arn

May 5, 2002, 04:48 PM

Originally posted by sparkleytone
my fav avatar so far was AmnitiousLemon's . It was a jumping, flying lemon, and it was awesome as hell. He should bring it back.

I just saw AmbitiousLemons....

he wins... imo... no offense to other's... but AmbitiousLemon's is right on target... exactly what it should be...

arn

lucs

May 5, 2002, 05:33 PM

aw man, i just realized you gotta have 500+ posts to have your own avatar.....that really suxor dude, i mean, cmaon, what happened to freedom of speech and stuff?

thats unfair, but its life i guess, just like diablo 2, you're not gonna get the coolest sweetest kick ass weapons on Act 1, right?

King Cobra

May 5, 2002, 05:38 PM

Originally posted by lucs
aw man, i just realized you gotta have 500+ posts to have your own avatar.....that really suxor dude, i mean, cmaon, what happened to freedom of speech and stuff?

thats unfair, but its life i guess, just like diablo 2, you're not gonna get the coolest sweetest kick ass weapons on Act 1, right?

Having an avatar has nothing to do with freedom of speech. If I remember correctly, Arn (or someone else) even said that an avatar is only supposed to make someone stand out and so that newbies and those with less than 500 are given a little more respect.

If you want an avatar that bad, start posting more often! As for choice of avatars, first come, first serve.
__________________

Any time is a great time for iPod.

King Cobra

May 5, 2002, 05:42 PM

I know, double posting.

I really like Lemon's avatar. It is probably the best I've seen.

And to correct myself, ...those with [more] than 500 are given a little more respect....
__________________

Any time is a great time for iPod.

edesignuk

May 5, 2002, 05:47 PM

Originally posted by lucs
aw man, i just realized you gotta have 500+ posts to have your own avatar.....that really suxor dude, i mean, cmaon, what happened to freedom of speech and stuff?

As much as I would love my own avatar now, having to wait until I reach 500 gives me something to aim for. Hope the next few months fly by! :cool:

arn

May 5, 2002, 05:54 PM

Originally posted by King Cobra

Having an avatar has nothing to do with freedom of speech. If I remember correctly, Arn (or someone else) even said that an avatar is only supposed to make someone stand out and so that newbies and those with less than 500 are given a little more respect.

It's not really a respect issue...

The point of 500 posts before Avatar is twofold...

1) Bandwidth is not unlimited... so don't necessarily want unrestrainted avatarage...

2) I find too many avatars a bit distracting. What's nice about the 500 post rule is that the people who are around enough for 500 posts should be relatively "known" by others on the board and an avatar will be an identifying icon...

Please note for avatar hopefuls - meaningless one-word posts etc.... will not be tolerated... there's enough other stuff to talk about that this shouldn't happen...

arn

mymemory

May 5, 2002, 06:47 PM

Originally posted by King Cobra

Having an avatar has nothing to do with freedom of speech. If I remember correctly, Arn (or someone else) even said that an avatar is only supposed to make someone stand out and so that newbies and those with less than 500 are given a little more respect.

Well, I do not relate the avatar with freedom or respect. I think is an awar for spending so much time writting "interesting" stuff here (yeah right).

My avatar was done in flash, of course can be done in about anything. I may do more complex things later on.

If my incomes still like this, I may use the space of my avatar as a comertial banner! All I have to do is to find a good sponsor:D

eyelikeart

May 5, 2002, 06:48 PM

;)

Ensign Paris

May 5, 2002, 06:49 PM

I like the idea of the Avatar, its a quick way to identify a person, especially avatars like JefHatFields and DukeStreet.

I do like the fact that the avatar is also limited to posters with a post count of over 500 because this allows you to also recognise posters who do not post often.

1 word posts are often useless.

Ensign

Rower_CPU

May 5, 2002, 06:52 PM

Originally posted by Ensign Paris
1 word posts are often useless.

Right

;)

eyelikeart

May 5, 2002, 06:53 PM

for the record...

I quoted arn in my above post...and added a few lines of my own...

and I'm a bit puzzled as to why there's nothing there except for my winking smiley?! :confused: :eek:

Rower_CPU

May 5, 2002, 07:01 PM

Originally posted by eyelikeart
for the record...

I quoted arn in my above post...and added a few lines of my own...

and I'm a bit puzzled as to why there's nothing there except for my winking smiley?! :confused: :eek:

I've had that happen to me a few times, where I've tried to quote someone, and clicking on a smiley on the left wipes out the whole message...

My only guess is that it's a bug in the vBulletin code.

eyelikeart

May 5, 2002, 07:11 PM

ok...at least I know the stress isn't getting to me so much that I'm imagining I'm doing things!!;)

lucs

May 5, 2002, 07:18 PM

yeah, i know, i was just a lil upset...but hey, i joined yesterday, i still have a long way to go :)

TiMacLover

May 5, 2002, 08:07 PM

How do I add a avatar?

Mr. Anderson

May 5, 2002, 08:55 PM

Originally posted by TiMacLover
How do I add a avatar?

If you last a little longer and post 389 more times, you'll get one. If you read the thread you'll see that it takes 500 to get you an avatar.

All this talk about them makes me want to go out and do another one. I think I'll try one more this week, v 3.0, just for the hell of it. Hey Arn, is it possible to change my name?

eyelikeart

May 5, 2002, 09:06 PM

Originally posted by dukestreet
Hey Arn, is it possible to change my name?

u can change your name...MacAztec did it before...

I don't know if I'd be stepping over the line or not but I can do it for u...

and I wonder what v.3.0 is going to be like? ;)

Mr. Anderson

May 5, 2002, 09:20 PM

Originally posted by eyelikeart

u can change your name...MacAztec did it before...

I don't know if I'd be stepping over the line or not but I can do it for u...

and I wonder what v.3.0 is going to be like? ;)

It will have to do with the name and be much cooler than what I have now, of course. And obviously 3D.....

I might hold off on the name change until I get the avatar done though, that way it would be a complete update. The only thing that would link me would be my signature and my post count. I'm not thinking about doing it to hide, just because it would be something more relavant.

Thanks for the offer, I'll let you know when I'm ready.

arn

May 6, 2002, 12:05 AM

Originally posted by dukestreet

I might hold off on the name change until I get the avatar done though, that way it would be a complete update. The only thing that would link me would be my signature and my post count. I'm not thinking about doing it to hide, just because it would be something more relavant.

I can change your name if you really want me to... but you've built up a lot of name recognition with your current name.... would be a shame to lose it. (though we can transition you like MacAztec did)

arn

jelloshotsrule

May 6, 2002, 12:18 AM

the only other name i would want to see duke going with is "floss gordon"

teabgs

May 6, 2002, 07:11 AM

How about the poster formally known as Dukestreet?

Beej

May 6, 2002, 07:18 AM

Originally posted by teabgs
How about the poster formally known as Dukestreet? He he... TPFKAD :D

Mr. Anderson

May 6, 2002, 08:11 AM

Originally posted by jelloshotsrule
the only other name i would want to see duke going with is "floss gordon"

And jelloshotsrule wins the cupie doll!!!

Yep, thats the one I'd go with, but I want to get Floss Gordon modeled and animated so I can use him as an avatar. That and his space ship, the Cavity Fighter. If I do it, I'll post a thread, I don't think it would be that big of a change, since I'd still have the flossing.org signature, most people would get it, I imagine.