Your avatar

[Smellincoffee]

In the early 2000s I discovered swing music via Star Trek Deep Space Nine's character Vic Fontaine. I loved the sound of it, and after learning that Fontaine was supposed to be a bit like Sinatra, I bought a Sinatra CD ("The Best is Yet to Come", Reprise) while on vacation with my parents (I was still in high school) and listened to it on repeat for an entire week. Sinatra quickly became my favorite musician, period, and then I started reading books about his life and his friends' goings-on. In 2005/2006, only a couple of years after that vacation, I went through some personal drama (falling away from my parents' religion and politics, trying to create my own worldview) and became a big fan of Sinatra's brassy numbers -- stuff like "That's Life" and "I'm Gonna Live Until I Die". They inspired me to believe I would make it out of that period, and I began using the Sinatra avatar around that time -- 2006, I'd guess. Mistfit (a user here back in the day) created a version where Frank is wearing a Santa hat, and I used to switch to it during Christmas, but other than that it's' been 18 years using the same avatar. I also used it at a few other places like TrekBBS.

This is the reason I'm a Sinatra fan to this day.

 

[Gorbles]

An old font face I came up with for my early gamesdev stuff.

 

[amadeus]

I took it from an old Super Nintendo game called Momotaro Dentetsu that was only released in Japan. It’s a video board game that is somewhat similar to Monopoly in some ways.

The name itself is a play on words: dentetsu is the Japanese word for electrified railway, densetsu is the word for legend or story, Momotaro being an old folktale about a boy who fights marauding ogres on Demon Island.

 

[Synobun]

It's not an interesting story. I've always had meme-y avatars, usually some kind of silly or grumpy face. Lisa Simpson was in my rotation, and after a while I kept gravitating to using her more and more when switching through the choices. Then I found an emote on Discord of a Lisa face and started getting a lot of utility of it in servers/DMs. After a few months, people started associating Lisa Simpson with me, and I realized that I also started doing that. Every time I've tried switching since then, it hasn't felt right. It's so closely linked to my online identity now. Almost everywhere I have a presence, if someone thinks of Lisa Simpson, they will inevitably think of me.

In my previous relationship, my ex drew an assortment of Lisa Simpson faces for me to use. They were fantastic. It doesn't feel good to use them nowadays, so I'm stuck with this grumpy one and a Christmas-themed one that I forgot to use last year. I say "stuck" mostly because I do get a little claustrophobic when I have the same aesthetic for too long.

 

[Ajidica]

My first avatar was one of the Civ2 medieval infantry graphics; not because I had ever played civ2 but I was looking for a vaguely Byzantine looking infantry.
My second avatar was a picture of a medieval fortune wheel, but it ended up looking like an orange blob. (I was listening to Carl Orff's Carmina Burana a lot.)
My third and current avatar is the One-Clan-Under-Moon-And-Star from the video game Morrowind. It is the symbol of Azura (Lady Of Twilight, Mistress of Magic, Aspect of Dawn and Dusk) and the Nerevarine, the prophesized reincarnation of the Dunmer/Chimer war-leader and protector Lord Indoril Nerevar.
I love Morrowind and never felt the need to change it. I think madviking actually made this one because he was grumpy at how bad of a job I did putting a transparency on the image.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

In the early 2000s I discovered swing music via Star Trek Deep Space Nine's character Vic Fontaine. I loved the sound of it, and after learning that Fontaine was supposed to be a bit like Sinatra, I bought a Sinatra CD ("The Best is Yet to Come", Reprise) while on vacation with my parents (I was still in high school) and listened to it on repeat for an entire week. Sinatra quickly became my favorite musician, period, and then I started reading books about his life and his friends' goings-on. In 2005/2006, only a couple of years after that vacation, I went through some personal drama (falling away from my parents' religion and politics, trying to create my own worldview) and became a big fan of Sinatra's brassy numbers -- stuff like "That's Life" and "I'm Gonna Live Until I Die". They inspired me to believe I would make it out of that period, and I began using the Sinatra avatar around that time -- 2006, I'd guess. Mistfit (a user here back in the day) created a version where Frank is wearing a Santa hat, and I used to switch to it during Christmas, but other than that it's' been 18 years using the same avatar. I also used it at a few other places like TrekBBS.

This is the reason I'm a Sinatra fan to this day.

It's been ages since I last saw that episode. Vic Fontaine is one of my favorite Trek characters, and I loved James Darren in the Time Tunnel series.

This is the first avatar I used on TrekBBS. Funny how it took some people years to realize that it's a play-on-words for a tractor beam:

Then, when we migrated to XenForo, we couldn't have animated avatars anymore. Here's my current one on TrekBBS:

Aside from one I used on the test forum they made so we could beta test the XenForo version before it went live, these are the only two avatars I've used there - and that, in spite of how many avatar contests I've hosted over there, and the others I entered. I used one or two of the cat ones I entered there as my CFC avatar, but over there I became so closely associated with the tractor beam that when I had to switch, someone told me, "You don't look like yourself anymore."

The funny thing about that is that I really am blonde, though no longer as young as the woman in the avatar. And I've never been a farmer.

 

[Cutlass]

C

 

[GenMarshall]

My current avatar is a character I whipped up in SFM mixing Star Wars, StarCraft, and Warcraft. I was originally going to have her with blonde hair, it turned out to be a pain trying to match the high/blood elven hair color. So I ended up making her a red head. I'm sort of debating changing the eye colors on her since alliance-alligned High Elves don't have access to green eyes (Only horde alligned Blood Elves have access to them while Void Elves do not).

 

[PhroX]

When I signed up for CFC I just looked down the list of avatars the site provided and chose the most interesting one. And I haven't seen any reason to change.

 

[Tee Kay]

There's a different website where I've used some version of Woodstock continuously for more than a decade. The story behind it is it's something I like but not too close to my identity or interests, and it's low-key, unflashy, unintrusive.

After almost two decades at CFC rolling through a wide variety of avatars, it felt right when I settled on this one. I suppose it reflects how I've changed as a person. This place is not anywhere near as close to my identity or my interests as it used to be, but I just want to pop back in now and then and not make a massive song and dance about it.

 

[dusters]

Mine is quite simple. I adore cats. They are smart, cunning and have a hunting success of high value.

This Petite Cat Is the World's Deadliest. Mini-Series 'Super Cats' Shows You Why

The African black-footed cat weighs roughly 200 times less than the average lion, but it has a predation success rate of 60 percent

www.smithsonianmag.com

A nice kitty has agreed to live with me for now so that as well. Oh, and I like to sleep and meditate. That's why kitty's eyes are closed.

 

[Smellincoffee]

My current avatar is a character I whipped up in SFM mixing Star Wars, StarCraft, and Warcraft. I was originally going to have her with blonde hair, it turned out to be a pain trying to match the high/blood elven hair color. So I ended up making her a red head. I'm sort of debating changing the eye colors on her since alliance-alligned High Elves don't have access to green eyes (Only horde alligned Blood Elves have access to them while Void Elves do not).

Have you played around with using Dall-E? I made it create an avatar of my first StarDew Valley character in the style of a StarDew Valley character portrait:

 

[IglooDame]

I started with a couple different Rommie (from the TV show Andromeda Ascendant) pics. A few years ago an online friend created this pic for me, a fusion of her imagining my Orion harem owner character on Star Trek Online, and me IRL (albeit me as hypnodomme). So now I use it as my profile pic across several online platforms, the consistency has been helpful with people (that I like) recognizing me.

 

[bene_legionary]

My current avatar is from the Bungie game Marathon 2: Durandal, when you are evacuating the planet Lh'owon as its host star undergoes an engineered supernova. I picked it because I really like the game's story and the fact that it's still survived to this day, though the new Marathon has been delayed

What's more interesting is my former avatar, parts of which were stolen from the flag of New Mexico. The story is that in Year 10, our history class was learning about the Treaty of Versailles, and as part of that we held a mock treaty conference. It was sort of in between a game of Diplomacy with 21 people in 7 teams of 3 (something I really want to try one day if I can find the people and the time), and a session of the Model United Nations, complete with fake countries, resources, displaced peoples, and national goals. It was not complex – the stuff was for a 15/16 year old audience – but I was a bit, er, nerdier back then and took this thing a bit more seriously. The classroom's tables had to be rearranged to allow a conference-like layout with the teacher adjudicating resolutions in the middle, and it was a bit hard to find who represented what, so I came up with the idea of making a placard for our country, Rava. Then I thought one step further and found some flag-making tool to piece together a Ravan flag. The result the next morning when I came in with my placard was chaos, because everybody stopped their negotiations and started making flags instead (to the great annoyance of the teacher, who was running behind schedule because we were taking so long to deliberate), and no work was done while people printed off their placards or argued over their flags. Later on I was needing a profile picture for my accounts, and settled on the emblem in the flag without the key and sword, and in yellow.

The flag below isn't my former avatar, but it is the flag I used at the conference. I can't seem to find my former avatar now.

Edit: Found it.

 

[Birdjaguar]

parts of which were stolen from the flag of New Mexico

The NM flag is pretty simple. I has two parts: a yellow ground and a red zia.

 

[GenMarshall]

Have you played around with using Dall-E? I made it create an avatar of my first StarDew Valley character in the style of a StarDew Valley character portrait:

I've played around with Stable Diffusion. While I managed to get a buffed version of my character using various addons. YMMV in regards to the hairstyle since I want to generate a Nova style haircut (as seen in my current avatar), and the ears and long eyebrows is a hit or a miss.

The NM flag is pretty simple. I has two parts: a yellow ground and a red zia.


View attachment 682546

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

^That calls for some Windmills!

You'll be praising the sun like the people who know where we sampled this from.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

The latest thread for Avatars can be found here.

In Which We Discuss Avatars and Custom User Titles X: Futurama Avatars Only

Time for Christmas to go

forums.civfanatics.com

 

[EnglishEdward]

I was once referred to as a patriotic Englishman in a debate about the American war of independence.

I found that rather funny.

Hence the archetypical avatar.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I can't seem to find my former avatar now.

I think your current one is very nice.