The Avatar Diaries

[wizard]

I was going through my backup CDs and I started to find some old avatars that I have used. I then began to copy them into a folder to see them all in one place. To my surprise, I have a ton! I think I change my avatar on average over a few months span more than Madonna changes costumes for a single song. I am going to show them off, giving a little statement explaining the meaning. I tried to keep them in chronological order, but with me not being able to find all of them, and a lack of total recollection, there may be some errors in the timeline.

Precursor

My first avatar I created for a different forum before I lurked my way over to A-S. It started off with me enlarging the "A" for the first letter of my name. It was an arbitrary design and had a neon look with a purple (foreshadowing) and blue gradient. Very basic in design.

My second avatar, just before I joined here. Again, simple, and somewhat ugly, in design. Just a lone "W" in a font that I feel in love with and I formally adopted purple to be my official color.

A wizard is Born

The time, right after Jaguar was released. Orbs were still a hot thing. And Apple used the rounded box on a lot of things. I combined those two iconic OS X items together with my purple and my "W" to have an avatar specially made for my Aqua-Soft persona. I had this avatar for a very long time, however I was mostly a lurker so to others it may not be recognizable.

Panther was released and a more gloss style was needed and orbs started to go out of style. I tried to keep the olde style "w", but there wasn't much to work with. So rather I adopted the "w" from Myriad Pro, which Apple started to replace their Apple Garamond with. Add the OS X Aqua style, still keeping my purple (though it was darkened to add drama), add a subtle lightning effect and I had my second avatar.

Amnesia (local Bouncy) created his mood avatars, with it, he gave members on the site their own version of avatar. Not made by me, but still one that I used for a while and really liked.

An avatar to look like a soft Apple button. I didn't care for this one much. In retrospect, it's probably because its too big.

I think I was on LSD.

The Dark Side

I lost the purple, may have became a shock to everyone (I think I was popular then). Styled after the Moulin Rouge credits. My only animated avatar I made. I still like this one and still would not consider adding purple to it. It's just dramatic like that.

A not so good point in my life, personally. The avatar explains it all. I think I had this one for quite a while, also.

Needing a change, I had no inspiration. I looked at iTunes, and viola. Not much creativity, but an interesting idea.

The Purple Prince

I KNOW there is an avatar when the Purple Prince returns, but I can't for the life of me, find it. I will update when I do.

My MSN avatar from The Real Duckie invasion. If you weren't here to see it, you missed an important time in Aqua-Soft history. Some may argue that Duckie single handedly changed the course of A-S.

Still keeping the Purple Prince alive, and adopted the five point star. It was just a design that I liked and spoke to myself in an abstract form.

During Halloween time, I changed it to be a metal star with blood on the bottom. It was a limited time thing.

Another bad time in my life. I was pissed, I made it, it's in history.

And current. Just a simplistic avatar with inspiration from La Boheme and RENT. I wanted to keep the star and purple. I was having a hard time to come up with an idea, you wouldn't believe how many sketches I came up with, all differing in style. I thought I could show inconformity by offsetting the start being cut off.

The Future

?

As I stated, I know there is at least one I don't have. There may be more. I will continue to search for them, but I don't know if my quest will prove successful.

And these are not all of them. I've made a couple of others for other sites, and not to mention all of the ones I created but either dumped the idea or just didn't use. Told you there was a lot.

[Pe8er]

Interesting read, like a flashback. I must say my favorite is the one which you did on LSD. Also the iTunes one is amazing, when I first saw it I was like 'whoa, what a great idea!!' And the MSN dude fad...I hated it. Although I'm not sure if I didn't have avatar in this style

EDIT: destroyed Moulin Rouge is beautifully disturbing. Totally retro. :thumbsup:

[grim53]

very cool, id like to see all the old members who changed there avatars alot do this.

I havn't made to many changes to my old avatar.

This is my first version, with the solid black background.

This was my trd msn guy.

On april fools last year I changed my title from the shinobi guy to the milk guy, and used this avatar

This one is the same as my first but with no bg. actaully I asked wiz to do it for me cuase i was having trouble with it. another note is this is the one i keep comeing back to.

I made this one after watching ff7ac, cause the movie was so cool.i think my title was grimiroth.

This was my only departure from my default grim avatar, its from the goth icon set.

And this was my Christmas grim version.

[nightcrawler1089]

Hehe, you guys have been members longer than I have, but mine have ALL been from Calvin & Hobbes, from the very beginning I believe.

-NC

[wizard]

Interesting read, like a flashback.

Danke

I must say my favorite is the one which you did on LSD.

I honestly don't know what was going through my mind when I made it my avatar.

And the MSN dude fad...I hated it. Although I'm not sure if I didn't have avatar in this style

There were a lot of unique and great ones done. But it just exploded within 24 hours everyone had one. I just got sick of it. But I have to admit, there were some really great ones done.

@ Grim - I thought the change to "The Milk Guy" was awesome. I vaguely remember the goth one. Or maybe I am just thinking of realitybath's avatar.

@ NC - That's because you aren't creative. Your avatars have always sucked.

[Pe8er]

There were a lot of unique and great ones done. But it just exploded within 24 hours everyone had one. I just got sick of it. But I have to admit, there were some really great ones done.

I don't recall many of them but StevieBM had an awesome one - gangsta monkey with a gun, it was wicked. Remember, someone even created an app that was generating these avatars. It was Ave, right?

[Louie Mantia]

Ave-atar lol

// Lou

[nightcrawler1089]

AveAtar is still available on TRD.net--I have a copy too.

Thanks Wiz, it means a lot coming from you!

-NC

[Ivan]

my avatar history:

thanks for watching!