This is really a huge grievance of mine on the internet as a whole... a new trailer comes out, and every tom, dick and harry think "hey, I'll butcher that thing to the poorest quality to fit in a box too small, and use it as my avatar in a looping 3 second clip... people will love that".
No.
There's two kinds of avatars primarily, true... but it's not moving and stills... it's great and suck.
Sucky avatars almost ALWAYS feature video footage. The greats of our posting era tend to avoid these. The only exception to this is if you can manage to take an extremely short clip, and loop it in such away that the end is as smooth as the start. The best example that comes to mind (and surely there's other examples of this that have been successful) is kypade's old
Dora the Explorer avatar where that fox had his hand sweeping back and forth. Not a brilliant avatar by itself, but it was well animated.
Too many people just want a "moment" in their avatar to be "that guy" who has a moment in their avatar. It's faddish, and generally pretty lame... and that's coming from MR. Fad. (I'm so rad).
Anyway, the other kind of moving avatar is a collection of stills that change frame. There's the more simplistic ones that Morg and Catman are modeling for us in this thread. These are less obnoxious, but still kinda lame. They show a lack of imagination, and they're just kind of... there. But Morg (for example) has dedicated his presence to his avatar... so it "becomes" him... therefore, the avatar has taken on a new life... it's more of an identity. Catman's is fairly new, so it lacks the same presence.
But there is hope for those who want the animated avatar. I've made a few in my day... sometimes they can be quite nice. The trick is really using stills, and then animating them. Again, this can even be split into two parts.
I remember BK had an avatar that was done by Joey of the Pink Panther, and there was just little lights going around, and minor animation going on against a backdrop that never changed. The animation was so subtle and well done... definately one of the best avatars I've ever seen... ever... and VERY clever! Another example would probably be Calvin's "Calvin" avatar in front of the American flag. Anyway...
The other kind is a collection of frames taken that follow a sequence, and animation is used to link them all together. The animation can then be either simple frame animation using photoshop tools, or video segments if they fit cleanly... but the overwhelming presence of the avatar is built from stills.
That's a basic animated avatar (like I was saying of Morg and Catman)
That's applying the rules of basic animation. Of course, because of the new limits here at SHH, I can do a lot more with that now... but that was just an idea of what could be done to dress up a basic animated avatar.
Another fine example of an animated avatar:
Sooooo simple, and yet so amazing. Then finally, here's something I did for Spider-Man 3. If you HAVE to have a theme avatar build around a fad period, why not animate the frames instead of chopping the trailer?
So there you go... an in-depth guide to animated avatars. But still, consider your options. Your avatar is what you're equated with in a quick survey of the thread. Instead of going faddish, it should be thematic. Drak changes his avatar all the time, but it's along the same theme, so you could easily pick him out of a line-up. Some are more devoted to one image for all-time. It's becoming harder and harder to think of these people now, but a good example would be Joey again... who did even dress up his red x once in a while.
The point is, don't do it for fad reasons... but someone should be able to see that image anywhere and think of you. Stills are usually the best way to do this. I've seen about a thousand FF2 avatars in the past few days, and I couldn't tell you one good one from them all... or who even has them... because you're all unrecognizable and unimportant.
A still, however, instantly makes you stand out because there's absolutely no compromising the grade of content/color/pixelation... you can add a border, or make it fancy in other ways... and you can make your central image large enough to actually be seen, without being busy and inneffective. Believe it or not, I learnt this lesson from reading ASM's old posts.
And of course, the longer you have it... the more well known you are. I, unfortunately can't follow that pattern because I change on a whim, but I do have a few regulars that I toss around. This one I have now is the latest... but if I'm feeling like a Sports fan, I'll pull out my Lakers avatar... if they had a big victory, I may even pull out Phil Jackson. I'm listening to Charlotte's Web a lot, so I should pull out my Danny avatar (of which I have two) and I have some other stills that fit emotion or mood. Then when all else fails and I don't know what I want, I usually go for the abstract. My most recent outing in that area consisted of abused Barbie:
She started out rather normal too:
Anyway.... this concludes my thoughts on the matter. You may scoff if you so choose, but this is all info that is so accurate, NASA would take years to try and replicate if they did their own research. But it's all here... and for free too... from me, your loving and caring compadre on the hype.
