question about avatars...

[uksexkitten2004]

when the avatar is a photo, is it usually one of the user? I saw an avatar by someone called studdog, and the guy in the pic was GORGEOUS, anyone know if it is him?

 

[Weird Harold]

when the avatar is a photo, is it usually one of the user?

I don't know the particular avatar you're asking about, but generally avatars are NOT personal pictures. Many are, but most are not.

 

[uksexkitten2004]

thanks, I guess yours is not of you then!!!
How do people choose them, and where do they get them from?
hugs,
sk

 

[Woodmiester]

there are some sights dedicated to them, do a search for avatar's

also just about any image you can find can be made into one. some folks like myself here on lit design and make our own for for others, if that's what you want just send the person a PM, most will do it if asked, least I've been known to.

 

[Weird Harold]

thanks, I guess yours is not of you then!!!
How do people choose them, and where do they get them from?
hugs,
sk

Of course my avatar is me! Its just not the real *physical* me.

My avatar is a picture from my digital camera, cropped and rsized to fit the limits for an avatar. It's a picture of a Father's Day gift from my daughters some 20 years ago that has a good bit of sentimental value.

It's also the personification of my alter-ego, Dirty Old Man, who occasionally takes contorl of my fingers and makes me write dirty stories to post on Lit. (There's a larger version of the picture on his author's page and it's also HIS avatar the few times I use that name to post under.)

I chose that perticular doll to photograph for my avatar, because it's a fairly accurate caricature of me -- long hair, big nose, etc -- except I wear glasses and he doesn't and he's better looking than I am.

Avatars are just GIF or JPG images that are less than 150 pixels in their longest dimension and less than 20480 bytes when stored on disk. That means almost any digital still image can be used as an avatar after resizing -- a very few images just are too complex to be reduced to 150x150 pixels.

Animated images (GIFs) aren't as easy to modify for an avatar because of the file size limit -- they have to be very simple animations to avoid being too many bytes.

Check out www.irfanview.com for a free image management program that can read almost all image formats, resize them and convert them to GIFs or JPGs of the right size and compression for an avatar.

Check out www.GifWorks.com for an online method of resizing animations.

Then find a picture you like and get ready for when you hit 100 posts and can have an avatar.