Avatar or Icon

So if you hang around on the internet very long, you’ll find there are things called Avatars and Icons. I was never sure what the difference was. Live Journal members are fond of making Icons and I thought I’d try my hand at it. With my new computer I have all my CI stuff in one place, so suddenly, it’s become a lot easier to crop and post on a whim in only a few minutes.

So, what is an avatar?
I found this acronym: Advanced Video Attribute Terminal Assembler and Recreator in my search. Wikipedia says: An avatar is a “computer user's representation of himself/herself or alter ego whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional icon”. Oh, look, there is that word icon again.

What is an icon?
When you look up icon, it opens a huge can of worms, but the most relevant definition I could find easily says “a computer icon (or simply an icon) is a small pictogram. A computer icon usually ranges from 16 by 16 pixels up to 128 by 128 pixels.” This doesn’t quite sound like what my friends are creating…. But really, who cares. What they’re doing on Live Journal are episode photos which have been cropped and reduced to 100x100pixels and are no more than 30kb. Some are “enhanced” and have text added. Many are very clever.

My inspiration comes from my friends havers and tjara. Click on their names and you can see some of their very fun blog posts featuring icons.

Here is a favourite of mine made by havers!
(It cracks me up every time I see it!)

I adore this one from tjara. It's the "unexpected" aspect that I love.

When I realized that I “needed” an avatar when I hung out on forums, I chose my favourite promotional CI photo and popped the Dasani water bottle in behind them. It was just after Purgatory aired…. I think she handed the water to him that day.

And for my first adventure into icons, I have created three of Eames. I really don’t know... I realize they’re boring, but I like my Goren and Eames in their true colours. Maybe one day I’ll go wild; make some icons with captions and play with the colour. But for right now, this is as good as it gets! Okay, now what do I do with these things????

Can you name the episodes these come from? (Hint: I have a blog post on Eames which have the three video clips these icons came from)

And then, because it was still in Photoshop....