One of the things that fascinates me about social sites is the sheer variety and creativity of the images people use for their avatars.
I feel quite prosaic in having picked a photo that I hope feels friendly, shows people what I look like and reminds me of a happy day out walking with my family when I see it.
Does anyone want to share the story behind how they picked the picture they use?
Top comments (37)
I don't like the idea of sharing pictures of me but when I built my first website I thought that it be prettier with a image. After browsing GitHub and other forums/websites (dev.to !) I decided to create my very own logo to put everywhere on different sites, including mine.
I was a totally into Sublime Text and minimalism, after thinking about it a couple of weeks, I created my logo (which I still use). I merged the P and the B of my name to remind the "viewer" that is it "Pierre Bouillon", took a dark theme as I thought that it was more related to back-end development (dark theme, tons of lines on screen, etc. typical shutterstock pictures ! ) and finally I added brackets all around to be as explicit about my job as possible for someone not into programming.
I am still satisfied of my little logo, even if that's certainly not the best one, it's mine ! :)
That is so clever - I didn't spot that until I looked at your profile page. Nice and elegant.
Yeah, it's not really visible in the icon and I was expecting it to look the same when I embiggened it, but the one on the profile page is actually pretty cool.
Great idea with the merge of the beginning letter! :)
It's the only nice picture with my face I had at hand, I don't like cameras very much :D
I think that it reminds me of a happy period of my life, so I have good vibes every time I visit dev.to.
It is a real picture, at work, we had a fun office with masks and other stuff (the perks of being a game studio), only the saber and the tattoo are added with photoshop.
Also I think most of the people here know about StarWars. Also it looks my character from SWTOR (the mmo).
Leaving the pic here in case I change my avatar
I've got a Zabrak Jedi Watchman on SWTOR 😁. I haven't played in forever, but when I stopped he was level 52 and a beast with those stacked burns. One of my favorite MMOs ever, and I was an OG with WoW back from 2002-2010 (anybody remember RopeTown or Speling Champians?). Great avatar and really fun photo!
I wasnt a fan of SWTOR, rather the universe, only played the free tier. I was too caught up with Guild wars 2. 😎
That makes sense. I was never a pay to play guy either. I'm just a huge KOTOR fanboy. It was my favorite game of all time up until about 4 months ago when it was dethroned after 15 years by Horizon: Zero Dawn. My top 3 round out at 1)H:ZD, 2)KOTOR and 3)Tied between Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, and Kingdom Hearts 2. Never played GW or GW2 but I've heard good things
It is a great photo. Even better full size
Great question!
This topic made me also curious about the reasons behind the avatar decision of people here...
The pseudonym "Dark Smile" was established a long time ago and I needed a picture fitting to it without representing myself. So I was searching for an image that fits and on page 5 or so of the google image search (yeah, I actually went this far!) there was the avatar you see next to my name today.
Since then this picture has a special place in the backup folder :)
I grew up in the "never ever use real information online" era, and even though I've (obviously) relented to some extent, I've always hated getting my picture taken anyway. I've borrowed Morticia Addams for avatar material for ages. That's about all there is to it.
Mine is pretty similar to yours. It is me at the zoo with my family and it makes me happy to see, the twist is that I digitally destroyed the avatar back when I was big on anonymity. Now I just keep it that way because it makes me look like a l337 h4ck3r.
I liked the idea of the traveling salesman portrait, so I decided to turn my upclose picture to tsp - I think it really looks cool.
It is cool - I'd not heard of using the traveling salesman problem to make a portrait before. I had to google to see how it works.
randalolson.com/2018/04/11/traveli...
Loved the idea and forked his repo, modified it to suit my needs then avatar....
Because i really like the song "The Bare Necessities" and i associate the picture with it.
I use my avatar for two reasons: 1) It's R2D2 giving a flower to a trash can...really shouldn't need to say more about why that's amazing. 2) I always identified with R2D2 in that I'm very technical, quite cheeky, usually only have a couple of close friendships at a time (which I much prefer to a multitude of shallow friendships), and speak in a manner that very few seem to understand outside of my social circle. That, mixed with the fact that my wife is an officially licensed babe, I feel like our marriage is like if the trash can in my avatar reached out, took the flower, and then reconfigured into a robotic dime piece, and she and R2 lived happily ever after. Everyone who had been watching R2 beforehand would have been like "Oh that's so cute! It's gonna be so sad when he realizes that he's giving that flower to something that couldn't possibly reciprocate." Then after, those same people would be like "Wait...what the heck just happened?"
You're right anything with R2D2 is instantly good and I love the story with it. It is kind of geeky and romantic and quirky all at the same time and beautifully told. Thanks for sharing it
I make digital comics about my life using a graphics software called Paint.NET. I send it around to my friends, and the character I portray as in my comics eventually became my avatar for all of my social media accounts. It's literally just me, you know?