General / Off-Topic How did you select your avatar image?

[simulacrae]

The thumbnail image is so small - is what mine depicts even legible to people who don't recognize the source? Or it is mostly just a confusing mess?

The full image (on the cover of a book) is below, under the spoiler. If you were a kid during the era of the original Elite, you probably knew of the Terran Trade Authority books. They were filled with the sci-fi paintings of the 80s (and 70s) - a distinctive style that blew our tiny minds and informed our childhood. But those children have grown up since then and are now creating our own things. Hence you'll notice that the art direction of No Man's Sky is an homage to this art; returning to that style and building worlds from it.

My favourite TTA book was "Spacewreck". Especially the eternally-drifting derelect ships that had succumbed to strange plagues or space fungus
(The TTA books are long out of print and are almost collectors items, but they were so successful and widely printed that they're not toooo expensive to buy - usually not much more than they would have cost new. This Chris-Foss-style art was everywhere back then, but vanished decades ago with the advent of digital graphics. Now, No Man's Sky is resurrecting it using the very technology that killed it )

Spoiler

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91hkQdHn34L.jpg

ditto

 

[Tone-The-Oracle]

I borrowed mine from someone else

 

[simulacrae]

I borrowed mine from someone else

Well if you ever get bored ... here is an oracle stone ... err tone.

 

[Abil Midena]

I searched for something extremely specific, not knowing if it existed. Luckily, it existed.

tl;dr: I stole it.

At Christmas he wears a hat which I made him

http://i.imgur.com/77QuDi6.gif

It always looked to me like a guy wearing a victorian collar he stole from a wounded dog. Is it supposed to be his hat?

My avatar is my ZX 14, only because I already use it elsewhere.

 

[TuxedoSteve]

What started as a joke between friends and a jab at the Steam forums' high density of morons quickly became a permanent profile picture for me

 

[Bostlabs]

Google image search for Rocketman.
Found my guy.
A better search would have been for rocket man serial.

 

[Captain Willard]

Because cynthia wood has the best looking azz I'v ever seen in a movie.
DAYUM could she shake that money maker.

 

[clivewil]

i made mine back in the old Battlefield 2 days, and i meant to make myself an ED-specific one, but a year later still haven't got around to it yet. maybe one day...

---> uploaded a new avatar. out goes the battle-scrat, in comes the flesh eating care-bear

 

[Terje]

I'm a retrogames kind of guy, so mine is Player 2 from Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters. Which is the best title of a game ever. It's a late eighties arcade game which is as cheesy a retrofuturistic fifties scifi thing as the title suggests:

The game itself is fun for five minutes but not actually that good, I just really liked the style of it back then and have never forgotten about it. Also, that title. I grabbed the avatar off the High Score screen of the Amiga version of the game. I actually use the Player 1 character as an avatar everywhere else, but the Flash Gordon look of Player 2 seemed to suit Elite better.

 

[Le-Betz]

My Avatar pic is a bit older than my forum membership. Since I expected to have my butt constanly kicked by trigger happy teenagers in the game, the picture of Chuck Yeager after the airplane crash from the 1983 movie 'The Right Stuff', with my face photoshoped into it instead of Sam Shepard's, seemed to be an appropriate choice.

I had quite a collection of photoshoped movie screenshots, including a self-portrait, wearing some cool sunglasses and Clint Eastwood's spacesuit from 'Space Cowboys', but I couldn't find it anymore (and of course nobody can be as cool as Clint Eastwood). Some remains of that collection I found:

 

[Patrick_68000]

I looked for a theme of the space. A galaxy seemed to me appropriate. I took the gif on the Internet

 

[InMemoriamSirocco]

I inherited CMDR Sirocco from my girlfriend, who had a female avatar. I'm an Imperial pilot, so the choice was kinda obvious.

 

[Alec Turner]

My Avatar pic is a bit older than my forum membership. Since I expected to have my butt constanly kicked by trigger happy teenagers in the game, the picture of Chuck Yeager after the airplane crash from the 1983 movie 'The Right Stuff', with my face photoshoped into it instead of Sam Shepard's, seemed to be an appropriate choice.

http://s24.postimg.org/uaw2vt5p1/Ikaros.jpg

Terrific film. Have you read Yeager's autobiography? Highly recommended - the man is an absolute legend.

 

[Gully Foyle]

Mine is from an Australian comic book by the Brothers Pitt, from 1967.
Amazing, timeless work.



http://ohdannyboy.blogspot.ca/2013/10/in-their-own-words-gully-foyle-best-sci.html

 

[Le-Betz]

Terrific film. Have you read Yeager's autobiography? Highly recommended - the man is an absolute legend.

No, I haven't, didn't know about it. I already admired the man when I was a kid, even before the movie was made. Thanks for the recommendation.

Edit:
Btw, great fan of H.R. Giger's works, too, so knew the pic from Giger's Necronomicon 2. Your avatar caught my attention a while ago.

 

[excalibus]

mine was a closeup of my first cobra with the red ignition paintjob and my weapons deployed...

 

[Iori]

I didnt

 

[Leadfoot]

My Avatar pic is a bit older than my forum membership. Since I expected to have my butt constanly kicked by trigger happy teenagers in the game, the picture of Chuck Yeager after the airplane crash from the 1983 movie 'The Right Stuff', with my face photoshoped into it instead of Sam Shepard's, seemed to be an appropriate choice.

Great film for those interested in those taking the first steps into space.

Favorite segment:

Girl at Pancho's Café: "I just noticed that a fancy pilot like Slick over there doesn't have his picture on your wall. What do you have to do to get your picture up there anyway?"

Pancho: You have to die, sweetie.

Very sobering, looking at all the hot shot pilots who thought they were the best and suddenly you hope to God you don't get your picture up there as well.

 

[Mercutio Tempest]

A photo of an old handmade/painted mask from a loved old Larp character and a painted up nurf gun from another old Larp Character.
The gun now sits in its holster over the back of my flight chair, along with the military jacket it went with.

I like to think my Elite character carries his side arm and has the old jacket.

 

[Le-Betz]

Great film for those interested in those taking the first steps into space.

Favorite segment:

Girl at Pancho's Café: "I just noticed that a fancy pilot like Slick over there doesn't have his picture on your wall. What do you have to do to get your picture up there anyway?"

Pancho: You have to die, sweetie.

Very sobering, looking at all the hot shot pilots who thought they were the best and suddenly you hope to God you don't get your picture up there as well.

Good idea, haven't seen it for quite a while and the DVD must be somewhere around here. Indeed an awesome movie, but then again, I would not copy my face into a film I didn't like. However, on the picture I look more like somebody who has 'the wrong stuff', a sort of modern Icarus who crashes airplanes or spaceships on a regular basis. So imo it suits pretty nicely as an avatar for this forum.

And yes, that scene is very sobering, but it reflects pretty well how dangerous the job of a test pilot used to be in these days and what it really means to have 'the Right Stuff'.