Topic: How do you choose your avatar? (+tips)

I rarely have an avatar that isn't a cute girl with nice hair. It's just a personal preference, I guess.
After I choose one, though, I tend to spend quite a bit of time fine-tuning an image in Photoshop. I'm not satisfied with an avatar unless it's pixel-perfect, and I change my avatar quite often.

Here are some tips to help you, from your friendly neighborhood avatar aficionado.

• Crop. This should be self-explanatory. There are a ton of tools to help you, too! Heck, even Paint can crop things. There's no reason not to, unless the image is already perfectly framed for avatar use. I hate it when I see people with avatars that are unrecognizable.
• Subject matter. You should really stay away from images with a lot going on, like this. Focus on one to three subjects for your avatar. @MegaMari0's current avatar here is a good example of having two.
• Try to avoid text. If I have to go to your profile page to read something on your avatar, you're doing it wrong. When you use text, try something short and easy to read, like this.
• Logos; they're okay, but they're also boring.
• You might not think it matters, but try to choose an avatar that represents you or your interests. It's the first thing people on forums see besides your name. I'm sure many of you can recognize some of NL's users from a quick look at their avatar.

chill. it's just an avatar lol

I change mine often, and it's usually just a character from some game that currently has my attention (Bloodstained, at the moment). I used to play around a lot with effects and backgrounds, but these days it's usually just crop and add a 1px black border. Gives it a better contrast against the forum background.

Shame that the old forum I used to frequent had different size/dimension limits, which resulted in most of my avatars being kind of useless for this site. Also, most of them I had tagged with my username, because people liked to steal them... The ones I could use here are useless for that reason, since my username is now different.

I am probably way too passionate about avatars, hahaha.

I guess I'm going through the "playing around with effects and backgrounds" phase right now. Also; wow, I can't believe I haven't thought about the border thing. Can I "steal" that from you?

Every Friday I just take a page with Isaac from Paranatural and crop it, focusing on him, then I edit out the speech bubble if I feel it ruins the picture. Usually I include as little context as possible cause I feel that makes them funnier

I normally follow a one avatar per page rule, unless there are expressions/shots that I simply cannot refuse to use, though I might start adding a border like Caviar since I like the idea

no idea who "Isaac from Paranatural" is (and i dont care so dont bother telling me!), but your avatar is pretty cool^^

Yay I was mentioned. just an FYI to those who crop. When you google image an avatar there is an option when you've selected the image to shrink it down via the size stated. Example, My avatar came as a 874 x 792 so I clicked on the stated size and it brought up other sizes all the way down to 130 x 130. Avatar sized

A cool picture of a dragon, sometimes changed to be thematic with the season.

Help make the world a more bordery place.

My dog. With a Wii Remote. Can anyone honestly do any better than that?

I know.

I carried the avatar that I used on IGN, when they started letting everyone have them. Never changed it since.

I have this tendency of connecting avatars to usernames (specially for quick browsing of comments) so it makes it easier for me when people keep the same avatar. I can look for my friends' comments and avoid the annoying ones easily.

I like Sonic, my username is BurningSonic, so I decided I should have a Sonic avatar.

I guess that's why I never change my avatar since I joined this site. That and I said if I was to ever change it, it would be one that I create and is good enough to show off. 3 years later…..

Also when you have a certain username, you become kind of tight case in what character you choose. Would be weird to have Mega Ampharos much less my Mii with this name

I thought I was the only one who did that. I recognize users quickly using their avatars. You'll know it's me, because it's a picture of the Blue Inkling.

When I first joined my avatar was my Mii playing a miniature pinball machine, and I thought I'd never change it, but since then I've changed it a few times. Right now it's the purpose badly animated sprite from one of my Petit Computer games.

I just use a pic that I like, and force everyone to look at the lovely Megumi while she stares into your soooouuuul! (I still don't know why I like her so much, lol)

Every month I change my avatar to a different character from a game I like (I just look for them with a quick Yahoo! image search, and choose the one best suited for avatar purposes).

Mudkip is the answer to everything. Best thing may be not to overthink it to much.

Yeah, I can relate to this. Ever since the name change; my avatar has almost always been of the little goddess you see over there, Lucina and Noire have been the exception so far. I usually mess with an image(s) on photoshop to fine-tune the avatar. Granted; in most cases; it's just cropping the picture. Though there have been times where extra tools are used. It's fun to spend a bit of time on the avatar sometimes.

I used to use Ryu from street fighter or Sailor StarFighter since that is where my username comes from (been using this since I was 14) but I got sick of people thinking I was male, so now I pick avatars that represent other hobbies/interests since it is obvious that I like video games when I join a gaming site. I'm on a personal mission to spread the gospel of Perfume so I have been using them as my avatar.