Avatar -still or animated?

[trekkiedane]

Afaik the biggest avatar you can sport on this board is a 70 Kb .gif (in the usual 140x140 pixels), My current avatar uses all of the allotted memory for that sort of thing.
But my usual line of avatars (La Linea) rarely come over 10 Kb -and I do luv a bit of animation.



How about you?

Why isn't your avatar animated?

Or, perhaps the question should be: why is it?

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

I like animated ones, especially some of the loops, like flamingliberal's or DsZ's.

I'm going through a phase where most of mine are still, mostly because I'm too lazy to make all the necessary screencaps. But I'm sure inspiration will strike again.

Plus, I'm having fun with the silly comic book scans.

 

[Kemaiku]

I prefer still since I just lack the imagination for anything animated really. I do have the odd animated one that I've made by they aren't good enough to show off.

 

[captcalhoun]

mine are all currently still because i no longer have Ulead Gif Animator since it wouldn't work on Vista and i can't be assed to find a newer free version...

 

[the 4th hanson bro]

I've got a few animated ones - Kaylee and the Strawberry come to mind, as well as the Hanson brother slapshot and Duck Season but I'm too lazy to resize them to 140x140 right now

 

[Mallory]

I prefer the still images since I believe that an animated avatar draws attention from the actual post contents.

 

[auntiehill]

I've had a few animated ones over the years, but I usually stick with the plain static image. It's usually hard to get the good animated ones under the size limit, and my av skills kinda SUCK.

My first Bloo av was animated, but I quit using it after someone told me it made them seasick:

 

[Hermiod]

Mine would be animated, but while I can do still frames, doing anything more complicated is well beyond me.

 

[Kemaiku]

Honestly after a few seconds its even making me queasy.

 

[trekkiedane]

mine are all currently still because i no longer have Ulead Gif Animator since it wouldn't work on Vista and i can't be assed to find a newer free version...

If you have the frames and only need to make an animated loop, perhaps unFREEz: http://www.whitsoftdev.com/unfreez/ might do the trick!

 

[Kemaiku]

Heh, it works.

 

[ITL]

I generally make animated avies, but have used the occasional still-image. I've seen great examples of both on this board. Some animated avies do cross the seasick/borderline siezure inducing line for me, so those get Adblocked. Hehehehe.

 

[Ethros]

I don't really like animated avs, find them too distracting when you're trying to read their posts.

As such, I never vote for animated ones in Av contests

 

[trekkiedane]

I don't really like animated avs, find them too distracting when you're trying to read their posts.

As such, I never vote for animated ones in Av contests

It is possible to block individual images you know!-?

 

[M'Sharak]

If I could have ANY avatar I wanted…
… It would be animated.
… It would be still.

It isn't really an either/or question, as far as I'm concerned; it's whether it's needed for that avatar. There are are excellent examples of each.

If it had to be one or the other, I'd pick a non-animated one.

Why?

You can't make an image too still. There are many who simply don't know when to quit on an animated av, and the visual equivalent of earsplitting noise will just make me want to scroll past a post containing such an image as quickly as I can.

 

[JonathonWally]

Depends on the avatar, sometimes stills have a better impact than an animated one, and vice versa.

Mine wouldn't be as good if it were animated

 

[Michael]

Well, it really depends, but generally I like animated avatars more. I know, still avatars can be just as powerful, humorous or meaningful as animated ones, but a little animation mostly makes the avatar appear more lively. Apart from that, I really enjoy doing animated avatars.

 

[auntiehill]

^You make some AWESOME avs! I'm very jealous.

 

[Ethros]

I don't really like animated avs, find them too distracting when you're trying to read their posts.

As such, I never vote for animated ones in Av contests

It is possible to block individual images you know!-?

Well I don't hate them that much. I'm not some avatar nazi

 

[trekkiedane]

You can't make an image too still. There are many who simply don't know when to quit on an animated av, and the visual equivalent of earsplitting noise will just make me want to scroll past a post containing such an image as quickly as I can.

Yep and those with text usually run waaaay to fast for any normal person to follow the dialogue

Personally, I find bad crops of bland promotional photo's more irritating than the occasional overdone animation