RatCreature's Journal

When I posted my first Tolkien fanart rec, I realized that I do not have a single Tolkien icon. I ought to fix this, but I'm not sure how to make it recognizable. My favorite character is Aragorn, so ideally I'd like my avatar dressed up as him, but what are the iconic attributes that would make it clear my creature is supposed to be him?

It's been a while since I've made icons for others to grab, but I just spent some time catching up with the webcomic Two Lumps: The Adventures of Ebenezer and Snooch by J. Grant and Mel Hynes, and thought while reading that some of the images would make good icons. Also, if you're like me and somehow missed this webcomic, you should check it out.

Just comment if you take one (or more), say if you're willing to share, otherwise the icon belongs to the first person to claim it, and of course you can modify them any way you want.

Some examples:


( all icons behind the cut )

To keep the comments by people taking them in once place despite x-posting to two journals, I've disabled comments in the IJ post and enabled anonymous/Open ID comments for the LJ post. Sorry for the added inconvenience for people only or primarily using IJ, but more people are reading my journal on LJ.

After seeing all the IBARW icons around, I've been trying to come up with an idea for an anti-racism icon that would fit with my icon theme, but so far I've kind of failed. Looking at my existing icons I'm even conspicuously lacking in icons of my avatar dressing up as COC. I have only a Teyla!RatCreature, and I haven't yet done the Ronon one I planned to complete my SGA team set (+ Wraith!RatCreature). Maybe I could be generous and count my Che!RatCreature too...

I never really thought about this until today, but in my icon set COCs (okay so there's no plural warranted yet, but I mean in principle) are also white through the design, which is that my creature avatar for fandom icons generally dresses up as different characters rather than icons showing images of the actual media characters themselves. "Blackface" disguises wouldn't be an appropriate design, so the idea to give my Teyla!RatCreature a different skin color didn't seem right to me. Though I actually didn't reflect about it much when I drew her. So it's just clothes, and I guess potentially hair, but most other "ethnic" features are kind of out with my avatar not being really human.

Actually looking closer I have to revise that statement, I do change my avatar's eyes making them narrower and slanted to varying degrees to make it look "evil", which is of course a fairly common cartoon technique. I'm not actually sure how much of that is racist stereotyping, because of the way that "cartoon eyes" don't work like actual human eyes. I mean, it's not like Asian people's eyes are actually positioned differently in the face when you draw them, they just appear slanted because the epicanthic fold reaches lower and some Asian eyes have a single fold eyelid rather than a double-fold one, so the area that's visible of the eyeball changes a bit, but human eyes have obviously a "fixed axis" what with being in a bone socket, and what changes for expression is the eyebrows. However for *cartoon* eyes to convey expression their axis is often changed like that of the eyebrows (though more subtle) to make the overall expression more intense. So for an angry look you don't just change the eyebrows, but actually tilt the axis of the eyes (you can see that when looking at Donald Duck cartoons, his character uses the eye-axis thing to great effect, you can look at classic model sheets explaining this effect this entry in an animation blog), and of course you make them narrower, because humans narrow their eyes in anger, and for happy, laughing eyes you change the axis of the eyes in the opposite direction. But looking closely I actually do draw the corners of the eyes differently for the evil characters as well, if you look at my Voldemort!RatCreature, my Sith!RatCreature and the WraithRatCreature. Umm, well, I don't know.

However, the only times my avatar is a different color are the aliens, that is the "Roswell/Gray Alien" type icon, which I made gray for obvious reasons, and the Wraith one, which ended up gray, because I wanted its hair look really white in contrast. Anyway, apparently I have no trouble changing its color then, but all the "human representing" creature versions have the same "skin" color (or maybe fur color, to be honest in my design it's not quite clear how much fur they have). In the rare color drawing containing my avatar (like this card) that color is actually a light gray, sometimes a light blue-ish gray, because that looks better than no color, so it's not really any kind of human skin tone. (I'm just pointing this out so that you don't imagine my avatar some kind of horrible light pink or something in a color drawing when I say that it is "white", that would just be ugly on it.)

So do you have any ideas for icon anti-racist motifs that would work?

Since my fortieth icon is Memesheep!RatCreature, I thought it only fitting to be a memesheep, too:

Take a look at my icons. Comment with the following:

1. One that makes you automatically think of me.
2. One that you think I should TOTALLY use more often.
3. One that you don't get/needs more explanation/you have no idea why I have it.

Comment using an icon of yours that you LOVE, and tell me why you picked THAT one too.

Finally, a poll:
[Poll #596712]

I've read Superman #204 (written by Brian Azzarello, pencils by Jim Lee, inks by Scott Williams), and I liked it. Okay, it is a bit of trick to start telling your story starting at the end to hook readers so that they wonder what brought the characters there, and Azzarello does it both on the level of this issue, with not revealing for quite some time what the monumental event Superman and the priest were both referring to was (I know I'm kind of vague, but I don't want to spoil), and for the cliffhanger, because we still don't know what Superman did exactly, and I guess the tension will be kept up for a bit in that fashion. But the trick with the narrative structure totally worked. I'm thoroughly hooked.

The art is very much eye candy, the way Superman is often backlit with lots of shadows gives him a great look, and Lee has the iconic poses down pat. Gorgeous.

So naturally I couldn't resist and have icons for your enjoyment, the usual rules apply, comment if you claim one, say if you're willing to share, otherwise the icon belongs to the first person to claim it, and of course you can modify them in any way you want:

( twenty Superman icons from #204 )

As usual, comment if you claim one (or a reasonable number of them), unless someone says they're willing to share the icon belongs to the first person who claims it (so check the previous comments), and of course you can modify them any way you want.

( 14 icons with Tim as Robin )

After this inspiring post in scans_daily I just couldn't resist and made a few icons from the "The Rainbow Batman" story, published in Detective Comics #241 from 1957. He's "a rainbow of dazzling action," and who could resist that? Feel free to modify them in any way you want, but please comment if you take one.

( some Rainbow Batman icons )

I made some Flash icons. The icons from issue #195, #198, #199 and #200 have artwork from Scott Kolins (pencils) and Doug Hazelwood (inks), the ones from issue #205 have artwork from Alberto Dose (pencils and inks). You can see in the filename which issue the icon from. As usual, please comment if you claim an icon, and of course you can modify them any way you want.

( 30 icons from those Flash issues )

In order to pimp my favorite superhero, here are twenty NIghtwing icons, made from art from the Nightwing issues #44-#50. Please comment if you take one, of course you can customize them any way you want.

( Nightwing icons )

Icons with Batman, Catwoman, Nightwing, Arsenal, Tempest, the JLA, Krypto... You can see which comic the original image was taken from by moving your mouse over them. Please don't direct link. Comment here before you use icons for your LJ or elsewhere, so that it's clear which ones are claimed. Of course you can customize them any way you want.

( pretty! )