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?

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?

I'm still 45 icons away from 100, and once again I'm unable to prioritize my icon ideas so... it's time for another gratuitous icon poll, so now you have the thrilling opportunity to choose for me *g*:

( You decide! Choose between one or more of 21 future icon motifs or suggest your own ideas. All behind this cut... )

...that the Pinky&Brain!RatCreatures icon comes out on top of the latest icon poll so far, and though it wasn't my idea initially, but a suggestion from iamza, while finishing this icon, it occurred to me that it'll be useful for a variety of topics, even though I'm not that interested in the cartoon itself.

Obviously it fits with a lot of politics or activism related stuff (and though I don't post much about that either, I comment sometimes), but it is also quite appropriate for my proliferating rat posts. Not merely because Pinky and Brain are laboratory rats after all, but my rats having secret world domination plans would explain so much of their behavior. Like why they insist on (trying to) chew on everything with cables, electronic equipment and remote controls: They are probably attempting to get parts to build a death ray or similar nefarious machines. It'd also explain why Dustin is so insistent to climb all over my laptop...

Anyway, I hope those who voted for this motif enjoy the icon result. Also I've put the pencils behind the cut again:
( Pinky&Brain!RatCreatures, pencil (36K) )

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]

The icon meme everybody is doing to generate more or less weird pairings that liviapenn started is a lot of fun, unfortunately it doesn't work with my icons, for obvious reasons. I'd only get a "RatCreature channels Multiple Man" story suggestion out of it, or something like that.

However, icons were also on my mind this evening, since I'm still diligently working to fill my icon slots. It's not quite actual content, but I do have four new icons. (Now 36 down, only 64 still to go! *grin*)

First there's Blathering!RatCreature:


and Thinking!RatCreature:


Both created in the hope that one day I may post actual content that's not a GIP again, but also useful for comments of all kind.

Then there's the icon for all those "Write/draw (more) of this, please?" situations, i.e. a shamelessly begging RatCreature:


and finally the depressed counterpart to my happy icon, the Dejected!RatCreature, though I hope I won't use that one too much:


I also did this "Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test", and it turns out that according to this I'm not much of a nerd compared to most of my f-list who did this quiz, but much dorkier... ( Not really flattering. Heh. )

Last night an anonymous benefactor, , gave me extra userpics. Clearly now I have to spend some more time like this: , to fill all those shiny new icon slots. Also I need ideas for icons. Maybe I should make myself a "Slacker" icon, to fit with my recent lapse in posting. Or a "Procrastination Is A Lifestyle." icon. Or maybe something seasonal, with me wearing a Santa hat...I have a long way to go to reach 50. Anyway:


Also, I went to see ROTK tonight, and overall I loved it. I hope to post a more eloquent reaction soon, however my intentions to post stuff somehow seem to be often thwarted recently (I'm telling you, it's a conspiracy, with aliens, who wield mind controlling lethargy rays... uhm, okay, maybe not.)

This icon was inspired by rhiannonhero's cool "super navel-gazing" one. Actually I've seen a couple of navel-gazing icons and wanted one too. Maybe I should have gotten a lemming one, but then besides those old computer game lemmings I have no idea what a lemming actually looks like or whether I could make my cartoony avatar look like one, unless she'd jump from a cliff with a group of them or something like that...

Anyway, the reason I wanted a navel-gazing one just now, were all those "friending policy manifestos" that I've seen recently and the discussion in bethbethbeth's LJ.

The thing I've noticed is that lots of people think that the name "friends list" is unfortunate and that "reading list" or something like that would be better, and that the whole "friending"/"unfriending" process would be less loaded with additional layers of meaning beyond the reading of someone's LJ. And I actually don't think that. It's not that I think the term "friends list" is really great, but "reading list" doesn't reflect all functions either, since that ignores the whole "friends can read your locked entries" aspect of the list (that it has for many if not most people who don't bother with elaborate filter set-ups, not to mention that for those with elaborate filters the "regular reading list" might be quite different from the "friends list"), but more importantly, calling it "reading list" doesn't make the process of putting someone on that list or removing someone from it any less about "liking" or "popularity" or "personal."

I mean, in all the discussion about feedback for fanfic writing a lot of people admit that it takes some effort not to take "negative" feedback personally, and almost everybody seems happy to receive positive feedback. And adding or removing someone from a "reading list" can't avoid being that kind of feedback, at least if the authors can see who put them on their reading lists. The only way to avoid that is not to use the friends feature but a news reader and utilize the LJ RSS feeds that exist for every LJ (except in the rare cases the RSS is broken for some reason). Obviously it's also an option to go to the pages directly, but that would defeat the convenience of the "friends list." It's not like anybody had to use the LJ friends feature just to have all journals they check daily on one page. I guess a lot people who, like me, also read journals from other sites (like journalfen, blurty, deadjournal etc.) as well as blogs that have a feed use such an RSS application anyway to keep track of their reading.

I guess, I'm saying that announcing to someone that they are on your regular reading list still has the potential for all sorts of complications, and not calling it "friending" doesn't make those go away. Those "personal" complications only go away by really "lurking" and if someone wants that, there's a lot of uncomplicated technology out there that avoids all the "hassles" but keeps the "convenience" of the "LJ friends page." But on the upside the instant "low-level feedback" of telling someone that they are on the regular reading list is also a way to make the appreciation for the blogging visible, sort of like linking back to other blogs in your sidebar.