Tosa: Can I use this avatar?

[Lonewarrior]

[Sasaki Kojiro]

841 KB? No.

[Lonewarrior]

841 KB? No.

That's why I'm asking. But I want to hear from Tosa first.

[KukriKhan]

Hi Lone Warrior. Wicked good bit of work you've put into that avatar. I agree: TosaInu is the final arbiter of avatar choices, sig's, etc., so you should wait for final word from him.

Without wanting to put words into his mouth, I think he'll (regretfully) say 'No'. Here's why:

We have just under 9,500 registered members. At our last survey (about a year ago), about 15% of them connect via dialup modem. That number is probably less now.

If one member gets authorized a 841kB avatar, all must be allowed that same limit, in fairness. If only half of the 400+ regular posters chose similar avatars, the dialup guys would never get (or would very slowly get) a page loaded.

That would defeat one of the main reasons for the Org's existence: offering TW-series game info to all for nothing more than the price of registration.

Again; I applaud your good work on an excellent avatar. Bandwidth and Member Access concerns make approving your avatar at this time not a great idea. Maybe next year, when more of us have broadband, and we've found a way to expand our site's bandwidth allowances.

p.s. how did you make that product; what software did you use, etc.?

[Togakure]

Hi there. Yeah, nice avatar indeed LoneWarrior. I have dial-up though, and it took over two minutes for my connection to fully load that avatar--with only one post. If there were several avatars like that in a thread, boyo ... I wouldn't be able to read the forums effectively anymore.

***

Kuhkrikhan: I have made a collection of animated .gifs like LoneWarrior's, and I made them using freebie tools.

The first tool is VirtualDub, a very powerful movie editor. It might seem a bit overwhelming at first, but once you learn it (particularly how to use filters), you can do a lot with it. I made my own movie from STW movie clips. You can even remove existing sound and put in your own if you're very ambitious. Here's a link:

http://www.virtualdub.org/

You can use the movies you create to make animated .gifs. Here's a freebie animated .gif maker:

http://www.jhepple.com/gif_animator.htm

There are better programs, but this one is free, and free is cool as far as I'm concerned. There are many other cool tools at this site, and some are free. most or cheap. If you like dwinking as I call it, check it out.

Here are some examples of what I made using these two tools:

The first is my trademark sig on ezboards. It and the second are smaller than their original counterparts as Photobucket--my host--shrinks them when I upload (I was surprised that they still worked). Toobad, cuz the color Ninja one looks really good in its original size. The last two are shown in their original sizes. With these tools you can make just about any size you like--even gigantic ones. The bigger the pix though, the bigger the file sizes. The 2nd and 3rd examples are the same clip, except that I applied a grayscale filter to the B&W one (black and white resulted in a smaller file size, so it's bigger here). Note that I reversed the direction of the movement in these from the original Shogun clip using a filter, and used contrast and brightness adjustments to make the small images clearer. In a word, Virtualdub ROCKS. Ok, two words.









I have about 30 or so more, including some from the MTW opening movie (catapults and colliding charge lines, etc.), but the thread will bog if I post more here.

Enjoy. If you make some, I'd love to see what you come up with.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Those avatars rock, wish we could use them.