Week of May 13th, 2012

Sunday: The busier I am, the more likely I am to resort to self-portrait. Most of my clothing is easy-to-reproduce in Gaia, and it means that- when I get around to the writeup for the week- I have an easier time remembering what I was up to. This is the tail end of my Faerie Festival avatars. And in case you don’t recognize him, this is Gummy.
Monday: Such a simple avatar. Ghosty, Celebrity Sunglasses, and Warm Starter Skater Guy Shoes. Approximate Retail Cost: 3000 gold.
Tuesday: Once again, an avatar suggest by Warriors Orochi. This is Kenshin Uesugi. I am disappointed that I could not find an appropriately wiggly-barbed sword. Other than that, I feel this to be a very accurate cosplay.
Wednesday: We sold some gasmasks at the Faerie Festival, so I went looking for one in my inventory. Lo and behold, there’s a true gas mask in Lyndexer’s Journal. Well, I had to make something using that. I’m still not quite sure what that something is…
Thursday: The low point of the week: In a rush to complete an avatar I made something that is neither an accurate self-portrait, nor particularly interesting.
Friday: Due to Gaia lacking an eye-searingly orange ruffled tuxedo shirt, I had to add a somewhat inaccurate tie… and the cape is wrong, too. I directed traffic and parking, DJ’d, and danced, in that outfit. And yet I was not the most flamboyantly-dressed person at the wedding. Bravo, my sister and my new brother-in-law.
Saturday: …The day after my sister’s wedding, I was exhausted and barely got dressed at all.

Week of May 6th, 2012

Sunday: I’ve had devils before. Here, for example. But it took me until now to use the Kelp o’ th’ Loch ‘red water horse legs’ to give a satyr-like appearance.
Monday: Self-portrait as a Lombax, and also as a teacher of some sort.
Tuesday: I desperately searched for a way to make this tree leafier. The trunk is the Epic Fail Hat, ‘1/000000000’ pose. The actual body of the avatar is hiding behind it by virtue of being The Case of Pietro ‘thief’s pose;’ the leafiness comes from the Green Knight with a little help from the Dandiidoodad Spore. Still, I don’t feel like it really looks like a tree.
Wednesday: I got the Preda-Armor in Dumpster Dive, and found it went well with the ‘Resolute Stance’ of Fallen King. Though a piece from Infernal Spirit was inevitable given that pairing, I couldn’t find a helmet to go with the set. And that’s why this avatar has the ‘Fiery Hair from Djinn Baharat and a black headband, instead.
Thursday: One week and one day before my sister’s wedding (wherein I am a member of the wedding party) I received the last parts of my outfit. Eventually, these pieces will become part of a nerfpunk outfit. This avatar is a preview of that outfit. Right down to wielding nerflike pistols.
Friday: I dropped off the grid, but still managed to update my avatar. But I had to drop down to basic self-portaiture. Thankfully, I was dressed very oddly over the weekend. Some sort of… academic pirate, here?
Saturday: Still a self-portrait. Thought the outfit from this Saturday and next week’s Sunday are switched. You may recall an avatar like this one from before. Or, then again, you might not.

Week of April 29th, 2012

Sunday: Saaandwich. The barbarian hero has unearthed the sandwich of the gods, and now prepares to consume it. But he is not without trepidation. See the sweat bead upon his brow.
Monday: Using Jeff’s hairstyle from last week one last time, this is the ‘Beautiful face’ from FMAB Major Armstrong. Why? Because mustache, that’s why. ‘Beautiful face’ is fairly unique. By comparison, I got rid of Gift of Hathor because its ‘goatee’ has too many similarities to things like the General’s Beard and Cowboy Stubble.
Tuesday: I always come back to Robin Hood. This outing is using the Sapphire Plume ‘sacred bow,’ because Disney’s Robin Hood had a leafy bow and arrows. That said, my avatar is not a fox (and is in fact back to my standard braid hairstyle.)
Wednesday: Related to my acquisition of a Changeling Baby Boy and a YHBT Hat for Yangus last week, I had some trollish odds and ends to use. So this is a fearsome semi-supernatural troll hunter. Of some sort.
Thursday: This avatar was titled “Steampunk as fuck.” And that’s still the overall impression of it. I associate the skirts-for-men movements with steampunk, for some reason that I can’t dredge up at the moment.
Friday: Oh, Tengu. Sometimes I miss the elder days. Times were hard, but you were, I think, happier.
Saturday: A few weeks months ago, I had an avatar of Jason Todd’s costume as it appears in the Batcave. Well, now I sort of have a glass display case, but it’s only transparent from the front. (And the Jason Todd avatar doesn’t work from the front- though I have an idea that involves the Imaginary Friend.) Anyway, this is the Unorthodox Experiment, and whether or not it will get much use remains to be seen. Oh! And the creature in the tank is Forteanagoria’s ‘Sasquatch Skin.’

Week of April 22nd, 2012 - Another Dang Videogame Week

Sunday: Jeff, from Earthbound. Wasn’t too long ago that I had his teammate Paula, or a version of Ness, but Jeff is probably the most accurate of the three. It helps that he has glasses obscuring his eyes- Gaia’s not so good on the vertical oval eyes. Jeff is currently holding the Laser Gun and the Heavy Bazooka.
Monday: This here is Shuten Dōji, a new character to the Warriors Orochi series, introduced in Warriors Orochi 3. The biggest flaws with this avatar are that his hair is too big, and he has the wrong kind of jug-of-alcohol. Gaia actually has the right jugs, but they are ENTIRELY too small. So I went with the Moonshine. Also, when it came to hair choices, there simply were none to be had that suited. Not wigs, not hairstyles. So I cut my losses, used the Yokai’s Treasure ‘Oni Mane,’ and didn’t look back until just now.
Tuesday: Sagat from Street Fighter has appeared before, but the Faceless Glitch has finally allowed me to make a significant improvement on the avatar. Those big black eyebrows from the Buddhist Monk’s Tonsure were rather unsightly, not to mention the skull-stubble, and Sagat has musculature where the previous avatar had nothing. Like Chun-Li before him, (same post,) Sagat is unlikely to improve further. There isn’t a skin tone that suits him better, or matches the Masterpieces ‘Picasso Face’ particularly well, so this is it.
Wednesday: This iteration of Link takes some inspiration from Skyward Sword. And some inspiration from the fact I used a different hairstyle for Jeff. There are a few better fairies I could be using, but they wouldn’t have much use outside Link cosplays. So Link gets the Spiderwick Sprite.
Thursday: Oh, poor Yangus. Yangus is a secondary character from Dragon Quest VIII, and among the few video game characters I could successfully cosplay. As such, I have great fondness for him, and am therefore sad that Gaia has no appropriate hat for him. Doubly sad, since the rest of the outfit is just about dead-on.
Friday: This is Claude, the silent main character of Grand Theft Auto 3. …Yeah, that’s about it. I could’ve used the Assasin’s Guise ‘Assassin’s Pain’- a submachine gun- instead of a revolver, but I simply didn’t think of it in time.
Saturday: This is Motonari Mori… sort of. He’s a character from Samurai Warriors 3, and as usual for the Warriors series, based on a historical figure. I’ll be honest, here, the assery is down to about half by this point in the week.

Week of April 15th, 2012 - All Washed Up

Sunday: This here is Charon, boatman of the river Styx. He collects gold from the dead, you know? This uses the Norseman’s Expedition ‘Ship’ instead of the Charon’s Vessel ‘Boat’ because the Charon’s Vessel is expensive, and the boat itself is slightly inferior. Despite being designed for Charon.
Monday: I’ll be honest here: I’ve never read Moby Dick. But Captain Ahab usually is portrayed with a huge nose and a lincoln beard, along with the distinct prosthetic leg. And I’m sure he gets set afloat on a raft at some point. One of this week’s particular challenges was maintaining a vaguely watery theme without reusing the same pose- I only have so many watery or islandy backgrounds.
Tuesday: Mer-princes aren’t too rare, are they? I mean, King Triton was Prince Triton at one point, wasn’t he? Anyway, this pose from Summer of the Shark is rarely appropriate to use because sharks don’t move like this except in the water. Therefore, being underwater, I had no choice but to use ‘ELLO THERE’.
Wednesday: Castaway! Only this castaway, unlike Tom Hanks, has a non-anthropomorphized ball. And a tropical drink in a coconut.
Thursday: The narrative on this is a little weird. A ghostly pirate with a skeleton parrot, digging up buried treasure. What does a ghost need treasure for? Maybe that potion can bring him back to life?
Friday: This is stretching it. It really is. Tengu, you are inside a wall-hanging of water. That only barely fits this week’s theme.
Saturday: Lastly, and a french-or-british sailor from around the time of the East India Trading Company. The only notable thing is his legs, which is/are the ‘Bartender’s Uniform’ from The Case of Pietro.

Week of April 8th, 2012

Sunday: Voila! A rabbit out of the hat! “He was behind the hat in a bag!” Shut up, kid.
Monday: I think it’s obvious that I just love Christian Siriano’s Ruffled Red Vest and Shirt. I’m also, at least temporarily, fond of Lucky Throw. (It appears twice this week, and once here, approximately the day it came out.) That all said, this avatar also combines seamlessly the ‘Inspector’s Hair’ from The Case of Pietro and the ‘Adult Timmy mustache’ from Timmy. They really do go well together, I think.
Tuesday: A self-portrait off by nearly a week. The actual vest was purple. I went to a Passover Seder. :D
Wednesday: For some reason, Mascherato shows up in [Tops] instead of [Head]. The feather on top of the Mascherato ‘without mask’ pose made me think of bards, so I put together an avatar based on it. There’s some neat embellishments in the center that the guitar covers up, though, so I’ve got a remake of this on the back burner, planned for some time in November.
Thursday: I like dice. And I think this was when Sims Social started doing a theme week based on Mad Men? So… dice, and things raining from the sky.
Friday: …god damn it Tengu. What have you done?! Oh, the humanity.*
Saturday: So I was playing around with Djinn Baharat and I realized that the ‘Rakish Pose’- sitting on air- worked awfully well with the Catastrophe! ‘favorite scratching post’- a couch. The beer, Cig, and general appearance all followed naturally from the “guy sitting on a couch” concept. If there were a videogame controller item, he’d’ve had the beer and that. The fez goes with the pants. But even I’m not sure why this scene takes place in a towering inferno.
*Tenguosity?

Week of April 1st

Sunday: Once I’ve finished this week of avatars, I’m going to change this tumblr over to the new adventures of the Cheddar Avenger, who is an adorable yaoi catboy.
Monday: In the meantime, Charlie Sheen. Should’ve had him holding a Pt.An.sa. Embryonic Vial. And said it were Tiger Blood or Adonis DNA. The mask is, of course, 1/3rd of the Ron Bruise Mask.
Tuesday: This avatar is a commentary on lawyers. It is also made up entirely of EIs. FURTHER COMENTARY!
Wednesday: What a dapper mummy! Umm. This was the middle of the week I spent on a not-very-good computer without access to my previous avatar records, so I mostly had to make do with any half-baked prefabbed avatars I’d previously saved to my closet.
Thursday: What is this? I think I was trying to make a whole chicken costume and just lost patience when I got to the legs. This is what hatches from a Cadbury egg if left to incubate, I suppose?
Friday: This avatar amuses me, but again I struggle to explain it. Obviously, the larger Diedrich is a policeman or federal agent of some sort. And he must have somehow caught the smaller Diedrich doing something illegal. But how does the book factor in?
Saturday: …Dammit, Tengu, what did I tell you about little red cars? You don’t fit!

Week of March 25th, 2012

Updates delayed my laptop disablement due to power cord failure. Kept my avatars going, more or less, though.

Sunday: Started playing Warriors Orochi 3 on this day- or, at least, I downloaded the game at this point. As such, I made a character who’d sort of fit in the universe- though, given that the WO series is sort of Koei Tecmo’s Super Smash Bros, a lot of characters are in the game that aren’t inherently a good fit. Like Joan of Arc and Achilles.
Monday: The theme of this avatar is Fire and Ice. Pretty clearly, I think. Almost every item or pose mentions ice/snow/frost or fire/flames/blaze. The sole exception is the hair, which is just the Ireful Marksman ‘Hair’.
Tuesday: A cute little pirate lady, first mate on the ship. I’ve decided she’s more than a little clumsy, but she’s made first mate because her sister is captain, and because the Kraken in the background is her best friend. Mechanically, it’s worth noting that her hair is actually the Enchanted Book ‘clumsy servant’. Ergo, her mop top is, in fact, a mop.
Wednesday: Gummy! We’re approaching the point where Gaia can portray Gummy more completely and accurately than I can sprite, though they still lack a pickaxe. And the peg legs they have aren’t quite what I want.
Thursday: Paula, from Earthbound, in the midst of praying. I wish I could have shown this from the front, because back-view is a copout (except when it comes to the Tengu) but there’s just no way to make the hands look prayer-y otherwise. (There exist two items, Anesidora’s something-or-other that have a prayer pose, but one turns the whole arms white, and the other black. No good.)
Friday: What… are you even doing, kid? WHO ARE THOSE PHOTOS OF? Gods almighty, clean off your bed. That’s disturbing.
Saturday: It’s always a little uncertain, when I leave an avatar with my default hairstyle and don’t change the face too much- doubly so when I have a beard, but not the right one, and am wearing items I actually own. Therefore this is not a self-portrait, or even particularly tag-worthy. I nevertheless like it.

Week of March 18th, 2012
This isn’t exactly a theme week, but most of the avatars include Picolitrosso’s Urn, an Evolving Item with so many poses they had to re-write how they displayed EIs because the dang thing wouldn’t fit.

Sunday: This is a cosplay of Satan, the Mysterious Stranger, as portrayed in The Adventures of Mark Twain. Honestly the biggest difference between my avatar and the actual appearance is that blue parts become orange in mine. The lower half of the actual Mysterious Stranger is just a mound of dirt, but the nearest I could find to that was Titan’s Legacy ‘Avatar of Earth.’ The mask being used here is PU’s ‘Bauta Mask’, combined with the faceless glitch, and The Case of Pietro ‘The Thief’s Eyeblack.’ (Which is why the glowing gold part of the background isn’t visible through the mask I’m working on that.) Picolitrosso’s Urn does have a mask-on-a-stick, but it’s all white-and-gold and generally too ornamental.
Monday: Here we have a variant on the Plague Doctor, mostly made up of PU ‘silver long beak mask’ plus The Carol of Ol’ Ebenezer ‘Ebenezer’s Hat’. Of course, there already is a Plague Doctor item, but that is Not The Point.
Tuesday: Creepy Jester? Check. Picolitrosso’s Urn + Faceless glitch again? Check. ‘Queen’s Gloves’ from The Case of Pietro, combined with Infernal Spirit’s fireball? AS I PREDICTED I WOULD DO A YEAR AGO AND FORGOT? Check.
Wednesday: It’s been a while since I had a completely non-personified Object-type avatar. I got some advice on this from my good buddy senorrandom; the prototype of this had an additional piece that was just far too busy, which senorrandom recommended I remove. The odd thing about this avatar is… I have no idea what it actually is. Just… some sort of abstract-y round multi-part thing.
Thursday: Making Tuesday’s avatar just left me wanting to make more jesters. Obviously, I couldn’t re-use any of the same poses, so what was I to do? There’s an item called Mascherato that’s a little like Picolitrosso’s Urn light- contains two Carnivale-like mask+hat combos, and then the hats and masks seperately. So the ‘Jester’s Cap’ from that, hair from The Case of Pietro, pants and shirt from PU and Hidden Ace, respectively, and the background is the default pose from this month’s monthly collectible, Fallen King.
Friday: I’m gonna quote the description I gave this in the Avatar Arena here:
   “Guess who~oo!” Sasquatch crooned.
    “I know it’s you, silly. Nobody else has arms that long,” Tengu said.
    Sasquatch said, “Spoilsport,” but didn’t break the embrace.
Please vote! Please vote highly! This avatar is nothing like anything else in the arena this week, you mark my words! 
Saturday: A-a-and immediately I go back to Picolitrosso’s Urn and the faceless glitch. This avatar uses the same general method described on Tuesday of this week: how to use Lumiere Noire (/Reborn) and a body-reshaping torso, in this case Antique Shop ‘Salute,’ to get an avatar with no face at all. This avatar is, pretty distinctly, a remake/upgrade of Wednesday of this week.

Week of March 11, 2012- St. Patrick’s Day and other Holidays

Sunday: Some sort of green scientist? Obviously ‘green’ was the theme for the week in a general sense, so I guess he’s green ops? He’s recovered the specimen, at least. I call him… Operative Lime Sherbet. The hair comes from Timmy, and that EI is finally turning itself around after a pretty crappy start. Even the facial hair is starting to be half-decent.
Monday: I’m pretty sure I haven’t done this avatar before, but I don’t doubt it’s a close thing. Another generic superhero.
Tuesday: Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Now obviously, some of last year’s styles are being repeated here. Sadly the Dwarven Locks are the only hair I have that goes properly with the Viking Love ‘Beard,’ so repetition seems inevitable.
Wednesday: So Pi Day finally gets an avatar that truly appreciates it, courtesy of the Live Free or Pie Hard event. That is a whole lot of pie. Also this is a self-portrait of younger-me. #thisIsWhyYou’reFat
Thursday: The same basic theme as last year’s Ides of March avatar, but with significantly more puncture wounds. The tie and briefcase appear because I had a job interview that day. Don’t know for sure how it went yet. The arrow to the knee comes from Norseman’s Expedition, which I got mostly for boats and backgrounds. As yet, though, I’ve got more uses for arrows to the knee.
Friday: Tengu at the end of the rainbow. There’s something endearing about the Tengu’s constant sullenness, even in the most fantastic of situations. I just want to hug him. (For anyone not in the know, the Tengu appears in many poses within Yama no Tamago.)
Saturday: From the aftermath of last year’s St. Patrick’s Day comes Astra-XI: Lucky Clover. The obvious feature is in tinting your entire avatar green. Granted, this is awesome, but it really makes my careful work of matching a wig to the green beard sort of useless. Oh, the glowy aura is the DBZ Power Up, Which looks pretty rad in green.

addendum: Why does tumblr keep losing my formatting?