Badmovies.org Forum

I saw your avatar question.  In general, the settings I use are pretty common for forums, though some require your avatar to be smaller in size.

Formats:  .gif, .jpg, .png
Max Size:  100 by 100 pixels
Max File Size:  30K

Not certain if your question was more specific or technical than that.  Please let me know if I can be of any assistance.  I am addiing avatars to the board now and then.  Most of them are ones made from b-movies now.  Really need to make one of the "eyes bugging out" scene in "Mosquito."

Thanks, I am kind of looking for step by step instructions, on a tyro-level pretty much considering my computer skills. Since I've been playing around with the ones you have, and have noticed others have brought in their own, I was wondering how it's done. I know some folks have mentioned other sites that have them for use, figured I could search for them, and try to learn from there on those. But, yes I was wondering how would I create my own from an image I have or find somewhere, if I'm not crossing any lines of image use or such. Nothing fancy, just still images I guess, but I admire the animated ones that are cropping up here as well.

I was changing sigs and avatars and such, noticed that one looked like he was asking a question or pleading and it seemed to fit with the question on my mind.

I knew playing with those avatars would create a monster.

Again any advice or instructions from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

That is going to depend a lot on the graphics program you will be using and if you are trying to make a static one or an animated .gif.  If you let me know what you want, I might be able to help out.

Doing an animated .gif from a movie is not too hard with the gear I have available.  I go in and capture a few stills (not every frame, but enough to make it move - hopefully not too choppy).  Then I crop them down to 100 by 100 pixels and load them into a program I bought years ago called Ulead GIF Animator.  From there I can tweak the duration of each frame and optimize the color palette to reduce the file size.

I made the one for Dennis in about 10 minutes from start to finish.

This Google search might help you find a good tutorial though:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=creating+avatar+tutorial&btnG=Google+Search

EDIT:  Adding Google URL.

Thanks, Andrew, I'm figuring static ones for right now just to get my feet wet. I'm thinking just a screen capture from one of my DVDs. 

I looked up some free avatars and followed some links on image hosting sites. Do you have any hosting sites you suggest or prefer we use? That'll be my next step, I guess, bringing in an outside one already made up. I saved a few I liked to my computer to give me something to work with.

I realize there was a thread on this after the board upgrade, I'll probably search it out also. Just a slow learner mostly, trying to change that lately.

I am not much up on avatar sites.  So long as they do not require any funky code, I would say you are safe.  Since you can upload your own avatar, what I would suggest is to right click and download it from wherever you find it and then upload it here.  A Google search for "forum avatars" would probably work if you need to find sites.

Ash might know of some places to find avatars.  He seems to change his daily.   :tongueout:

I search all of the avatar sites, find ones that I like, right-click on them and "save as".  I keep a ton of them in an Avatar folder in My Documents.
Then I come here to the board and upload them one at a time from my computer to see if they'll work.

One thing though, not all of them work even though they appear to be just the right size.
There are some avatars that are smaller in size than what I usually use and they still won't work.
You just have to try a bunch of them here on the board and see if they work or not.

If you type in "forum avatars" in Google like Andrew said, it'll bring up countless pages.
Most are decent...though you'll have to wade through quite a few before you find good avatars that are to your liking.

As for a good image hosting service to upload your own avatar that you made or any other pics you like, I recommend www.imageshack.us 
It's the only one I've ever used.
The best thing to do is create a free account there so you can go back to your images anytime you want.
I also recommend downloading the Imageshack toolbar which is invaluable if you use lots of images in your posts like I do.

(http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/6424/toolbarimg26cq.png) (http://imageshack.us)

Before, I had to save the image to my p.c. and then upload it to imageshack.  With the toolbar, you don't have to go through all those extra steps.
Simply find any image you like online, right-click on it and a new option that says, "Upload image to Imageshack" will appear.  Just click that and boom...you're image is automatically uploaded into your "My Images" section and numerous ways to display it on different websites is instantly provided.

Also handy is Imageshack Quickshot which allows you to take screenshots with the press of a button and upload them to your Imageshack "My Images" section.
They've got quite a few other neat tools as well.

Imageshack can be confusing to new users so if you have trouble, let me know and I'll walk you through it.

I would guess that this is either due to the file size or maybe that some do not look good on the green background?

I guess I never really checked the file sizes for each one.
I always went by the physical size of the avatar by looking at it.

I'd try to upload some and they just don't "take".  They don't appear on my profile at all.
From now on I suppose I'll have to check the properties of each avatar to make sure they're the proper size.

I would bet that some do not take is the file size.

I set the file size at 30K, because some of those avatars can get quite large and several large avatars in a thread can suck for someone who is not on a fast connection.  You can do a fair amount with 30K though.

I just went through and looked at the properties of several of my saved avatars and sure enough, the ones that are like 120x110 won't upload.
No wonder the forum rejected them.

So, let's say an avatar is 110x75..it still wouldn't work right?
Neither number can go above 100 correct?

You got it.  If they go above that size they will not display correctly anyway.  The only one that is bigger than 100 by 100 is the Ghidrah that Jordan uses.  I put it up, because I had helped make it years ago and like it a lot.  Unfortunately, it is a bit too large and causes a slider to appear on it when viewed by some browsers.  One of the things on my "to do" list is to try and resize it.

Yes...I see a slider bar for that Ghidrah avatar though it's not very big.

I should throw together an image and image hosting tutorial for everybody here.
People seem to have a lot of dificulties using Imageshack.

Thanks for your help, both of you. Uploading an image I saved was easier than I figured.

I'll do some more hunting for avatars I like, found some images I liked with Google searches, but a lot were just over the 100x100 limit. I guess my next step should be seeing if I can crop or resize some screen captures into something useable. We'll see.

      I don't know if this will be any help, but I can change the size of the pictures through "My Pictures". I right click on the picture and click edit, then click attributes and it gives the size. Then I go to image and put in the measurements I want. Most of the time this works, if it doesn't I grumble and go to the next picture. You can probably do this where ever you save your pictures. I hope this helped alittle..... :smile:

Thanks, I tried it, managed to cut one down to size that was a little over. Like I've said I can be a real idiot about how to use some features, my computer and internet-fu being rather weak. 

Somewhere along the line I'll try the image hosting to see about adding images (probably screen captures) to posts, not something I plan to do often, but can't hurt to know how. Some of the stuff Scott finds and adds to posts is amamzing, specially the film posters.

Yaddo,    I know how you feel. We've only had this computer for about a year minus a few months so we're learning as we go. Hopefully others will understand. Andrew explained how to put pictures on the posts, still our computer wouldn't let us do it. What he said sounded so simple,(copy and paste). Well I had to look that up, I had no idea what that was, Ha...talk about dumb. When I finally found some imformation I was brain dead, everything I read came across like I was supposed to already know, like I said, we're really beginners at this. Dennis found out how to do it through the computer expert at work, we had to go through a different site for the pictures to post..  :smile: You know alot more then me, I'm positive of that, but it would be nice if there was a topic on this site about how to do things, I mean a very easy step by step process for different things such as posting pictures and videos. With all the knowledge on this site it would be very easy. Andrew's going to love me for this, like he doesn't have enough to do.  :buggedout: :buggedout: Oh well I'm done whining for now...tah..tah... :smile:

I'll put this on my list of taskers, but it might be a bit before I can get to it.  The "Help" button across the forum function bar does have helpful info for the forum.

I use "cut, copy, paste" for text, so I tend to think of it only in those terms. Images haven't usually been something I've had the chance to mess with.

Most of the people I can turn to IRL for computer advice tend to not be helpful or talk down to you (me) for "not already knowing this stuff". Plus my old computer got so buggy after a while, I became to reluctant to even go near the thing after a while. New computer, in decent shape, yet still leery of what I'll screw up just by using the thing.

I did some cutting and cropping and a little resizing with some screen captures after the advice the other day. At least I know a little of what I'm doing now, just need to find better material to work with.