The Custom Avatar Art Gallery (updated 18th May, 2019)

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VictorDoom wrote:

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Charan wrote:

I'm much happier with how it's looking now. I've gone through the old thread and added titles/descriptions based on what people have said. Fiveby5's, in particular, is really significant.

i always thought that was marius from diablo 2 getting killed by baal from that cutscene..

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ephetat wrote:

As the other thread was closed, I'm reposting the detailed background information on my avatar here, if anyone's interested.

Here's the full story.

My avatar was painted by the talented Kevin Hsu. Kevin did really fine work and was really patient with me as I provided lots of specific feedback... nevertheless worded as a non-artist.

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Firstly, some backstory detail.
The woman in the avatar is a Witch, but not specifically Alira. The circlet is intended to give that away, of course. Her assassin is intended to be a Shadow, who actually specializes in Damage over Time -- the copious amount of blood is a reference to Puncture, and the facial expression on the Witch is supposed to be the effects of a Poison.
I originally thought to use a Heartbreaker as the dagger, but it wouldn't have made much sense as it's a caster item. And Bino's is, well, pretty much a butcher knife, and that didn't seem particularly graceful to me (it's really closer to an axe than a dagger).

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The avatar is really a combination of two pieces of artwork that I like.
The (potentially) more obvious reference is the art for the Magic: the Gathering card, Assassinate.
Here's the artwork in greater detail:

Assassinate

For the less MtG-inclined, It's actually a reference to another card in both mechanics and artwork, called Royal Assassin. In any case, I really liked the vertigo-inducing perspective employed in this art work and knew I wanted to replicate it for my avatar.

The second influence is the macabre photography work of Jenni Tapanila, the Finnish artist known as suzi9mm. Back in 2004-05 I used to visit deviantArt regularly and suzi9mm was one of the top artists there. Her work is very inspiring, and the way she uses gore can sometimes be outright discomforting. I still squirm occassionaly when I view her work today.
Here's her gallery site.
The specific artwork I reference is one of her "scraps" called Kitty's selfportrait.

Kitty's selfportrait

It's pretty obvious how this one influences the avatar! But moreso than the blood -- which is really rather excessive in this image -- I was struck by the woman's fairly calm, sedated appearance. So I wanted the Witch to possess a similar expression, while slightly toning down the amount of blood so that it didn't dominate the image's color distribution, which revolves around shades of dark gray, white, and red.

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So I just finished paying for my conqueror pack you'll be seeing my name along with a custom avatar on this list one day!

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Valley wrote:

The Incandescent Heart

I Love the GGG artwork for my custom unique :D

Looking forward to seeing the 3D model one of these days.