Internet personas

[Chooch]

Not entirely sure if this belongs in here or not, but I would kindly encourage the moderators to lock/move this topic if need be.

So anyway, I've come to talk about internet personas. Not everyone has one but I'm sure some people here do (as do I). They aren't particularly necessary, but I think it's kind of fun having your own cute, creepy, or awesome likeness outside of how people normally see you. Anyway, I'd like to tell you all the tale of my first horribly embarrassing internet persona and how I've progressed since then.

My first internet persona, like many others, was a horribly pathetic Sonic fan character that was nothing more than a recolor. How pathetic, you ask? Well I've taken the time to recreate it just for the sake of this topic. Shield your eyes!

His name is Dash the Echidna (D:). I made him sometime in 2005. I would go into further detail (his abilities, backstory, etc.) but I already feel what I've shown is enough. To put it simply, he was horrible. Some time later I abandoned him (as a persona at least) and moved on to something that's arguably worse. That is, I basically stole an existing character.

Some people may recognize him right off the bat. Choo Choo from the ever so not-popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon Top Cat from the 1960s. When I first introduced this 'new' persona to the people on the second message board I frequented, they had no idea what Top Cat was so it worked. But eventually I felt bad (as I should have), so even though I loved the character I changed once again.

Keeping the name 'Chooch' I adapted the existing character into a much more unique and much cuter persona. I'm not sure how exactly he came to look like this. I just wanted to change enough not to feel like a thief and this is the result after I was finished. I had accomplished my mission, but something just wasn't right.

To me, he seemed to be very reminiscent of a overly cute Japanese anime character and I didn't like that. (Shoot me) 'I should try and make him still cute, but able to be taken a bit more seriously,' I thought. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, is where we get to the Chooch of today. Pretty drastic change from a Sonic fancharacter isn't it?

Regardless, I'm satisfied. I hope you all enjoyed my story and would be willing to share your own. So go on.. Discuss!

[Phos]

I briefly had one years ago, back when I was a somewhat active Megaman fan. The crappy sprite sheet I made is long since gone. While I did come up with what I still think are some pretty cool ideas for it, I had no aspirations to actually do anything with it. I stopped using him as a persona long before I "discontinued" him, though.

I also decided that I wouldn't want a persona that was basically a weapon and nothing else, and then I decided I didn't want one at all.

[Badnik Zero]

About your character, I always kind of liked him. I didn't know he was an original creation, I thought he was part of a series I had no idea about, but it's pretty cool you made him yourself. Nice design, Chooch.

If I had a persona around here, I'm some kind of Badnik. I grafted a Weedle head onto my Caterkiller avatar during Pokemon week, and I've been that ever since. I'm giving it a break now, but maybe the Weedle Badnik will return.

Edited September 26, 2009 by Ezra the Badnik

[YoshiUnity]

Well... I'm interested in discussion the origin of my character. Feel free to grabs some snacks, I tend to make long post about this kind of stuff.

Anyway, as a lot of people probably know already, my persona character is a Yoshi. I have to say, I kind of luck out with my Nintendo making Yoshi a species instead of just a character itself. I don't have to deal with any recolor claims whatsoever. Thank the lord, because I didn't base it off of the main Yoshi, just a yoshi.

At first, my character looked like this. I have been known for giving my art design some attitude, so I wanted him to reflect that. I gave him clothes and somewhat of a man's posture. Also, I do have some scars on my face, so I decided to chip the scales on the back on his head. Both related pretty well in my opinion. Looking damaging yet, showing attitude.

Still, I didn't like it that my character looked a little too much like THE Yoshi, yet I wanted him to be a green yoshi. Plus, the outfit seemed to lack effort. So I change it a little more and gave him a weapon, the Unitybrush. (Think Kingdom Hearts. But instead of keyblade and hearts, it's Unitybrush and artistic vision.) Then, this came out. The outfit was more detailed and I changed his eye color brown to reflect mine. The outfit was a mixed of something from Super Mario Strikers and Starfox. I called it an success... momentarily.

I'll admit, years past and it became clear to me. That outfit sucked! I couldn't make heads or tails of it. I kept forgetting what was armor or clothing, and whenever someone wanted to draw it, explaining it was a bitch. So that design had to go. I had the yoshi down, but not the outfit. It took me a while to think of a successful design, and this came to be. I was very proud of it. I mean, I had experience of making personas for others and adding my touch those already made, so I should be able to make mines look better. So I made a catchy little symbol, and made the outfit design from scratch, including sunglasses and a new Unitybrush. It's a lot easier to follow.

Overtime time, this character became my face internet persona and I don't plan on abandoning "YoshiUnity" for a while. I mean, my name may be "The Pyro" now, but that only for this TF2 fad. I'm always YoshiUnity on the internet. I find it really fun to have a persona. It's an hysterical game when opening to others on the internet. I'm always drawing mines in different ways.

A werewolf:

A superform, or TrueUnity,'Omega YoshiUnity':

Holidays:

Swimsuit(familiar?):

It's all in good fun. Plus, it really helped me with my artistic skills and opening up to other people. My most recent version is this. (A lot of people have seen this, but whatever.) . I love adding detail, but I simplified it some. Too many pockets and symbols, got a little annoying.

And that's my character. A yoshi with a paintbrush. Over five years in the making.

Edited September 26, 2009 by The Pyro

[Ferno]

My first internet persona avatar was simply Sonic Knuckles and Tails sprites doing a pose back when I first joined here as "Bluedude", didn't really put a whole lot of thought into it.

When I changed my name to Chaos Inferno back in '07, I used this as my avatar for the longest time. During the summer of '08 when I became more active I wanted something simple, something that stood out, 'was easily remembered, and actually went with my user name so I started playing around with some Sonic Battle sprites. I was actually joking around with it at first, actually, it was just gonna be a joke-type thing; Take the flaming-sonic head sprite- slap on some spines, call it a day, but once I was finished, I thought "Hmm, doesn't look half bad... *looks left and right*...*uses as avatar*" and it's still my persona to this day. it's changed slightly over time, and many different versions were made, including a Chistmas themed one that I used during december '08. These days it has Kamina shades, just because I think that series is awesome, also, I've finaly figured out how to make it move like I've always envisioned, so that's pretty cool too.

I've also recently created a character based off of my avatar used strictly for RP'ing over at the FBMB.

Other temporary personas avatars include:

http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd33/Elekid1/InfernoGumball-1.png

I was a part of the gumball brigade.

http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd33/Elekid1/ChristmasFerno.png

My Christmas themed avatar, as mentioned above

http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd33/Elekid1/WEEGEEultimate.png

Not even my avatar was safe from Weegee.

http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd33/Elekid1/200px-Charmy_Bee.png

Yes, I was Charmy for the "be a Sonic character for a week" event.

http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd33/Elekid1/Noamusepika-Copy.jpghttp://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd33/Elekid1/NyarthAva.png

I've also been known to use Pokemon.

Edit: Silly me, I've been talking about avatars this whole time and not about actual personas , well, I guess I act a little different on the net than I do in real life, but not so much I guess. I do often catch myself in real life referring to myself on here as "Inferno" in the third person, ("Damn, 'Ferno's missing out on the Needlemouse topic 'cuz of homework!") kinda like "he's" a different person altogether. No one but my best friend knows I'm on these boards, so I guess Inferno's almost like an alter ego to me.

Edited September 27, 2009 by Ferno

[Paul Str337]

I’ve never really had an online persona, in fact I’ve always tried to be as honest as I can be with who I am on the internet because it’s always too easy to hide behind a fancy screen name and mouth off in relative anonymity.

Creating a character though is a different thing entirely and it intrigues me. I’ve never done it but it’s interesting to see the creations around this place.

[Arrow]

It sounds like you're referring to an avatar, more than a persona? Saying persona, to me, implies that you pretend to be something/someone different from yourself? I'm I alone on that...? Being pedantic maybe.

When I first started online, I had a DragonBall Z fan-character of sorts called Hajime, which is why I've still got the name now on most sites. It's NEVER taken, and I quite like it anyway. I haven't liked DBZ for years, though.

Then when I started using Elfwood, MorbidCorvid arose when I was going through my mid-teenage angsty stage. He started life as a raven, but was sort of reinvented as a magpie. I like birds a lot, and whilst magpies are far from my favourites they are something I see on a daily basis, they aren't common characters and yet their filled with mythology, are very intelligent and are complete wankers.

And Arrow is the most recent addition, who was born on Sonic Zone Forums... almost 6 years ago now.

[Mollfie]

I'm myself online. I've never understood why you'd want to pretend to be someone else online, except within roleplaying communities.

I've also never really understood fan-characters, I've tried my hand at them but I find it really boring and uncreative.

I create characters all the time because I'm a writer, but I never make characters just to use for myself like a persona because the character has a life of it's own, and I don't want to 'use' them in that way. To me, my characters belong in stories. That's not to say I don't draw random people, I do, but they aren't characters. Just drawings.

[TheGerkuman]

I created a character, but like Molfie I don't use it for me. Parts of him are like me me, but others aren't; I use him for RP's. To be honest though, I didn't design him. XD A close friend did it for me.

This tends to be why I have different avatars and why I change them so often. :3

Edited September 26, 2009 by Gerkuman

[PaddyFancy]

Starting college for the first time at September 2005 was when I started using the internet regularly. I joined my first message board in November 14th 2005, and began as Jezzy (as my first real name is Jeremy), then I changed it twice within two weeks. Became Bowiefan (as I was a David Bowie fan by that stage) and then Ziggy Shadow-Dust (named after Shadow The Hedgehog and David Bowie's most famous alter-ego from the early 1970's 'Ziggy Stardust'.

For three years I never actually had an internet persona. I wanted one but I couldn't draw, but a friend off deviantART offered to do one for me for free and here it is.

OK it's worse than Chooch's Dash character. It's just Shadow The Hedgehog with a red lightning bolt painted across his face, and an electric guitar. Nevertheless it was my first ever persona and I was proud of it. Sadly I never stuck with the hedgehog character and when I went around deviantART requesting some more Ziggy hedgehog drawings, one user wanted to draw me as a wolf, so I let her and this is the result.

I love it. Made me feel officially like a furry. Furries are the best <3. Early this year I started drawing regularly and I drew myself another persona. A cat in the style of Top Cat called Zigg-Zigg, double-barrelled like Choo Choo and Fancy Fancy. Sorry Chooch for nicking your idea . Here's Swimsuit Zigg-Zigg from the Mr. SSMB competition.

All of these characters (hedgehog/wolf/cat) have one thing in common that makes then all Ziggy Shadow-Dust. The lightning bolt that is painted across their faces, as David Bowie has on the album cover of his 1973 album Aladdin Sane, which is described as "Ziggy [stardust] goes to America".

[Wyde]

I think it's safe to say my avatar began to form into an actual kind of "character" when I started getting involved in the furry fandom a few years ago, before I got a hold of the masses of smut it produced even. At the time I thought a purple cat sounded like a great idea for a "murrfursona" so that's what I went with. The character of "Wyde" has developed over the years very quietly, even gaining a first name, classifying an actual species and making his his fur colour into something more boring, ie. various shades of grey. "Wyde" is also used as my usual roleplay character if I ever find myself in such a situation, and will change certain aspects depending on the setting (what his usual attire is, what exactly his past entails etc.) but he's really little more than an estimated reflection of myself with added fluff.

<--my own attempt at drawing this particular mask lol

I'm not going to bother detailing my other two aliases that never see the light of day.

Edited September 26, 2009 by Wyde

[Dr. Mechano]

My character can be considered an idealized mish-mash of my favorite qualities.

Dr. Mechano was designed to be the quirky, bombastic, sympathetic supervillain that- on some level- I always wanted Eggman to be. In a sense, he was my way of coming to terms with the reality that my view of Eggman was biased in an overly sympathetic light, so creating a new character in a new universe was my answer to this epiphany.

I've been using Mechano for almost a year in various places, and recently cast him as the showstealing villain of my new comic series. In a way, branching out into this helped me become less obsessive about Eggman, and the Sonic franchise in general- So I consider it a plus.

Edited September 26, 2009 by Dr. Mechano

[Angnix]

My character I think still is kind of horrible... but here is the history:

Angnix started out as a superhero character back in 1999 when I was in high school. I had a teacher that wrote DC comics fanfiction. Angnix originally was a superhero that turned into half bird-half human and who was a pyrokenetic who wore purple.

Then when I turned into a Sonic fan, she suddenly became a Cream recolor with wings... >_>;

I've tried to make the furry character Angnix a bit more original nowadays.

[Flyboy Fox]

I've never had a unique online persona. Well, that's a lie. I guess it's more honest to say I've never had one in the Sonic fandom.

In my Star Fox obsessed days, I was Jadie Kiczenski, a rollerskating and somewhat clutzy female snow leopard.

In my Pokemon obsession, I had Kanjii Kinyobi, a reluctant and somewhat goofy male Team Rocket agent.

In the Sonic fandom, I just stole Tails XD I AM TAILS. Whee.

[Chooch]

About your character, I always kind of liked him. I didn't know he was an original creation, I thought he was part of a series I had no idea about, but it's pretty cool you made him yourself. Nice design, Chooch.

Hahaha. You think so? Thanks.

It's always nice when someone else gives you praise for your work. :3

Edit: By the way, the artwork used for my avatar is actually something a friend of mine did. You can see it along with a lot of other artwork friends have done for me here.

Edited September 26, 2009 by Chooch

[Rusty Spy]

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/shadowx918/VTCLAIR.pngSeeing that my sister had a few fan characters of her own for a few years, I was just like, fuck it, and went to work designing my own Sonic fan character. Having full knowledge of the uncreative recolors out there, I tried as hard as I could to make mine original and one that could fit in with the real cast. Thus, Virgo The Cougar. Unfortunately, I can't draw what so evah, so I had to depend on my sister to draw him for me. Eventually, I was able to get her to draw it for me for the first time, and this was the result.

Original and first Drawing

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/shadowx918/Virgo.png

Sonic Channel style ftw!

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/shadowx918/VTCLAIR.png

Christmas sketch from 07(?)

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/shadowx918/VirgoTheCougar.png

Surprisingly, the main inspiration for the character I have today came from a story I had to right in the fourth grade. I had to right a story about if I was my own superhero. I later used said superhero as the basis for my own fan character.

[Daisoku]

OH I CANT BELIEVE THIS

I write out a huge big thing on all mah charries and the browser decides that it's time to go back.

bastard.

[Vasco]

I started off as a pink Tails recolor. I had a button and everything. I was such a badass.

Now I don't use much, I have Aoi (who's the character in my profile), but that's about it. When RPing was popular, I was in a fewand used. She's been modified over the years and now simplified for only projects and representation. (:

Oh, Aoi, don't you miss those old times? (:

To make the post useful, I'd say I had a brief Knux recolour - with rainbow colours! Didn't last long, and didn't have much of a personality either. In the internet I'm me - not that it's necessarily a good thing.

[LATER BUDDY]

Wow, this brings back some funny memories, XD.

I used to have a pathetic Sonic recolor as well *digs deep into computer.* Here we go. Fun times, . I kinda forgot that I used to be really interested sprites and whatnot. Lol, I used to just "be" Sonic too, >_< (with Aoi attachment, XP)

Anyways, after that I met this cool dude that went by the name of "Nomad" if any of you recall him from ancient times. He was my best internet friend and such, but he was, well is, an excellent artist. So being cool comrades and all, he was awesome enough to help me create a fan character I could live off of based of a design that Aoi/Bleu/Claire made. So I used him for the longest time until I got bored with him and dropped the whole "internet persona" thing.. But sadly, he's still basically Sonic, X3.

I guess they weren't full on personas, but more of just a face figure. I have been thinking about making a new one just for kicks, but I haven't been that motivated. I did make a pretty awesome wolf, but my scanner is broken, and I don't know how to use any art programs that are available for Mac sadly, ^^".

Fun stuff though, <3.

-Blur

[Joseppi]

I have to say, I lol'd at Dash. Knuckles changes his clothes and he's a whole different character. But from that to the Chooch of today. You've come a long way and I like Chooch. He makes me forget all about Dash.

As for myself, I don't have an internet persona. I did create a Sonic character when I was around 12 years old. His name was Hotfoot the Pigeon. Everyone thought he was a duck. Maybe one day I'll draw him up for ya'll. Over the years I evolved him and took him out of the Sonic universe altogether.

The funny thing is, after I made him a human, (which was back in 2001) I changed his name to Blaze. Who would have thought that five years later, there would be a Sonic character of the same name. Kind of ticked me off. lol

Anyway, here's Hotfoot AKA Blaze.

[Diogenes]

Yeah, that used to be me. I knew enough not to be a pure recolor, but not much more than that. The character never really went anywhere, and the little it did go was packed full of cliches, mary sue-ism, and wish fulfillment. Eventually I ended up just dropping him entirely.

The next one I actually did keep around, though not as an avatar. To make a long story short, I'm Knux Chao on GameFAQs, and that eventually evolved into a somewhat demonic (though not particularly evil) shapeshifter that looked a bit like a gray echidna. It's at this point that I started using the name Diogenes for the character and for myself.

Eventually I realized Diogenes had become too "wacky" to represent me (that or I had become much less wacky myself), and was also a pretty bland and overpowered character. I put him on the backburner and made another Diogenes (eventually renaming the first), this one a gray cat with red hair, an intellectual spellcaster sort of guy. It was a more accurate representation of myself, though still pretty cliche, and still not that great a character. I kept him around, tweaking his story, powers, and personality, and the more I built him as a character, the less he was me. I still use him as an avatar occasionally and I still use the name for myself, but I no longer think of him as an extension of myself.

[Vasco]

Oh it's too bad I can't post my character as the rest of you guys. Lost it when my computer was formatted. Hopefully somebody still remembers it. x)

[Tornado]

I very briefly had a shallow Knuckles recolor as a character for some RP before I gave up on the whole thing (so briefly that I never bothered with a profile name change to reflect it) back in 2004. I do remember the name (but am too embarrassed to state it), as well. There was a brief period of time in 2003 where I used Yamato "Matt" Ishida as my screen name and acted accordingly, but I never used it here. Otherwise, my online name has been unchanged since 2003, and I've never created an online persona.

Edited September 27, 2009 by Tornado

[Chooch]

Anyways, after that I met this cool dude that went by the name of "Nomad" if any of you recall him from ancient times. He was my best internet friend and such, but he was, well is, an excellent artist. So being cool comrades and all, he was awesome enough to help me create a fan character I could live off of based of a design that Aoi/Bleu/Claire made. So I used him for the longest time until I got bored with him and dropped the whole "internet persona" thing.. But sadly, he's still basically Sonic, X3.

Hahaha. I remember Nomad and back when you used to use the Blur persona. He's still basically Sonic, yeah, but I always sort of liked him.

I have to say, I lol'd at Dash. Knuckles changes his clothes and he's a whole different character. But from that to the Chooch of today. You've come a long way and I like Chooch. He makes me forget all about Dash.

Dash's pretty terrible, I know. D: It's amusing to look back on him though. He still exists and he's a lot less of an eye sore, nowafays but he doesn't look to be replacing Chooch any time soon. Nice to see you like Chooch. I'm proud of what he's become.

[Wyde]

For some reason I feel like the minority: I don't think I ever "started off" as a fan character. I'd like to try formulating one for lulz though, because coming up with character ideas is fun.

(P.S. I was thinking of a tortoise. lolkoopaclone)

Edited September 27, 2009 by Wyde