Howdy,

I felt compelled to make this since almost a year has gone by since I've started changing my avatars seasonally, to the point where every season's avatar has been shown. Because of this, I'd like to reflect on each of them and give some background on them. I'll start from the first made in the current style to my final one.

This was the first of its kind and the original one. It's based off of an incomplete drawing of mine which was featuring my character, Soran. Ultimately it didn't end up going well and I scrapped it. You can see the contrast between this one and the future ones, whereas this one is much simpler than the others. All my avatars afterwards were based on it.

This one is my winter one. I noticed people were making Christmas versions of their avatars by attaching Santa hats to the character in their avatar. I thought that was too simple (and too easy given the placement of my character) so I went with a winter theme instead. This set up the trend of things in the foreground falling around Soran. It also started the light flare across his eyes.

This one was based off the whole, "April showers bring May flowers," rhyme. This one was the only one to feature the objects actually affecting Soran with the rain bouncing off him. Not nearly as many people noticed the change between the Winter one and this one. It also is apparently comparable to Japanese animes.

This one was also inspired by the same rhyme as mentioned earlier. I went with flower petals falling around him. This one I tried to make him look significantly brighter versus the previous ones, which were dreary by comparison. In the event of that though, it seems I might've made him a bit too yellow, which most likely prompted the whole, "Takanuva" spiel.

I went with falling leaves this time around and with a very "Fall colors" heavy background. With this one I tried to retain Soran's orange color to not repeat the mistake of the previous one. I also went with a moon in the background which is barely visible (but helps connect it to the Winter avatar). This also is the first one featuring a lens flare.

This one is the only one I haven't used yet. It's going to be the one I use during my eventual retirement from the site. With this particular one, I went with more of a dream-like look as well as a nice sky background behind Soran. It's also the only one (aside from the original) to not feature anything falling in the foreground. This one also employs the lens flare, though the end is barely visible due to the brightness of the bottom. I felt it works best as a final avatar as it works with my character's name the best, Soran D. Skies. Got to end things on a terrible pun.

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So this is each of my avatars. One for the beginning, one for every season, and one for the end. Actually, the final avatar is the most important one listed, the reason is because as soon as I'm sporting that one I'm finished with the site. For as long as I'm not using it, I'll still be thinking of the site no matter if I take a break or disappear.

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Although I like each of them I feel that my favorites are the Original (simply for nostalgia sake), my Fall avatar, and my Final. So I'm curious which ones you guys prefer.

~Soran