Weekend DE, anyone?

[aisforamy]

Who do you use for your pups' PB icons? Is it the same as another pup's? Has it caused confusion? Hilarity? Anger? What sources do you use when looking for a new PB? Are you happy with the one you have? Would you like to beg others to make icons for you?

Comments

[genarti]

Almost all of my current ones are from visual canons. For past characters, Will Stanton I mostly played back in the day when icons were less important. I used Topher Grace for him, because he was the first guy I found with a 70s haircut and the right kind of coloring; I might look a lot further if I were doing it now. Alain was also from a book, and I used a random blond guy on Getty for him, when I wasn't using non-facial pictures or group shots from Jeff Buckley's band.

River is from a reasonably popular visual canon and Summer Glau has gone on to more roles, so pictures of her are pretty easy to find. Yay! Except that my River's now several years older than the canonical one, and Summer's later roles and photoshoots have (reasonably enough) tended to have her do things like brush her hair and wear makeup. I've been trying to use increasingly older icons for her, but some pictures work for River and some just don't, so really I use a mix. (Shati is, however, a total rockstar for the time she Photoshopped makeup off a bunch of Summer-as-Cameron icons for me.) For a couple of AU threads, I've used Catherine Zeta-Jones as an adult River, but I don't really expect to do that in game-canon ever.

Trowa is another one who's several years older than his screencaps indicate. But he's animated, so there's no actor to age up along with him. I just shrug, and try for relatively older-looking (that is, thinner-faced) screencaps when I can. It also means, alas, that I can never change his hairstyle, unless I switch right over to an actor PB while I'm at it. (I figure eventually that hairstyle will have to stop being common and unremarkable, as it presumably is in GWverse, and then Trowa will switch, because he's not the kind to have an eye-catching hairdo for its own sake. Sadly, icons mean that will probably not happen during his tenure at Milliways.)

Hawkeye is also from an animated canon, and she's from the canon timeline. And a major enough character to be onscreen a lot. Easy!

Lan is from a book. I use Clive Owen from the movie King Arthur for his icons. Ways in which he's excellent: he has the right coloring, he makes grim faces and infinitesimal expression, he wears armor and carries a sword and otherwise dresses in old-fashioned (late-Roman) fashion. And Keira Knightley (Moiraine's PB) was in that movie as Guenevere, and he's been in other movies with Angelina Jolie, and both of these things are handy for icons too. Plus it's easy enough to Photoshop in a leather band around his forehead. Ways in which he's not optimal: he's a little too craggy, and his hair's way too short, and his sword and armor are the wrong style really. I supplement with Getty icons of katanas and canon quotes and so forth.

Regan is from a visual canon, but she only has one scene in it. My icons were thus very limited until the last milli_icons Secret Santa thing, in which I got several more because yakalskovich is awesome.

Edel, again: visual canon, screencaps. Honey: ditto. Piotr, not that I really play him these days: comic, which means a whole ton of different artists, but again it's a visual medium, and I took all his icons from there. I never did find a good PB for him, not that I looked all that hard. (The guy they got to play him in the movie wasn't bad at all, but he was way too young for the era I was playing Piotr from.)

[genarti]

Oh, and for both River and Lan, I've played it that there's a certain resemblance to other people who share the same PB, but that they don't look precisely alike. You might mistake them at a quick glance, but not at a long one. This has been most relevant with River and Cameron, and they dress differently and move differently as well as not looking quite alike. (This includes the aforementioned makeup and hair-brushing.)

Will is the only one who's had a doppelganger; way back in the day, we had some That 70s Show characters around who mistook him for Topher Grace's actual character. He was never in-bar AFAIK, though, so it was only confusing for Hyde et al.