Here is some information about me...
Name: Salamander
AKA: Sal, Zappa the HDRA, Doctor Faust
Build: Stout
Hair: Red
Eyes: Green
Sex: Male
Birthplace: Finland
Birthdate: 1987 June 1st
Occupation: Student
Hobbies: Playing video games, reading, listening to music
Likes: Food, fighting games, heavy metal, comics
Dislikes: Religions, politicians, most of non-metal music, effort
Complexes: Laziness and stubborness
Motto: You can't win always, not even every time.
Email Address: salamanders_avatar_place@yahoo.com
Here are some questions I've been asked.
How long have you been making avatars?
I've been doing them since November 2002. Final Fantasy X was my first avatar set. It was originally made for a forum called Final Fantasy Online. I made some other sets as well such as Breath of Fire III and Fellowship of The Ring and soon making avatars became my hobby.
Why do you like making avatars?
I used to make a lot of wallpapers before but then I made Final Fantasy X avatar set and realised that making avatars is quite a lot of fun. I probably like it because making avatars is easier than making wallpapers and as I make new avatar sets I get to see a lot of wonderful pictures.
How much time do you spend working on avatars?
If I'm having school I spend a couple of hours to make avatars in weekends. If I'm on holiday I spend time every now and then to make avatars. On the other hand sometimes I spend whole holidays relaxing and won't do any avatars. That's what happens most of the time...
How much time does making an avatar set take?
That depends on the avatar set I'm making. First I need some pictures to make the avatars. Sometimes I find only few good pictures and sometimes I can easily find hundreds of good pictures. Taking screenshots from animes can sometims take really much of time. For Samurai Deeper Kyo it took about 45 minutes to take screenshots from a single episode and there were 26 episodes.
After I have all the resources I need I can begin making the avatars. Making an avatar is quite simple. First I take a picture, then I make it small enogh and finally I align it so that it looks good. Sometimes it's pretty hard to decide how much I want to resize the picture. If I make it a lot smaller you get to see more of the character but the details become blurry. Aligning pictures properly is hard as well.
After I have done plenty of avatars I watch them carefully and make again all the avatars that don't satisfy me. If the set gets too big I have to remove some bad avatars to make avatar set smaller. If I didn't remove any avatars from all the Samurai Deeper Kyo avatar I made the size of that set would be 366 avatars!
Making a single avatar set can sometimes take very much of time but I think it is usually worth the time.
What kind of music do you like?
I like heavy metal and rock. I like bands such as Iron Maiden, Grave Digger, Gamma Ray, Helloween, Black Sabbath and Running Wild. If I had to say what's the best album ever, I'd probably say that it's Helloween's Walls Of Jericho or Keeper Of The Seven Keys Pt. 1. But I know many great albums so it's really hard to choose one.
What kind of movies do you like?
I like martial arts, action, fantasy and comedy movies. One of the best movies I've seen so far is Braveheart. I really like that movie!
What kind of books do you like?
I really don't read many 'books'. I read comics mostly, both mangas and american comics. Mangas mostly. My favourite mangas include Hellsing, Blade of The Immortal and Samurai Deeper Kyo.
When I have enough time to read 'real books' I read short stories by Edgar Allan Poe or H.P. Lovecraft. I read anything that interests me... Which is not much...
What kind of video games do you like?
I love fighting games! Such as Guilty Gears, Street Fighters, Virtua Fighters, Soul Caliburs and others. My favourite fighting games are Guilty Gear X2 #Reload, Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution and Capcom vs SNK 2. At the moment I'm training five different fighting games! It's kind of a pain in the butt, but I love fighting games!
I play with the following characters...
Guilty Gear X2 #Reload: Testament, Zappa, Bridget and Slayer
Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution: Shun Di
Street Fighter Alpha 3: Zangief, Karin and Birdie
Capcom vs SNK 2: Iori, Mai, Maki, Raiden, Zangief and Kyo and many others. I mostly use N-Groove.
Capcom Fighting Jam: Jedah and Alex
Soul Calibur II: Nightmare, Cervantes and Mitsurugi
I also play Japanese RPGs such as Final Fantasies and Breath of Fires, but not as much as I used to play.
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