New Profile Picture

A Symbol of Growth

This is likely an unnecessary blog entry, but I wanted to point something out. Something some people may eventually notice one day, if I ever get anyone regularly reading these, is that the image I use for myself is, as of today, different from the image that will remain as the thumbnail for my first blog post. It’s funny that this will be the third entry, seeing as it will look like I rebranded myself while I still had little to no content on my website. The truth is, this was something I had planned for a while and simply chose to do now. There is actually a short story associated with it that I’ll tell here.

What was the deal with the first one anyway?

The context of the picture I was using before is actually quite nostalgic for me. Something I talked about in my first blog post, is that I spent a lot of my preteen and early teenage years trying to make YouTube videos. Something key to that, which many tutorials will tell you, is establishing a unique brand identity, and even as a kid I knew I wanted to have a unique aesthetic. I was, like most people, self conscious of my actual appearance at the time. That led me to pursue an illustration for my picture, and I was specifically looking for something cartoony, anime, or in what would be the final result, a chibi-style design. I mainly wanted something like that because at the time I loved cute shows such as Adventure Time, and had seen some really good anime including Angel Beats. So after a few attempts at drawing something in a pirated copy of Macromedia Flash 8, without even a drawing tablet, I eventually concluded that I wouldn’t be able to make what I wanted on my own.

So How did I manage to get one?

I decided to just do a Google image search of the type of design I was wanting. Eventually by chance, I did stumble upon a drawing I really liked. Being a kid with no money, I reached out to the artist via Gmail, and as I recall I practically begged her to make a version of the illustration based on me. She very kindly, in only a day or two, made one for me based on some old carefully crafted photo of myself as a greasy kid. I’m extremely hesitant to share this picture of me, especially because how drastically I’ve changed since then, but I might as well. Don’t judge me okay, it was a hard being a freckled, overweight boy, with brown hair who wanted to be emo or something. 

The artist’s name would be Nilam Sari, and I very much encourage you to check out her website nilam.co and consider commissioning her yourself! She is a very experienced and talented artist. Highly recommend!

The result, A big piece of me

The photo the illustration would be based on. Sheesh, could my hair have been any greasier!? Maybe I’m being too hard on myself, but for so long until late in my teenage years, I was set on always have hair of at least that length. Little did I know that eventually instead of hating getting my haircut, I’d hate not having my hair cut. Also pretty sure I’m standing in a closet in this picture. Posted it on Instagram sometime in 2015, though it appears I deleted the post at some point. Something funny is I actually have multiple old pictures of myself wearing the same, or similar, knock-off Apple earbuds from Dollar General.

The image that would become my profile picture on almost every site and social media until now. To this day I still love this illustration, and it pains me to stop using it. I made very minor modifications over the years, like some slight color tweaking, and putting it over different backgrounds, but the drawing as a whole remained unchanged. Nilam did a great job, and I couldn’t be more glad that this is the piece I’d use to represent myself for all of those years.

So why get a new one?

Despite how much I love that illustration, the truth is I’ve since gone through the biggest changes of my life. The people that know me in real life can attest to how different I look now compared to that picture there. I’ve been thinking for a while that maybe the old design was no longer an accurate representation of myself. I feel that I’ve grown and so I’ve felt that I needed something that represented that change. In recent years I’ve let go of a lot (but not all) of my insecurities about my appearance, so I’ve considered just going with a picture of myself, but ultimately my passion is creating things so an illustration feels right. While I still don’t necessarily have the skill to draw anything that I’d wanna use, it would be my girlfriend that would eventually give me a great idea.

My girlfriend of eight years, Kaley, had taken notice of my profile picture. I’d even told her the story of how I’d gotten it. Knowing that I’d used it for many years, one night she remarked that she’d like one to match, but of her in the same style. This was an instant gift idea, and unbeknownst to her, I immediately wrote that down. Finally, while I was writing the previous blog post about my game development journey (part two coming soon), I was uploading some footage of past game projects to YouTube when something caught my eye. At some point I had setup a default description for my videos, and fortunately I had linked to one of Nilam’s pages crediting her for my picture. This was all I needed to set in motion the gift idea for Kaley, and to get a new picture representative of the new me.

Not but a few days later I checked out her website and sent her an email, and this time I wasn’t asking for a handout! I explained who I was, and she remembered the interaction we had all those years ago, and fortunately for me she’s still doing art, and does commissions. It wouldn’t take very long at all, and she would send back the results, and I couldn’t be happier.

The new me

Again, don’t judge me. This along with another picture of me would be what I sent to Nilam to base the new illustration off of. Not my favorite photo, and in fact I don’t use it anywhere, but I try to take pride in my job so this was an attempt at that. My coworkers would instantly recognize where I’m at in this image, seeing as I took it in the office, and on a night where I was dispatching solo, so no one had to watch me try and take a selfie like a forty year-old man. I’m not good with pictures, and have never been, so this was the best I could do. An intrusive thought I had while writing this was how funny it is that you somehow can’t see my ears in this picture, and it looks like my glasses are held up by nothing but the fact they are slightly too small for my head.

This is it! I feel like there’s a lot to say about it. First off, its perfect to me that Nilam’s style has grown and changed, just like me. I also really appreciate that she still does chibi-style artwork, but yet she’s done something that feels much more painterly here, and it really lends itself to the details. I am also surprised at how well she manages to draw a chibi character with facial hair, as I don’t think I’ve seen one before.  To me this feels like a perfect evolution of the old artwork. I’m happy to use this as my new picture for years to come. She very kindly gave me a version with, and without the glasses, but I preferred without. 

But what about my girlfriend?

This is both of our illustrations side by side. As of this blog post, I haven’t shown it to her. Gonna try to keep it under wraps until Christmas probably, and use it as a surprise gift. I also won’t be showing the picture I provided Nilam of my girlfriend, in lieu of her consent to put it on here. That said, for those who know Kaley, this is a great illustration of her. I love it, and I’m sure she will. She gets the nostalgia and importance I place on things like my old picture. I just know she’ll love these, to have her own, and to be apart of this with me. 

Closing Thoughts

I will use all the willpower I have to not remove the images of myself from this post, and as I’m writing this I can’t believe that I've included them. I’ll just grit my teeth and try to be proud of myself I suppose. Please, please, please know, that if you’re reading this, and you know me in real life, that I also can not help but cringe at myself for even writing a blog post about myself. Imposter syndrome is weird, and I’m not even trying to be someone of notability, this is just my personal blog on my personal website. Again I wanna say check out Nilam’s website, and I can’t thank her enough. This is one of many blog posts I’ll write addressing some nostalgia-based aspect of my life. Fair warning, I will eventually get around to ranting about Digimon in one of these posts. The cringe will only grow, and I will just have to embrace it.

Anyhow, thanks for reading!

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