I wanted something that fit nicely inside that cool diamond-shaped icon, and something that could represent my face across all platforms. So I had a couple motives for this one.

One- I needed to practice more with self-portraits.

Two- I'm terrible about drawing noses. A part of that is in part because I don't really like how my nose looks in particular. That's why my last profile pic looked like this:

And I tried to do the Space Ghost thing but it just wasn't vibing with me. And every time I looked at it I noticed more things I didn't like how I did it. Like the ear looks weird, my moustache doesn't look like that, etcetera.

Well, the wife and I just got back from seeing my cousin get married in Arizona. Lots of pictures were taken, and one of them had me unaware in the background, over another cousin's shoulder. It was a profile shot that was uncommonly right down the side (because usually when you're aware there's a picture going on, you stop, look, smile, and I don't get many pictures taken of me anyway, so I jumped on it.)

So I traced over it with a v1 mockup here:

The main thing I wanted to do was to convey the year (so it pushed me to make a new one next year), have a wave form in the throat (for voice acting) and to highlight the brain and eyeballs (to remind me to work on Jar)

Then I whipped up v2

It got that blue that I like, it's got my hair color, the Runic G looks modernized. The waveform pops. But it's way too busy. The white lines from afar make it seem like I have a greying beard (Not yet!) and the emphasis on the brain makes it seem really egotistical. As if I'm like Ah yes, what a genius I am. Burdened by such profound knowledge. ...While ignoring that I got the anatomy wrong and that brain's a lot smaller than I think it actually is.

I don't know. Can't see mine.

I had v2 up for a day or so and every time I saw it, it just looked wrong. Finally, after a Discord meeting, I was looking at it, and I knew the black background had to go, the white outline had to go, and the business needed to be simplified.

And that's the story behind my 2024 profile pic! Leave feedback below and I'll factor it into next years.