Who were the user icons of?

[keshwyn]

The loss of Alan Rickman (sob) got me thinking about Alternity again, and wondering - for the O.C.s, who were the actors y'all picked for user icons?

Comments

[jenett]

Siz's are Lauren Laverne, who Wikipedia describes as "Radio DJ, television presenter, author, singer and comedian" which is about right. (I did not pick her, since I picked up Siz as a character December Y1.)

Lauren Laverne is, it turns out - I was utterly unfamiliar with her before I started figuring out who the single icon on the account was - ferociously intelligent, entirely capable of holding her own in complex discussions, and also a fundamentally decent sort of person. You can find clips of some of the things she's done on YouTube: her body language is very like I thought Siz's to be, and her voice itself is much the same, though the accent is different, even though I had a pretty clear idea in my head long before I saw any clips.

Conveniently, she also adopted two kittens about six weeks before the Plating of Umbridge plot ran, and that would be why Siz ended up with a small black and a small orange kitten, for an icon I think I used twice, but couldn't resist doing.

obligatory kitten pictures or this one and this one and this one from that May.

[(Anonymous)]

Lana was faced by Charlotte Casiraghi.

[synecdochic]

Not really OCs, but Dolohov was (of course) Alexander Siddig, and Charlie was Julian Rhind-Tutt.

[pegkerr]

For Terry, I used Barney Clark, who starred in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist. He had just the right look, and the costuming was perfect, so I had a great selection when I started out.

It became more difficult to find appropriate icons of him later on. Not so many good pictures, the roles he had in movies weren't the right roles--he didn't look/dress like Terry. Then it became VERY hard to find pictures of him at all. He disappeared for awhile because he got caught up in drugs and spent a year in prison. When he got out he made one twenty minute very blue/gray tinged movie, and that's where I got his last (very unsatisfactory) icons. He has since announced he's leaving acting and his fan site has been taken down.

Here's where I found Bill Weasley's icons. So many great ones, but I was never 100% sure it WAS Domnhall Gleeson, even though he was identified as such. The hair was so dark, and I never figured out what movie(s) the screenshots were taken from. But I just loved having so many great icons to pick from for bill.

I always wished there were more icon worthy material of Molly and Arthur. There really aren't too many good ones, as there are, say, for Ron (Rupert Grint has assumed every expression under the sun and someone has taken a picture of it somewhere).

Neville was another one for whom I had a tough time finding good icons. I used mostly screen caps in the first few years. He was usually in the background, so, frustratingly, was usually out of focus. Then his role enlarged a bit in later years and there were more good pics to choose from.

I found a good cache of icons for Luna, but there isn't too much to differentiate her expressions in them.

It was interesting trying to identify pictures of a more ominous Percy than he presents in canon. I took them from the actor's own website, and used just the one eye to hint at shiftiness.

I didn't pick 'em, but I know the icons for Frank were Luka Bloom, a musician. It was AMAZING how much Matthew Lewis grew up to look like him. And Alice, of course, was Felicia Day.

[naomikritzer]

Sally-Anne was played by Genevieve Buechner. When I first went looking, I found a bunch of images of her as a young, sober-faced, slightly spooky little girl. I wanted someone who did not look happy, and who had a significant emotional range that wasn't happy. Her original "smiling" image is just barely smiling. By chance, she played a part where she wore a school uniform, which was even better. (I think Rene helped me tweak it for better Slytherin colors.)

As she aged up, I had to hunt down older pictures of the actress, and just as I thought I was going to have to switch to some similar looking actress, Genevieve got cast in "Caprica," and I was able to scrape together some decent pictures of her from stills from the show. (Which I never watched, though I did watch the re-envisioned BSG back when it aired.) FWIW, there was one picture in particular (that I snipped just Genevieve from), this one: http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/File:Zoe_and_Tamara_in_their_fortress,_1x16.jpg which looked to me distinctively like Sally-Anne and Pansy together.

[naomikritzer]

Dominic Selwyn was played by Chad Allen. I had to look that up just now; I have no recollection at all how I settled on him.

Arista is played by Cassandra Sawtell. By the time I needed a face for Arista, we'd found the really outstanding collection of pre-customized and optimized-for-RPGs set of icons at http://asylums.insanejournal.com/blevcons/ and so I looked through there for a cute little girl of an appropriate age with some emotional range. Emotional range in the images is so key for me -- it was a huge part of how I wrote my characters. Arista was only an occasional character but one who showed some significant personality -- she'd filched her father's journal and written in it, she'd snuck away from her parents to test out the magical Lo-Jack bracelet they'd given her, etc. Cassandra's whole collection is here: http://asylums.insanejournal.com/blevcons/156416.html and it's really delightful (and includes loads that we did not ever upload and use.) It doesn't include her last-ever post, which uses an older Cassandra.

[naomikritzer]

Corax Selwyn is played by Carl Froch, a British former boxer. We were encouraged to look for people who were not super recognizable, and I was frustrated that of the actors I was finding, either they were way too friendly looking in most of their photos, or they were way too recognizable, or they were way too pretty. Rene suggested I look up boxers, and this was an excellent suggestion.

Rachel Brodie is played by Dakota Blue Richards. She's another one I found via the InsaneJournals site. Here's her collection there: http://asylums.insanejournal.com/blevcons/186646.html

Dakota Blue Richards also played Lyra in "The Golden Compass," so here: http://www.aceshowbiz.com/images/still/GC_00819.jpg is a lovely picture of the child Dolohov sent upstairs out of the way while he killed someone in her kitchen.

Savitha Desai is played by Lilette Dubey. (Wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillete_Dubey ) I spent a lot of time hunting through images of Indian actresses looking for someone who was plausibly the right age, with an emotional range that worked for me. The images I was able to come up with definitely shaped how I played her.

[longstrider]

Cedric was obviously edward cullen Robert Pattinson.

In inherited Raz, and didn't touch the icons, so I'm not sure about that account.

Rookwood was John Noble. Most of the the images I used were screen grabs or promotional photos from Sleepy Hollow and Fringe.

[(Anonymous)]

Not 100% sure but I think Raz was Peter Serafinowicz? I was watching Shaun of the Dead and he turned up and I instantly went 'RAZZER' to the befuddlement of my friends

[gwendolyngrace]

Correct.

[gwendolyngrace]

I had it easy, as most of my icons were the movie actors:

Lucius - Jason Isaacs
Sirius - Gary Oldman
Hermione - Emma Watson
Padma - Afshan Azad

I inherited Narcissa, but I remember that her original player and I both hated the look given to the movie version. Her original player chose Alison Doody (best known as Ilsa in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).

For Justin, I also thought that the young man cast in the part completely did not match his description in the books. I loved James Buckley just for his look - I had not watched the "In-Betweeners" until I'd already chosen him and his floppy fringe. Only later did I find out that the character of Jay was pretty much Justin's antithesis.

Actually, it's funny - I'm about to watch a movie starring Saoirse Ronan (whom Renee used for Hydra) - in fact, it's one of the films she took a lot of her icons from, I think - and I had that *moment* where I had to remember that, "Oh, yeah, Hydra's NOT IN THE BOOKS."

Oh, and Zach... Poor Zach. He was the amazing rotating face. I inherited the character, couldn't find any updated pics of the original actor (Will Poulter), so I went hunting for "British child actors" and found his replacement, but neglected to write down the actor's name. Then we couldn't find him ANYWHERE on the internet. I think eventually I threw in a couple more Will Poulter icons but I wouldn't swear to it.

Michael went through a similar transition, with the important exception that once I subbed in Tyger Drew-Honey, he stayed in the role.

Penelope also changed at some point when we needed more expressions for her; she's Jennifer Damiano.

[reenie]

Sorry to be so late in replying!

I played a lot of OCs and non-movie characters, and even helped pick out the icons for some of the characters that weren't even mine. The criteria that guided my choices were that the icon be 1)a British or at least non-American person and 2)someone not super-duper famous. I was better at sticking to this criteria more with some than others.

Hydra was played by Irish actress Saoirse Ronan. I saw her in Atonement and she instantly seemed like Hydra. She was much less well-known at that point, and as she grew more famous and less awkward-looking (i.e. gorgeous) it was difficult to find pictures where she looked like a pretty but mostly "regular" girl.

Daphne was played by British actress Kaya Scoledario, known for her role as Effy in Skins. I wanted someone who was very attractive and sort of mischievous/Slytherin-esque. She fit the bill!

Jason Montague was played by Brit actor George MacKay, who I saw in a movie alongside Hydra/Saoirse Ronan. I wanted someone with a terribly trustworthy and friendly face.

Walden Macnair was played by Russian Boxer Wladmir Klitschko, because he looked mean. Also I used to watch a lot of boxing. He's mostly famous for be married to Hayden Pannitere now.

Eloise Midgen was played by Brit actress Michelle Tate, specifically from her role in Sugar Rush where she looks like a ditzy, dorky girl, which is what Eloise was.

Rabastan Lestrange was played by the hilarious British actor/comedian Peter Serafinowicz. He IS Raz.

Rodolphus Lestrange was played by Arben Bajraktaraj, who was in the OOtP movie as the Death Eater everyone assumed was Bella's husband, but then by Deathly Hallows was listed as Antonin Dolohov. Shrug!

Millie....I can't remember for the life of me except that I helped Millicent's original player find the pics, and that I needed a famous person who wasn't really THAT PRETTY and it was really, really hard because no truly ugly people are famous, are they?

I wasn't Pansy's player but I did help the player find her icons - Yasmin Paige, specifically in the cute British movie Submarine

Also not Megan's players, but made her icons. She's played by Lisa Blackwell, also from Skins

[(Anonymous)]

re: Megan, I wondered about that! Whether it was somehow the same actress as the original icons, or who it was.

For the record, younger Megan icons are Caitlin Wachs. Edited for school uniform and to blur out or remove the background, generally.

i.e.
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3197409536/nm0905157?ref_=nmmi_mi_all_pbl_25
->
http://v.dreamwidth.org/329094/440473

more or less, at least. I don't remember exactly where the original pictures came from, probably some fan site, not IMDB.

Not sure how good an idea that was, I doubt I'd try to do the image editing for icons thing again, but *shrug*

[pegkerr]

This information really should go into the wiki, don't you think, Jen?

[queenbookwench]

It's probably way too late to add to this, but for Susan I used Eleanor Columbus, who actually played her in the early movies, with a couple of photos of her from movie premieres for middle-years Susan.

I had a hard time finding actors with the right look for older!Susan, and in the end went with Adele, in some pictures where she has a very casual look. Peg and Gwen were immensely helpful with icon-finding as I recall...