Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

Hello all!

One of the things we all remember from the Plaza is the art work. While some credit must be paid to the likes of John Howe, it was really the innovative work of Protoguy that made us fall in love with the site. I'm not entirely sure if he appreciated it at the time, but his efforts gave birth to a unique and distinct form of graphic art: Icon making, also known as the art of putting tiny pictures into tiny spaces. When Protoguy left the Plaza, he left a vacuum behind. While no one could really duplicate the majesty of Peeg's icons, many of us tried. I'll hold my hands up to the fact that I was one of those who attempted icon making. The results were...mixed. Nevertheless, I tried to pay homage to Peeg's style.

Below are some of my old attempts at making icons.

oh boy I remember working on icons way back when! I ended up coming up with icons for 15 ranks for the Kingdom of Numenor, which I hosted as a Plaza House, as well as icons for the king and queen. And I did all that in MS Paint. Those were the days haha.

Dig them up and post them here!

Li! Thanks for making this thread-- it's great to see some of these again.
I didn't realize it was your icon I shared; I was Lindo with the fiery eye swirl (I assume that's the icon to which you are referring?) for a while, when I was Maia of this area of the Plaza. (Thus was born the Toasty/Burnt Toast nickname. Not actually sure where toast came in, now that I think about it.)
I absolutely adored that Lindo icon.

I have no idea if I have that icon saved anywhere, but I'll look!

I think I was Melian at one point? Although I am not sure if that was my precise icon, I can't remember. I have some other ones, I think you did them maybe. I will have to visit the ol' photobucket. The icons were always super beautiful.

I think we should discuss what the admin/moderator structure will look like and then design a nice set of icons from the original set. They don’t have to fit old plaza but can be throwbacks or references to them. I do think that for now we see how many people come back and what we will need then we create a small moderating team to ensure things don’t go crazy if we have more people than expected.

Agreed Oro - Sil/Uruva/myself are gonna hold down the fort for a little bit just to let the dust settle on this initial stampede and wrap our heads around this wild situation. Getting a proper small mod team together is definitely a priority though, just want to make sure we do it the right way!

Yea. I was just saying If i were you I’d remodel some of the core Valinor team and not worry about a ton of icons. The mod team no matter what is gonna be small and just there for policing and helping. So dont stress on all the old icons. No one here will be upset if they are slightly different.

Yeah for sure, admin icons are real low on the priority list atm, the normal member ranks are definitely the important ones. You can see how much effort I put into my own super official rank & icon for example

I do wish I could find my favourite special rank ever though - The Void. I would totally sport that one again

I'm not too fussed about how icons are used, I just set up this thread because I like looking at them and making them. That said, Narv, if you want me to have a crack at making The Void icon, just describe what it was like and I'll see what I can do.

The Void would look great on you Narv. As long as you keep the Title of Cave Troll. Or some other kind of troll. Maybe the Void Troll. Hmm that has a nice ring to it.

lol it was literally just a black square, that's what I loved about it. Probs wouldn't actually use it for myself, but it might be neat to have in the vault for special occasions..

Say no more fam, I got you.

A lot of this is Peeg’s work

I have been trying all day to get access to some of the ones I made. and a few others I had just saved. but I think my account on the upload site I had used was hacked :/ I will keep trying

Beefcake Horse and the Fist of Tulkas were my favourites

Some of those I see and just know the Admin.

This is what I kept from back then ...

Wow Sil that is quite the collection! Great job keeping ahold of it. I personally really did like the style of Peeg’s icons. Hopefully we can get some similar ones that fit.

And Narv Fist of Tulkas is the best. And Beefcake Horse are cool. The Water waves aren’t bad either. Haha. Personally understand Aule’s but wish they were cooler.

I only have saved one official one - when I held the special character rank of Frodo:



But I also made some for my characters to have at the top of posts, as I RPd in lots of places as different people it was easier to keep track.

Isiliyan for Fangorn RP:


Itarilde Tinehtele for Imladris RP:


Peachleaf for Ent RP:


Aelflaed Goldhawk for Rohhan RP:


I have no idea what happened to my hobbit icon though, for Lily Knotwise.

As you can see, I didn't always use original images to make my icons, just smooshed some together and added a border. And I wasn't very good at keeping the size consistent!

Li. wrote: ↑Fri May 15, 2020 1:55 am Dig them up and post them here!

Oh man that was so many years and so many computers ago, I'm not sure I would even know where to start to find them again! I remember spending a lot of time getting the borders lined up properly, making sure the image was sharp, even getting the text the right font with the proper color/weight halo around it for rulers and special character ranks. It was a challenge to be sure, all in Paint!

Love Peeg's work. My favorite was the Laurelin ATR I was awarded in 2011. I believe that was the year. I was given the ATR because of RP. I thought I had saved it. But can't find it in any of my libraries. I did find this.



I made a Imgur account for sharing images. We'll see if they go the way of photobucket and make it into a fee service. I think I am going to clean off the stuff I value from Photobucket and delete that account.

Baingíl Randír wrote: ↑Fri May 15, 2020 4:32 am I know I have a ton of stuff saved on my old laptop from my Plaza days, which will include a bunch of (post-2010) icons. But in the meantime... I have these saved in a more accessible place. Some people might recall the thread that resulted in these happening. God help us all.







And then there's this old SCR:

Baingil those are excellent! I remember creating those, especially the good egg and the bad egg times. Thanks so much for finding them!

Narv, you didn't exactly request them, but here are 3 icons to choose from

I love em

You have such good records! Theres 3-4 of mine in that mix. I think Erinti was one of mine and looking at it now, I'm quite fond of it :)

Ohh I really like that Denethor (maybe because I wore it) Bain thank you for that post!

These are great! I think I had some icons saved in my photobucket account, but I tried three different email addresses and photobucket doesn't seem to remember any of them. Does anyone know if they delete accounts after a long while? It's probably been seven or eight years since I last logged in.

AHH! Okay. I went into wayback machine, and I searched the time when I was Lindo, and I was able to find the old fiery eyeball Lindo icon! So much nostalgia. I feel such triumph at finding this. Makes me miss Tarawen a whole bunch! She had a lovely Tinfang icon.

Also, wow, @Baingíl Randír, you are on a roll! XD What were all the egg based icons from?

Assuming this was what you were looking for, @Li. -- hopefully I can get this image shenanigans to work.



And here's Tara's Tinfang:

You beautiful human. That was the icon I've been looking for!

My photoucket was wiped :( But these are so beautiful and drool-worthy. Thanks to all of you that have some of them saved!

Yeah, I believe Photobucket changed its TOS in the past several years, and I don't recall quite how it affected users, but it drastically restricted the ability to upload images from the site anywhere else.

What's a real bummer is there aren't many good alternative photo-uploading and sharing sites. I mean...Maybe people who make icons can upload them in a private facebook album, then re-post here.

Though a more difficult-to-execute, easier-to-use if we could get it working option, would be to change the format of the site so that instead of the old form style of posting the image URL to upload a photo, pictures could be directly uploaded here on the Plaza. Narv, is that something that could be possible?

Okay when cleaning out my Photobucket to get rid of it, I found this. This is the old Fangorn Rank Five. The Huorn.



How long ago was that? I joined back in 2003 when this style was still in use.

Photobucket went down the toilet then it turned into a fee service then it kept telling me I was in violation of its terms because I was not paying its fees. So I deleted the account after taking off what I wanted to keep.

I actually cannot tell you how much pain those Durin doors icons caused me!! Arghhh lol

Wow some of those icons bring back memories lol

Oh and there was another SCR, a frigging fairy. Least I think it was an scr as it saved on my profile in one of the archives. Filthy dirty little fairy..

@Lúthien Tinúviel Uploading images onto the plaza directly would take up a lot of storage space and would come with an associated cost, which is why it was stopped on Original Plaza as well. The options that Eldy mentioned are all good ones.

@Mor Toast - ahhhh my Tinfang icon! *hugs it* I have officially been punched in the feels by nostalgia after seeing all of these.

@Tarawen Oh my goodness. *tackleglomps you* I found it after digging through the Plaza archive, and found a snapshot of when we were Maiar together. It had our old Cottage banner, and our lovely lil faces (read: icons) at the top. I dug through some of our old trib threads and such-- I found a thread I made called the KA-BLOOIE thread where people could post old artwork of theirs and the next person could... "kablooie" it. Such fun.

That Tinfang icon is so cute-- and those two icons just looked so good together.

@Tarawen Yes! Seeing it again was amazing. And yes, I saw I had the Sherlock name XD. We definitely know better now.

@Baingíl Randír That is an excellent rendition, thank you for the story! Perfect plaza shenanigans. It also sounds familiar; I feel like I remember that happening- do you remember what hear that was?

@Oak Halloween icons! Hmm, I'm pretty sure we did. I feel like I remember having Halloween icons even after regions started. Pretty sure?

@Baingíl Randír I remember seeing the dodo icon going around. I don’t recall participating in the craziness, but I defiantly enjoyed watching it.

And Halloween icons! I remember when Lorien (maybe Wilderland) was Lion King and I petitioned the ruler to let me go back to rank 1 so I could be baby Simba. I actually RPed as Simba for a bit.

@Li. I really like those void icons. Cool stuff.

I think the best part of the icons was that they allowed surprises like Halloween and Christmas changes to be so fun. Seeing new icons float around was a lot of fun. And also SCRs because it really gave people a sense of pride to carry an epic character around.

Like many here, I went back and dug out my old Photobucket password and went through my account and found a bunch of Plaza stuff, including this Finrod tribute icon that I got to rock for a time.

Mor Toast wrote: ↑Sun May 17, 2020 1:59 pm @Tarawen Yes! Seeing it again was amazing. And yes, I saw I had the Sherlock name XD. We definitely know better now.

@Baingíl Randír That is an excellent rendition, thank you for the story! Perfect plaza shenanigans. It also sounds familiar; I feel like I remember that happening- do you remember what hear that was?

@Oak Halloween icons! Hmm, I'm pretty sure we did. I feel like I remember having Halloween icons even after regions started. Pretty sure?

I tended to disappear in the fall because that was vacation time for my family. I was usually travelling to see family in the next state over. So I don't have a lot of memory of what happened in the fall.

I don't spend on a lot of time on the computer in the fall going toward Christmas. There's enough activities in my community that take up my time.

Now if we are still having this quarantine. this year might be a another story.

Found these on a trip through the wayback machine. I am willing to be helpful, occasionally, but hopefully someone else is making a nice folder of all these things, because I'm not!!



Smaug, Rosie, Elrohir, Eönwë, Bill the Pony, Gilraen, Haldir

Okay getting in the wayback machine. A set of icons I made for an Eagle Eerie RPG I ran in Fangorn years ago.



I was the GM so I used the Bald Eagle Icon.