Looking for a better way of dynamically loading an image between scenes

Hey guys, for a couple hours now I've been trying to create a script that allows me to do the following things:

• Dynamically copy one GameObject's sprite to another (hidden) GameObject's sprite

• Load the GameObject with the dynamically loaded sprite to another scene

• Do all of this without having the GameObject with the dynamically changing sprite visible until the scene changes to the appropriate one.

  ---

I want to do all of this because I'm creating a player avatar (read: like a forum avatar) selection menu where the player chooses one from a number of different sprites. After the player has selected a sprite, a placeholder sprite in the middle of the screen changes to represent the decision made by the player. Because that sprite is now considered the player's avatar, I want it to be visible on other scenes as well, but I can't just DontDestroyOnLoad the placeholder sprite, because it also serves the purpose of a button. Transferring the whole button seems like a bad idea.

I played around with SetActive, but couldn't make it work. Somehow, I got the idea that a transparent image, which only regains its alpha on scene change to the appropriate scene is a smart way to deal with my issue. And, to my surprise, it actually worked.

The code in Awake() deals with the problem of having a child GameObject that you want to use DontDestroyOnLoad on.

The code I used to accomplish the task is as follows:

 using System.Collections;
 using System.Collections.Generic;
 using UnityEngine;
 using UnityEngine.UI;
 using UnityEngine.SceneManagement;
 
 public class AvatarPersistence : MonoBehaviour
 {
     public GameObject PlayerAvatar;
     public string SceneToBeActive; //Assign in inspector
     private Image img_PlayerAvatar;
     private Image new_PlayerAvatar;
     
     void Start()
     {
         img_PlayerAvatar = PlayerAvatar.GetComponent<Image>();
         new_PlayerAvatar = this.GetComponent<Image>();
     }
 
     void Update()
     {
         new_PlayerAvatar.sprite = img_PlayerAvatar.sprite;
         if (SceneManager.GetActiveScene().name == SceneToBeActive)
         {
             var tempColor = new_PlayerAvatar.color;
             tempColor.a = 1f; 
             new_PlayerAvatar.color = tempColor;//Makes transparent Player Avatar visible again on Assigned Scene change
         }
     }
 
     void Awake()
     {
         Transform parentTransform = this.transform;
 
         while (parentTransform.parent != null)
         {
             parentTransform = parentTransform.parent;
         }
         DontDestroyOnLoad(parentTransform.gameObject);
     }
 }

My question is, is there a more elegant way of accomplishing the tasks I previously outlined? It seems to me that playing around with the alpha of an image is not the best way of doing this.

Thanks, B.