My Avatars

I started off making my avatar on Second Life. I'll admit now, I had no idea what I was doing. My avatar looks nothing like me - not for lack of trying but for lack of understanding. It was very difficult to manage and I found that all the options were a bit overwhelming. Maybe the fact that I went into it with the intent to do my homework and not to recreate myself for other people made it more overwhelming than helpful. The fact that I could change such small details, like the bridge on my nose or the length of my torso made me feel a little uncomfortable. In the end, my avatar has zero resemblance to what I look like:

The Mii avatar was a totally different experience. My brother has a Wii at home so I had worked with the Mii system before. The character obviously looks nothing like me, but I guess if I had to "cartoonize" myself , this wouldn't be far off. The options are much more limited, especially when it comes to the clothing options (they only allow you to change the color of the shirts). I think this is a good thing, considering it's purpose. Whereas Second Life is used to recreate yourself online - at least, for me I tried to make it look as much like me as possible - Mii is clearly much more fictional, not holding any realistic purposes.

An Avatar of Mii

In doing this assignment, I opted to try and create a simplistic and cartoonish Mii character instead of trying my hand at Second Life. I own a Wii and have experience creating avatars on that system, so I already had a bit of an idea what I was doing when I began. Besides, from what I had heard from other classmates, Second Life was difficult to catch on to and led to some weird experiences. Feeling unready for such an experience, I began creating my Mii character, which looks like this:

When I was creating this avatar, I decided to try and create a more literal representation of myself instead of something more outrageous. Although the creation system had all of the basic tools for creating a general representation of myself (curly brown hair, brown eyes, etc.), i found it difficult to create an avatar that truly looked like me. However, this i something that I've never really been great at, despite trying it countless times on my own Nintendo Wii at home. Overall, though, I think that this system is adequate for someone trying to create a general representation of themselves or one of their favorite characters (yes, there are even online communities built around this practice).This simplistic and cartoonish trait seems to be great for people who want to make simple representations of themselves or who want to make a completely funny and divergent representation from themselves. If they are looking to get more detailed, however, they should probably look elsewhere for that.

Second Try

I don't like Second Life. I'm sorry, but it is not an appealing way to spend my time. As soon as my avatar loaded, it wandered into the water and flailed around because it couldn't walk properly. That was just the beginning of my problems. I was struggling to change anything about my avatar. I managed to change the shirt somehow, but it was still stuck in gladiator attire, and I couldn't figure out how to change any of the physical characteristics. At first, it seemed like I might be able to figure it out. The tools to change the avatar seemed to be there, but I would click different clothing items and nothing would change. In the end, my avatar ended up with one shoe on, very short shorts, and gladiator accessories on her shins.

After my bad experience on Second Life, I decided to try the mii creator. It was incredible how easy it was in comparison. The features are obviously so much simpler, but it was a quick and easy way to make an avatar. If anything this avatar is a better representation of me. I chose this hair because I alternate between curly and straight hair, so it was a happy middle. I also chose to represent myself with the same race and gender, although I think the guy hairstyles were better. I felt super limited by the options, because they were all so simple. However, it was a cool exercise to think about which physical features most accurately describe me. 

Mii Oh My

(First off, I did not want to dwell into the world of Second Life based on my previous notions of the site based off of this episode of The Office)

So, I made a Mii avatar instead. I've had a Nintendo Wii since it came out and I've always used eccentric characters instead of a personal reflection of myself. I don't know why. It was probably the novelty behind the fact that I could play Mario Kart as Kanye West or race against Sonic in the olympic games as Kenny from South Park. When I used to make Miis on my Wii way back in the day, I never felt limited by the lack of variety to chose from in terms of facial features. Back in middle school, I probably spent hours making different Miis to use in games. Looking online at the time, I learned that you could get very creative using the pieces they gave you. For example, by using eyes as ears and moving parts around, this person made a panda.

For the Mii for this project, I didn't make a version of myself, but I messed around with all the different parts given to me. Using an afro and making the mouth really large and the eyebrows really low, I created a helmet and a football player Mii.

Now, I've never played football competitively. I was more of a soccer and cross country sort of guy. The football player doesn't even look like me at all. To me, an avatar does not have to exemplify physical qualities of a person, but rather traits that a person may have. This avatar doesn't represent what I look like, but it does show that I have creative side which is something I'm proud of and would show off in an online space. 

Who Am Ii?

Okay, upon further review, this looks even less like me than I even thought. Oh, how I hate you, avatar creation systems.

Don't let the ambiguity of internet text fool you; I really do have a hatred of avatar creation. Especially in the case where I'm trying to make anything that resembles a real human being. I actually have a bit of a reputation among my siblings for having a Mii on our family Wii system that looks nothing like me, despite my repeated claims that it does. For that reason, I gave it another go for this assignment. Sure enough, my Mii again looks absolutely nothing like me!

So who's fault is it? Mine? The Mii creator system? I'm gonna go ahead and say it's a little bit of both. I've always had no sense of what I look like, as strange as that may seem. I was never able to draw myself back when I was young enough to not be completely embarassed by my lack of drawing skills, and every avatar I've ever created looks only a tiny bit like me. I'm a skinny white boy with medium length hair; From there, I don't really know where to go. I learned from this assignment that I have really small eyes, which I kinda tried to replicate in the avatar. I also tried to use a facial expression that I use often in real life when I saw it as an option for the mouth, but it just made me look upset about everything, and I saw myself as a bit more happy than that. I ended up going with a straight face, which is pretty much how I feel about avatars as a whole.

The Mii creator is also at fault here. Designed to be very simplistic, the Mii creator program is very limited, and I've never seen a Mii that looks exactly like the person it's supposed to represent. There are no realistic eyes, the facial expressions are amazingly exaggerated, and it takes a large amount of tinkering to make a face with the proportions of a normal human face. Also, for me, my hair style simply isn't represented in the creator, so I had to go with a more bowl-cut look, which would have been a bit more accurate in middle school but not right now. Using the Mii creator to make cartoon characters can actually be really fun, as I learned from trying to do so in extreme teenage boredom, but for making humans it is kind of horrible.

So, if I'm so bad at making avatars of humans, and the Mii creator isn't good for it, why do I continue to do it? Well, in this case, I just wanted to run an experiment on myself, but also, the image of me is still the image I want to portray across the internet. Pretending to be something else is a really strange concept to me. The closest I ever came to this was using a green skin color for my avatar on a game called VMK, but that was really only because I thought it would be cool to use the only non-normal skin color. In all other cases, I represent my own gender, race, and image (to the extent that I can recreate it.) Perhaps, if I were to critique myself, I can do this without issue because, at least in the USA, I have the features of those associated with power: white males. But also, I just want to be myself in all contexts, and see where I fit in. For example, I've never been one for "badass"-type imagery, so in a game called Toribash, whose tagline is "Violence Perfected," my avatar had the head of... Nemo. As in Finding Nemo. Again, I didn't stray from who I was: I love Finding Nemo, and I'm totally a kid at heart. I couldn't have put my own face on my avatar, so I used something that still represented me. I can't really explain why I have this need to try to show who I really am at all times, but it's present for sure.

My Avatar

So, here is my Avatar, as close as possible to what I actually look like. The process of making my Avatar was quite easy and didn't take that much time in doing so. I clicked on the link to go to ones that are like those available on the Nintendo Wii System called Mii. It was extremely easy and I had fun with it! My goal was to represent myself. I think it would personally be weird to represent someone other than yourself online. My favorite color is blue, so I chose that as the color of my shirt, and I used to have an afro (JewFro), and I also wear glasses. I added the facial hair because I usually grow it out. I never felt limited by my range of options in creating this Avatar. Race, gender, ethnicity, and other markers of "difference" are present within my Avatar. By choosing to represent myself, these markers of "difference" are present throughout my Avatar. There are other options as in one can make themselves a man or a woman and any color they really wanted to, I just went for the realistic approach.

This online assignment of creating an Avatar gives people the opportunity to be anyone and represent anyone or anything that they want to be online without stereotyping. I think it is essential that people chose whoever they want to be online.

Creating an Avatar of Myself

I started off by trying to create an avatar on Second Life that resembled myself. The process was difficult, but overall I think there were a lot of different opportunities to help create a realistic representation of myself. I was shocked by the array of options for changing your features but could tell that more regular users would be able to do a lot more with their character than I was able to figure out. I went through and tried to make my facial features and hair as close as I could to myself and I ended up looking nothing like myself, but it did work on it for a while.

After giving up on Second Life, I decided to go on to the Wii site and create another avatar of myself. This time it was much simpler, but the options were much more limited. Especially with clothing there was only one choice, rather than being able to personally design every aspect of an outfit.

For both avatars I noticed how simple defining features made a huge difference when creating my avatar. The one feature that I spent the most time deciding on for both avatars was my hair. Trying to find the most similar style and color was extremely influential in deciding how similar the avatar looked to myself. Also, simply having a more feminine body on Second Life, made it easier to tell my identity rather than on Wii where I felt the need to have myself wear pink to be able to recognize myself as a female. It is easy to see how little details can help set apart, gender, race or other identity markers.