Avatar Creation Systems

For my self-portrait avatars, I used Fuse and south park avatar creator.

I tried south park avatar creator first. The body shape of the avatar is identical to their typical characters - it is the only option. I can choose one of five skin colors. Also, the choices for facial features are limited. Basically you have two styles of eyes: big round eye shape and small narrow eye shape. The selection of mouth shapes is a set based their design style. I wish had more choices of physical features, like face shape, height, etc.

Despite the limited physical features provided, users can still customize their avatar to their liking by using the big collection of accessories provided. I found going through the collection of items was the most fun. Because they are references to a story or an episode. Although the final avatar does not accurately represent me physically, it represents me in terms of my personality. I also feel more immersed in the south park world, because I can clearly visualize me in the show.

Using Fuse is a very different experience in comparison to south park avatar creator. First of all, the visual aesthetics are at two extremes. South park avatars are stylized cartoon characters, and fuse avatars are high-resolution 3d scans of a person or person-like fictional characters. Interestingly, not only I have control over a model’s features, but also expressions. That was something I did not expect to have and was happy to see. However, the set of default models are not too close to my facial appearance, it is hard to adjust one to accurately represent my face. If I import a scan of myself and adjust it, it could be a highly accurate physical representation of me.

Discussion Questions

After reading the articles on psychology of avatar online. My questions are the following:

1. If the virtual world is a reflection of status quo, what happens when an avatar challenges gender expectation in the virtual world? Would that affect the player’s mentality?

2. Are there virtual world social norms? Or are they established social norms transported in the virtual world?