Evaluation

The Identities projects aim was to create an avatar and environment which represented yourself. At first I was a little confused by this whole concept as I was not sure how I would put my personality across through an avatar. I was advised to join Second Life which is a bit like MSN but with an avatar, which you can dress and change to look like anything you want it to look like. I kept a diary of this for around 3 weeks. Joining this helped me realise how people’s perception of you can change depending on your surroundings, the way your character looks and is dressed.
I did a lot of research to start off with including mood boards to get me started on what I might what my avatar to be like and what I could possibly make my surroundings look like. I also did research on existing characters and environments to get me started and see ideas for what I could possibly make myself. Next I researched artists that I like and find influential. After that I did few ideas and chose one to develop. I chose my character to look like a human but thought that might be a bit boring so i made it out of doughnut shapes so it looked more abstract. It also looked simple and that showed characteristics of me as I like to live an uncomplicated life as possible. I also added butterfly wings because I like to go out and it represents me as a social butterfly. For the environment I wanted to create something eye catching, so came up with the idea of making a building similar to the Taj Mahal as it shows my background and culture. I then chose bright coloured sky and this was influenced by Pop Art because that style of work was usually bright and it also shows my bright outlook on life. The island is in the shape of a star because I like anything to do with stars. Inside the building I chose to add objects that represent a part of me. I did a iPod because I love music and to emphasize the importance of it in my life I made it bigger then my avatar. I also did 3 different sized spheres each with a different photo of things I like and myself. The last thing I put in was to images of Pop Art because I really like the style of them and my works influenced by it.
We were taught to use 3D Max, however I found Cinema 4D easier to use as I have used it a little before. I found that it was quite hard to work things out at first ad it took a while to get the hang of the functions but I got there in the end. I used simple shapes to model the whole things and i Felt that it was quite effective and worked well.
Overall I didn’t have that much difficulty generally apart from the fact that I couldn’t get it to render properly, I played around with the settings and everything but in the end I had to settle with a preview view which appears rather small. If I had to change anything I think I would probably make my avatar move as I didn’t feel that confident with the idea much this time so I just moved the camera angles. I was happy however with my building and avatar and feel it generally showed my personality well through it.