Talk:Brian Mansfield

Hi Brian,

To start off, I really liked the fact that you included your personal background information at the beginning. At first I was a little confused about the distinction you were trying to draw between “self-portrait” and physical appearance, but after reading about how you are your brother were adopted, I understood more about the idea you were trying to convey. To my knowledge, a lot of people think of the word self-portrait more literal, where its definition is quite similar to that of physical appearance. I could be wrong, but I think your point was that your social identity does not coincide with your physical appearance. Even though you are of Asian heritage, because you were adopted and raised by Caucasian parents you identify yourself more closely with the Caucasian American culture. So I think the first part of your reflection would be better if you clarified a little bit more. You gave very detailed and thoughtful description of your avatar-construction process. Maybe consider integrating the technical process of building your avatar with your background information. From the way you structured your writing, the two parts almost seemed like separate entities.

I liked your chosen personality for your fantasy avatar, it’s very interesting. However, I understand the focus of your reflection was on your “personal portrait” avatar, but there was too little information about the construction process of your fantasy avatar. It’s very cool how you modeled the avatar’s look after Russel Crowe’s character in A Beautiful Mind, but you didn’t really explain much why you chose him, besides the fact that he’s brilliant like your avatar. Also, I know you cited the movie in the reference section, but it'd helpful to have a footnote linked to it. Overall, you did a good job.

--B Humphrey 02:54, 12 November 2011 (EST)

Your analysis of self-portrait versus physical appearance was a very strong start to your reflection on making this avatar. The story of your adoption provided a lot of insight into why you consider the two to be distinct. A lot of your identity comes from both your parents, but you seem to want to connect with your heritage, which works to alter the way you view your appearance, your reflection seems to say. This deep analysis works to set up the next part of your reflection well.

Though brief, the overview of the self-portrait construction provided good insight to how you thought and went about the process of making your character look like you. You discussed most of your decisions and how you felt about them very clearly. Your ‘difficulties’ section was similar to mine and the other reflections I have read, stating that a certain feature was difficult to perfect due to it being connected with another part, in your case the mouth and lip. Your frustration with clothing choices was interesting, because it gave insight into the fact that you find clothes to be an important feature of a person.

Your fantasy character seems to lack description, focusing only on what you wanted it to be rather than how you made it to be what you wanted it to be. Some of the decisions you made are not clear to me in your description of the character.

Your use of a source is a little weak as you don’t use it to back your views on self-perception or support your reflection in a strong way. While it does explain which movie your character was from and give an example of what you wanted it to be, the source should have been used to back some of your findings earlier in your paper.

-Sue Henderson