User talk:Kkyang
Contents
Self Portrait
Creating Myself
Looking at the assignment I was interested because I’ve never tried “creating” myself with software like this. I have drawn myself before and picked premade avatars that looked like me but never sat down and tried creating myself. To begin, I turned on my webcam on my laptop and took a picture of myself and saved it on my desktop. I started with my hair first because I thought it would help me see myself better in the avatar. I clicked the hair tab and in my mind said “which one of these look the most Asian.” I settled with a middle length sort of straight black hair, similar to mine. Next I went on to shaping my face. I played around with various faces, trying to match my head type. I just settled with a pretty generic head type and not combining faces. I then continued with the rest of the facial features and found that I used “Sean” the most. He was my cheek, chin, mouth, ears, and eyes. The nose was the only different feature that I used.
Reflecting Back
I found this exercise a bit frustrating because my ability to customize myself was very limited. Only allowing selection from a small pool made it hard for me to represent myself the way I wanted to be represented. My first attempt at making myself was choosing hair that looked like mine. Being Asian, I know that Asian hair typically only comes in one flavor, straight and black. After looking at the selections they have available, I settled on one that looked sort of like my hair and changed the color to black. I found however that after I changed it to black, it resembled my hair much more and I was satisfied with my choice. The color had really made a difference in the envisioning process. Before I thought, “I’ll just settle with this one…” However after I changed the hair color I found myself thinking, “Not bad actually…” Next were the eyes. Again, being Asian I know that Asian eyes are typically smaller so I already had an idea of what I needed to look for. Browsing through the eyes I was very easily able to decide which ones looked like mine. I think however for non Asian people, they would have had to look a bit harder because their eyes don’t have this sort distinguishable trait. That may be an overgeneralization though. There turned out to only be three Asian looking eye sets that I was able to choose from and I ended up picking “Sean” again. This continued on throughout the rest of my selection except for the nose. This where I chose to mix a wider set nose with a thinner nose bridge to create my nose. As for the body I decided to just pick and medium build to represent myself. This choice process wasn’t very difficult or frustrating. I didn’t find it as important as my facial features. An interesting thought that popped into my head as I was creating myself was that I found myself asking “What looks most Asian” when I was choosing facial features. Before going in and picking what looked the most like me, I already had a preconceived idea based on the fact that I am Asian.
Fantasy Character
The Head
This is how the idea of creating a disco retro 70’s looking Buddha came into my head. I had no idea what I was going to create so I decided to browse the head. The first thing I saw was a face named “Anthony” that was round looking. With that in mind I decided “I’m going to create Buddha.” After deciding that I went on to make the face look as round and as happy as possible because well… he was going to be Buddha. Why not? He's a very well respected man, why not recreate him for my SI 410 class. When it came to eyes, I again already has this idea that the eyes had to be “Asian” looking so I already knew which set of eyes I had to choose from. I ended up choosing “Minh.” The rest of the features went on to be the roundest and “fattest” features I could find to match the happy looking Buddha that everyone loves. A majority of the features came from "Anthony" who was also the basis for the face. I had tried other facial features but they didn't seem to mesh well with the facial structure. I had used "Anthony" in all of the facial features but did however add "MudNa" to the nose because I wanted a wider set nose. Next was choosing the skin, initially it was set to a dark skin tone, I had to change it to a more olive and light skin tone. There was a filter and Asian was set as one of the choices. Perfect. I picked "Steph" and the Buddha was coming together at this point. I had a happy looking Buddha like face but next was his body and what the Buddha was going to wear.
The Body
As for the body, I again set out to create a round looking avatar to resemble the idea that Buddha wasn’t the dieting type. I chose the rounded looking features again. However this time I picked "William" to be the basis for the body type. I didn't choose "Anthony" because I found that he wasn't big enough for the Buddha. The rest of the features however did come from "Anthony", the arms, legs, chest, etc. Overall I wasn't too concerned about his body shape as long as it was rounder looking.
The Swag
Next came what my Disco Buddha was going to wear. I had no idea where to begin. I thought to myself, "I wonder if they have robes, or togas or something of that nature." As I browsed around I started off with pants for some reason and found some swanky looking white pants that instantly reminded me of “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City | GTA:VC," a video game about drug lords, guns, women and swanky disco pants. Boom. The Disco Buddha. I swore that he would “be the Buddha with the most style and swag that anyone else has ever laid eyes on.” With pants picked, next came the shoes and his shirt. I found a purple flower looking button up shirt that I thought would be perfect. It was. It matched his pants perfectly and made him look like he was ready to hit the dance club with John Travolta on a Saturday night. It was all coming together now and there was only one final touch left, the shoes. I picked a pair of shiny looking black shoes to complete the ensemble. The Disco Buddha was born.
Overall
