Talk:Trevor Cortez

I thought the addition of the wii and xbox avatars was a great addition of using outside sources. I could immediately relate to his comparisons as I own an xbox 360 and wii as well. In most instances using a caricature for an avatar is better than a poorly done self-portrait. If the software is attempting to be realistic and can't produce realistic results it fails in both categories. It is neither a cartoon nor a self-portrait but rather a poor combination of both.

I thought the person reflection was extremely well written and I have to admit to laughing out loud after reading "Having to use a character named “Bozo” to shape your nose can be a blow to your self-esteem." I thought that was an extremely good observation. When you're trying to create a serious self-portrait of yourself it does not help if a template you use has negative connotations. When they were programming Evolver they should have thought about using neutral names for the templates to prevent offending anyone. Knowing Trevor I can tell his avatar looks nothing like him. This shows an extreme limitation of the software because it is not able to create good self-portraits of whites nor minorities. Trevor used the same helmet for his avatar character as I did for the same exact reason, we both are fans of the Call of Duty franchise. It's interesting to see how similar interests can form similar avatars.

-L. Cobb

I agree that how you come up with your own facial features isn't that intuitive. I don't think of my features as the combination of male and female features. Instinctively, I want to select something close to me and then tweak it a little bit. Even though the name of the company is Evolver, this still wasn't that obvious to me during the process. I remember selecting that I wanted a male character, and then I went from there. It would have been nice if they had said something more along the lines of choose you mother, choose your father, and now choose your gender.

I also agree with the lack of customizability of some of the features like facial hair and head hair. Both have a range of styles, lengths, and colors. It should really be divided up into parts. First you pick the style of hair, then you pick the length, and then you pick the color. I would even add that for designing the eyebrows and facial hair, there should be some sort of draw element involved. Potentially, you would be allowed to draw the eyebrow and/or facial hair on one side of the face, and then it would be mirrored on the other. This way, you could get your design down pretty easily without it coming out too messy.

-W. Mack

This is a well written article describing a lot insights about avatar creation and the challenges associated with it. I enjoyed reading the section about spectacles. You provide a lot of good details about your level of comfort with your new image. As an extension, it may be a good idea to point out some of the difficulties that you mention about creating avatars with glasses. For instance, you may wish to talk about how glasses can hide some other features like the nose, and the user may have to work harder to work with the nose.

At first, I had the impression that you would use your old image (with glasses) for the fantasy avatar and try to draw a comparison between your new image (own avatar without glasses) and your old image. However, that was not the case. Regardless, I enjoyed reading about comparing two different images.

On a different note, it was an intelligent idea to compare the capabilities of different softwares to create avatars. It adds a new dimension to the writing and allows you to make a more concrete argument in terms of highlighting Evolver’s drawbacks. As a minor edit, since you have added the pictures bellow the text, you may wish to change your sentence from "displayed below" to "displayed above"

- C Douglas