Talk:Vincent Sarkisian

I thought your reflection was very honest and descriptive. Your use of outside sources was good, but I felt they could have been incorporated more seamlessly into your reflection. Although your reference to Catfish was very descriptive, I didn’t see a huge relation to the assignment. I think a better explanation of how this example related to your experience would help. I thought your addition of the Kolko article was great, but again, I think a more detailed explanation of how this article related to your experience would make your reflection stronger.

Your introduction was very informative and a great way to introduce the assignment. I liked that you explained your definition of an avatar, your experience with avatars and your thoughts before starting the assignment. Like most students, you had a hard time finding features that represented your true features. Like you, when I started creating my avatar, I didn’t look at a mirror or photograph, thinking I knew myself well enough not to need it. I also found that this approach was not beneficial. On your second attempt you said you found that creating an avatar from two parent avatars was difficult as well. Did you consider using some of the other tools on Evolver? For example, using the features you found using parent avatars to start from a blank face, or even uploading a picture to help you find features that match. I agree however, the Evolver software was limiting. Your reflection on your fantasy avatar was honest. I related to your feelings of not wanting to create a fantasy avatar. I similarly, have never had any experience with avatars, so I had a hard time creating a fantasy version of myself.

-Mel Barnes

Your avatar reflection highlights what issues you ran into when constructing your self portrait avatar and how these problems with evolver.com prevented you from creating an accurate virtual representation of yourself. However, your discussion of these issues is limited. It would have been interesting if you had discussed specific issues you were confronted with and not just stating that the number of parent avatars were few. But I like how you mention using a picture of yourself really helped you in constructing your avatar. I also like how you talk about your lack of interest in creating a fantasy avatar and was probably explained by your lack of avatar usage. That shows how having different emotional investments in your avatars affected how your build each one. It seems that you were not as invested in constructing your fantasy avatar because there are no virtual situations where you would be perceived as your fantasy avatar. Although you did not spend a lot of time making your fantasy avatar, I wish you would have explained why you had him wear a hat. But I found it interesting that you were reminded of the movie Catfish when you were building your fantasy avatar. Do you think that all people creating fantasy avatars do so to fill voids in their real lives or are there other reasons behind their creation?

-J Armstrong