Difference between revisions of "Talk:Kenny Yang"

Latest revision as of 18:25, 15 November 2011

Your reflection clearly depicts the evolver software’s lack of racial variety outside of Caucasian. Rather than describing every single issue you had, you generally summed up that there were not enough Asian options. Not being particularly familiar with the nuances of Asian facial structure, I could have used more discussion as to what you would look for in Asian options, and what it was about the available options that made them unsuitable for you. I would hazard a guess that after many attempts at producing what you really wanted in a self-avatar, you realized it was not going to live up to your standards and settled into looking for what looked ‘most Asian’ and went from there.

Your outside source is unsatisfactory. It fails in ground your reflection in anything beyond personal opinion, and the only thing it achieves is to tell us what some clothing for your fantasy avatar reminded you of. An article on racial identity and avatar creation could have been a solid (and easy) anchor point for your piece.

I enjoyed your walkthrough on the creation of Disco Buddha. I find it interesting that, rather than creating a fantasy character of yourself, you created a character with no real connection to yourself beyond the fact that you imagined it.

Overall, I thought your essay was good. It was very comprehensive and detailed in all of the processes that you went through to create both avatars. However, I agree with the first commenter that there definitely needs to be a little more substance and detail in certain areas. For example, you talk about assumptions about what it is to "look asian". It would have been helpful to reflect that a little more back to what you looked like, instead of just saying that (i.e.) asian hair comes straight and dark (or something along the lines of that). I know you later on make such a connection, but I think you should do it straight off the bat, and make it very direct (so for example: "I am asian and I have straight, black hair. None of the hair options really fit me until I had to make an adjustment" type of comment). Also, (and I know you said that this was a pretty smooth, easy process), it would have been nice if you could've went into detail when you were making your body or choosing clothing (maybe even just putting in a sentence: "I found the body type that really matched mine", instead of just glancing the whole thing over would have added a little more to your whole reflection). I also thought it was interesting how you made a fantasy character that had no connection to you. But I felt like I was asking "but why?" or "how is this connected to him at all?" or "why is he making this?" the whole time. I think it's okay that there is no direct connection, but I think there needed to be a mention of why you explicitly thought it was important to make this particular fantasy character instead of another. I also think your outside source doesn't really support anything besides what your fantasy avatar's clothing reminded you of. If you brought in something about social identity and perhaps how that caused you to choose your (unconnected) fantasy avatar - I think that would have made your overall reflection much stronger. But good job though!

-Pat Walter