In real life there is no appearance modification station and in order to alter the way we are seen by the rest of the world we have to resolve to less flexible means. We can change our clothes, get tattoos or piercings. We can colour our hair, style it or choose to shave it. We can even go down a “body size” or two by changing our diet or going to the gym yet it’s pretty clear that our real life customization tools are far more limited than those in game. When we enter the virtual world of online gaming it is so easy to make the avatar representing us look however we want them to. So what lies behind the choices we make when we create these in game manifestations of ourselves?
For this week’s topic we are investigating the creative space of "character creator" applications. Character creation tools allow people to experiment with identity & enable a form of artistic collaboration between the artist and player. For this assignment, I mad characters in 4 different character creators.
CHARACTER CREATORS
As a person, who spent her childhood playing “The Sims“ It was so fun for me to explore all these nice tools. I believe there is no difference in having fun among the psychology of creating characters even it’s less detailed more realistic. My attitude was creating slightly idealized avatars based on my actual self. There must be a deep hole behind this behavior. I also believe as a woman, the creation of characters are related with our childhood. Girls are likely to play with dolls and inclined to create characters beautiful or good looking. What is it this impulse that direct us while creating this characters. What is the impulse of creating them more likely look like us? These questions made me think a lot.
MY CHARACTERS
#Nintendo
#Rat Maker
#Aloha Sushi
#Ice Cream Makers
EXPERIENCE WITH TOOLs
Mii Studio
With the mii creator you can customise everything about your character and create the perfect avatar - whether that's a boy or a girl. The Wii Mii maker allows you to choose from a wide variety of options for each facial feature. By the end of the design process you will have created a carbon copy of yourself or something completely different!
There’s a variety of options where you can choose “eyes” among more than 60 variations. You can customize twelve section of body including the width(weight) and height of your character.
For those who don’t know, Miis are customizable cartoon avatars that came into existence with the launch of the Nintendo Wii in 2006. Remember those big-headed characters that bopped around your screen in titles such as Wii Sports or Miitopia? Yup, those are the Miis.
RAT MAKER
Rat maker was so much fun even it doesn’t have detailed graphics as much as. Nintondo’s miis. The user face and fonts were look like 90’s infer face. Maybe this was the reason what makes it very special.
Altough there wasn’t a lot of options to choose from, they made a great job with the graphics. They looked like hand drawn illustrations and I think they’ve bring them together using photoshop.
Even it doesn’t require to much detailed work. They made a great job creating a tool that was so fun with all the elements in it, as a whole.
Here is another tool I’ve found during my research;