Play Make Write Think

I chose to create this avatar to use as a representation of myself for English class. I used an application on my iPhone named “NBA 2K Mobile” to create my image. My favorite hobbies are watching or playing sports and playing video games. My favorite type of video games to play are sports games like “FIFA”, “NBA 2K”, and “Madden NFL.” In “NBA 2K,” there is a game mode called “MyCAREER” which allows players to create a basketball player and develop it into a legendary player. When I play this game mode, I always create my player using my name, height, weight, position, and the type of basketball player I am in real life. This makes the game much more personal and realistic. In my avatar, this is my “my player,” and I would say it looks pretty similar to me in real life. I am tall, skinny, and have short hair which is shown in this player creation.

I had difficulty finding a way to create another “my player” on a sports video game. I don’t have an XBOX here at Emory, so I had to find another way to create a player that looks just like mine. Luckily, I found an app that allows me to create one. It took some time to create the player, but I feel it was worth it to make a player that resembles me. My badge highlights my interests of basketball and video games and captures my physical attributes all in one location.

NBA 2K Mobile. 2K Sports, 2019. Vers. 2.20.457713. Apple App Store.

This avatar shows exactly what I’m stepping into: WOMANHOOD. Instead of choosing some abstract model to represent womanhood, what better to represent it than myself? No, I am not egotistical, however showing the confidence and strength in oneself is key. Womanhood is not only about becoming a woman, but also about gaining strength, wisdom, and stability within oneself. It is a time where a woman loves themselves and builds her own world. So, yes, this is my avatar…because I am a living, exemplary figure of womanhood.

I chose this image, Kirby in particular, because I found him to be cheerful with a heavy appetite, quite like mine. He is a flexible and adaptive character in absorbing his enemies/weaknesses and turning them into his power; in doing so, he aligns to how I wish to learn and grow. This 3d model of him in real-life gives a more animated outlook which portrays how I also wish to express the skills and characters I gain from theory into actual practice. Chalkduster font was used to emphasize the easygoing and adaptive nature of this image.

Some difficulties I had were trying to use the interfaces between Picmonkey and Pixlr as one required a free trial, and the other had more presets/options to elaborate on. I also tried to understand the pixels width and length as I downloaded the image and cropped it appropriately.

Image Credits: “Kirby Invades Chateau de Ranton” by Nick Silver Sides.

Link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rtypes/16807571109/in/photolist-rBecjM-DtXpn9-CyLigu-KahP18-KahQsB-P3e8uU-yNRpvx-2F5XnW-uiqzU4-rkFEQW-rkDqyn-bu8Df8-P826M3-ZQdSuA-D59Unu-KZZkFM-MpY8Ga-28pWmAo-MpYhqH-UXLezd-KZKrCL-wvUj5t-Yht5qX-LPUp5F-tmrnH7-r2xcjH-K3n2e6-RCzxPz-APkXJE-ZUWaT2-D59Yzh-2F1y9c-M7ZPsn-Mpdvdy-UC1YtQ-26aGYKY-28W5djx-rkDpmc-2fjk2Ey-FMr2ri-Dp1izr-CyLdTm-rvRg22-rvXg4t-B6UyrZ-Bx8nu4-V1h5hb-VqzRVc-vKVo8n-28C4dW1

I am a car lover and the first thing comes to mind when thinking about choosing my avatar would be a car picture. As I already have lots of them in my phone, choosing one was the main task. This picture of a Lamborghini Veneno came out last week and is my current favorite. And I downloaded a photo editing app on my laptop, cropped the photo and added caption. I have worked on similar task before and it was quite straightforward. Then I made the size a bit smaller to be not too far from 512 pixels.

Posting the avatar turned out harder than I expected. I found WordPress hard to navigate. It took me about half an hour to figure out where to upload my avatar and even longer to find out how to use the tag function. But overall, I believe this experience enhanced my skills in WordPress and is rewarding when I finally realized how to make it work. The only problem I have right now is the the oversized displayed avatar. I need to figure out how to remove it from my homepage or adjust its size.

I spent a long-long time skimming through my photo library looking for a satisfying avatar for myself, longer than the time I took to build the website. There are too many aspects I want to express in one picture: music, hobbies, lifegoals, personalities, and so on. I decided that was not possible after several rounds of fetching: I’ll have to write a book to represent my whole life, so I ended up choosing one of my passions as my avatar. Equestrian is a big part of my life; it allows me to take time to forget pressure and exhaustion in my life. I’m forced to focus on my gesture, my breathing, connection with my horse and a path we are taking when I’m on the back of a horse, and I enjoy the excitement when all of my attention is focusing on just one matter. There is no room in my head for the tests I did not do well or the arguments I had with my families. I often say riding is therapeutic to me, and it has been supporting my mental and physical health in many ways.

It is also a well-structured picture to me. Iphone did a good job focusing on the main subject, the horse and me, and blur out the background, giving a sense of we are striving forward, which is what I’m hoping for in my life as well. Look forward and take big strides no matter what’s in the front.

League of Legends has been my favorite game for roughly seven years. I can confidently say that I have poured thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, of hours into this game. The main character I play in League is Orianna, a female android who uses a robotic hovering ball to deal damage. I think it would have been a missed opportunity not to mix Orianna with the sport I have played my entire life: bowling. Although, the outcome was a little more comical than I expected it to be. I believe my badge icon shows my taste in video games as well as what has been a major facet of my life so far.

To create this image, I looked up images of Orianna cosplays, a bowling ball, and a bowling jersey on Flickr. I grabbed the background image on the League of Legends website which has a fair use policy with their images. Then, I enlisted the help of my close friend who owns photoshop. Since my technological prowess is at a similar level to that of my grandma at times, I asked them to show me some basic skills in photoshop. After cutting out the bowling ball, I replaced Orianna’s ball with that image. Then I carefully placed the cut out jersey on top of her. Lastly, I pasted the background photo.