Advantageous Avatars

We often accept things at face value. This was especially true during the recent pandemic when our lives were suddenly inundated with avatars. This got me wondering about the origins of the modern avatar.

The term avatar comes from the Sanskrit word “avatāra,” which translates as descent or falling. Within the Hindu religion, an avatar is a manifestation of a deity in bodily form on earth. Personally, this historical element was a satisfying discovery because I am half Asian Indian. I was completely unaware of an ancient Indian connection to these modern icons who have infiltrated online meetings, video games, and social media.

A Brief History of the Avatar
One of the first modern documented uses of the term avatar happened in 1979 via a role-playing computer game. By 1996, the use of avatars became prevalent in AOL’s Instant Messenger, whose avatars were referred to as “Buddies.” The film Avatar took the concept to a technological zenith in 2009.

In order to make online interactions more comfortable for humans, we began to give artificial intelligence a face. Some forms of artificial intelligence have taken ownership of their presence by creating their own curated visual identities. What Is an Avatar, Really? (see Resource) is an excellent resource that delves deeper into the history of the avatar and asks us to imagine what it would be like if our avatars could allow us to physically feel, touch, and even smell the world at a distance. Obviously weʼre not there yet, but creating a custom avatar using Adobe Illustrator was something extremely doable with my introductory computer graphics classes.

Preliminary Considerations
Avatars come in a vast array of styles and complexity. Iʼve created many avatars of myself over the years, and I share those with students in addition to the one I use in their Google Classroom.

I wanted to keep this project simple for my introductory students while leaving room for those who were able to take on more challenging design possibilities. I thought it wise to have them use a flat design as inspiration. This approach is also an excellent way for students to explore creating visual diversity using only a few elements of art: shape, color, and value. This is a manageable way for them to become familiar with the Illustrator workspace, how to modify the default shapes within the program, and how to create a custom color scheme.

Individual Color Schemes
To start, I photographed students so they could build their avatar using separate layers on top of the photographic image. One of the first tasks is to have students create a custom color scheme to emulate their skin tone. There has been a lot of conversation in the art education community about deconstructing race using color theory; this project was an opportunity to have that discussion with my students, in addition to teaching them how to use Illustrator’s Swatches and Edit Colors options to create an individual skin tone value system. From there, the techniques involved are fairly direct.

Project Criteria
The final avatar had to be completely symmetrical, with minor exceptions. Students began with the shape of the face, ears, and neck, torso, eyes, nose, mouth, hair, clothing, and accessories, each on a separate layer. This allows students to easily select and correct their images, if necessary. Each segment of the project served as a conduit for me to present the Align and Pathfinder palettes, Paintbrush tool, Offset Path action, and Pen tool options.

Importing and Sharing Images
To finish, I demonstrated how to import an AI Illustrator file into Photoshop and save it as a 300 DPI high-quality JPEG.

It was important to demonstrate how to make a professional-looking avatar, as well as how to save it so it can be used on different platforms without losing image quality. I instructed students to use a document size of 8 x 8" (20 x 20 cm). Many platforms use circular cropping when posting a profile image. Taking the usage of their avatar into consideration is an important factor in determining the length and width of their design space.

Some students asked if they could convert their avatar into a perfect circle. I demonstrated how to do this and save it as a PNG (portable network graphic). A PNG is better than a JPEG in this case because it retains the shape of an object with a transparent or semi-transparent background.

Conclusion
I was curious to see if my students would actually use their avatars, and I received an answer rather quickly. At the end of the project, students were uploading their illustrated portraits to their Google Classroom profile and Remind accounts without my suggesting it. One student mentioned the possibility of using it in their promotional materials for a student government campaign.

You can find my custom editable step-by-step tutorial for this project on teacherspayteachers.com. Email me with any questions.