To rock it in the metaverse, your avatar and how you design and dress ‘it’, are key to how you wish to express yourself and how you wish to be seen by others.
Creating avatars
Anyone who has tried to build their digital selves on a 3D platform; be it Roblox, The Sims or Genies, knows that capturing the essence of you is a challenge. How can you transform yourself as a person into a digitised form? And should your avavar look like you in gender, hair- and eye-colour as well as height and weight? Is not the freedom of the metaverse such that you can be or look like anything?
An LA based artist who transforms, mostly famous, people into the 3D realm is Blake Kathryn, who is commissioned to immortalise people, ranging from Paris Hilton to Pabllo Vittar, as avatars. In a recent interview with The Fabricant, a digital fashion house, Blake said that the key to her digital designs of people is precisely NOT to create exact replicas of her subjects. She prefers to find and caricaturise the distinguishing features of each physical person to anchor her creations, making sure there is a likeness and that the caricatures are not over the top.
That sounds like good advice. So, if you are designing your own, DIY, avatar, you may list the things you find most important about yourself and decide then how these things are best given shape. It is interesting to think how you can capture kindness or being funny. It is sort of like painting a self-portrait. Not so easy really and possibly you may want to enlist the help of a pro, especially considering your avatar will live forever.
Dressing avatars
Creating a digital wardrobe is the next thing on the creative list. Your choice of digital outfits – which can be as outlandish as you wish - allows you to express the identity of the character you embody in the metaverse.
There are more and more virtual designs and designers emerging to make their mark in the metaverse. In the Gamification of Fashion, TalksforTeens discusses who is doing what and where, with most of the design action still within the boundaries of video-games.
The rise of digital fashion has brought along its own digital (avatar) influencers on social media, providing ample inspiration for digital wardrobes.
A hugely popular digital influencer is @lilmiquela, a perpetual 19-year-old girl, whose world includes – other than Miquela herself - characters such as Perl and Lil Wavi as well as Miquela’s sidekick Blawko and his girlfriend Bermuda. Miquela has a keen fashion sense, and her enormous popularity has brands tripping over themselves to work with her. Miquela’s persona was created in 2016 by an LA based design studio. The @lilmiquela avatar cast now has 3 million followers on Instagram and counting.
@noonoouri is another digital influencer. She is a cross between a Bratz doll and a Barbie, created by German art director Joerg Zuber in 2018. Soon after her creation, noonoouri became a darling of the fashion crowd with her big eyes and stylish looks. She is a particular favourite of luxury brands, whose iconic fashion pieces seem to be made for her. The outfits she wears are certainly doll-like and very glamorous. @noonoouri has attracted a following of almost 380,0000.
The smaller account of @ruby9100m, is populated by the avatar Ruby Gloom (personally I am loving this name), designed by the illustrator Martin Hsu. Ruby is a (very) avantgarde version of her digital rivals. Her outfits are distinctly experimental and futuristic. Although Ruby is less popular on social media, she was featured in VICE Magazine as well as by Snapchat and FENDI and is loved by the musician Grimes.
Creating your avatar can be a wonderfully creative process. There are plenty of apps and platforms to help you with this. The ‘old’ concept of avatars that are alien or purely robotic looking, are out of date. For avatar fashion inspo, go to Dress-X, The Dematerialised or the Fabricant. There are plenty of wild outfits to choose from. It may sound futuristic now, but soon we will all have a full-fledged, customised avatar to navigate our online lives.
Recommended Links:
https://www.techworm.net/2020/04/best-avatar-creator.html
https://www.talksforteens.com/fashion/where-to-get-your-virtual-fashion-fix
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