Identity, Your Avatar, and You!

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This brief workshop was delivered to faculty members at Connected learning’s Summer Institute!

“Identity, Your Avatar, and You!” is a 1-hour facilitated workshop which engaged learners to consider their own identity, self-awareness, and how they may be perceived in online and virtual environments, including virtual worlds, social VR platforms, and other immersive spaces.

If you already have experience with this tool, or designing avatars, please go ahead and begin creating; this is time for you to experiment.

I suggest that all persons rush through their first avatar as they are editable after-the-fact and get at least one avatar completed enough to share (between 5-10 minutes).

Instructions to create Ready Player Me account and begin constructing your avatar:

  1. Create account at https://readyplayer.me/
  2. Click “Sign up” button, select “Player”
  3. Enter email, and create password
  4. Verify account link in your email
  • This workshop will cover some basic definitions and context relevant to XR and immersive environments
  • Self-reflection of identity and personal representation
  • We will cover the use of one avatar creation tool which has application across several immersive VR platforms

Why and how to consider your virtual representation-

  • Identity factors- Where do we display our “identity”?:
    • For example, Name, Title, Education, Email address, Visual presentation, Slang, Accent, Dialect, and Association, are all “Speech Codes”.
  • Speech codes: theorized by Gerry Philipsen, Professor Emeritus at UW
    • “Speech Codes”, which is Philipsen’s reframing ‘The Ethnography of communication’
    • essentially, this encapsulates the relationship between communication and culture
  • Impression management: Erving Goffman – ‘Give’ vs. ‘Give off’ via ‘Impression Management”

Instructions to begin creating your avatar:

  1. Click on the tile that says “Create a New Avatar” or “Try our Avatar Creator”
  2. OPTIONAL: Take a front-facing photo with your webcam or upload a file from your computer
  3. OPTIONAL: Start from a pre-created template
  4. Choose a heteronormative gender expression
  5. Choose a body type
  6. Choose a skin color
  7. Choose a head shape / jaw line
    1. Eyes (Shape and color)
    1. Eyebrows (Shape and color)
    1. Nose shape
    1. Mouth shape
    1. Facial hair and color
  8. Choose a Hairstyle and hair color (use horizontal scrollbar to see more styles)
  9. Choose an outfit template, or select Tops, Bottoms, Shoes independently
  10. Choose Eyewear
  11. Choose Makeup
  12. Choose Mask or face-covering
  13. Choose Headwear
  14. Select teal-colored box “Next ->” to set your main identity

From the Ready Player Me “Hub” menu [ https://readyplayer.me/hub ] you can further customize your look, create a new avatar style, or download a copy of your avatar as .glb format to use in 3D modeling programs, and/or convert it to an .stl (Standard Triangle Language) to print your avatar with a 3D printer!
Free GLB to STL converter: [ https://convert3d.org/glb-to-stl ]

Last Updated September 30, 2024