As part of the first week of my GDO710 Development Practices module, we were presented with the following challenge:
Brief
Use objects from around your home to create a custom avatar of yourself. The objects selected should not be random: they must tell a story or mean something to you. There are no other rules and you are encouraged to get visual and have some fun. Once finished, take a picture of your avatar and post it to the forum. Include a paragraph or two about the objects selected and what they mean to you. You might want to use the avatar as your profile picture.
This was presented as a fun icebreaker challenge, which would allow the new cohort to get to know each other a little better. However, as I approached the challenge I couldn't help comparing my thoughts on the brief with earlier submitted entries by my cohorts. This initially caused me some internal friction, questioning my ideas and interpretation of the brief as well as added pressure on myself to deliver a piece that was of a polished standard. After all, this was to go down in posterity as my initial submission. I decided to forge ahead with my initial concept which ended up being quite different from my peers. I decided on a composition that I hoped would evoke a mood and style that would tell part of my story. This was something I did not have experience in and was a risk, but I had also decided to take the brief literally and have fun.
I decided to keep to a few objects that would tell a simple story about who I was as an individual and my aspirations as a UX Engineer. These were arranged in a manner similar to a movie poster. I did briefly entertain adding images of my family as they are understandably a big part of my life but ultimately decided not to as I am sensitive to my family's privacy.
A cutting matt was added as a reference to Synthwave/outrun grid tropes (Chan, 2020) . I decided to take this a step further in Photoshop and add to the style. However, I had no idea how to replicate the style and therefore searched online for tutorials on the subject (How to Give Your Photos the Cyberpunk Look in Photoshop, 2019).
The final result can be seen below. The accompanying paragraph was as follows:
"Here is my avatar, based on a collection of objects I feel represent me. Forgive me, I've also tried to incorporate a Synthwave aesthetic as I really like the genre but alas my photoshop skills are a little rusty and this is my first attempt at creating one myself. I can supply the original photo if needed.
Starwars was a huge influence on my formative years. The Darth Vader helmet pictured was actually signed by David Prowse. The flat cap on top is my signature hat. The Vader mask is also wearing a Roundtable face mask, which both addresses my membership to Roundtable and the current covid situation. The two Pop Vinyl characters represent unfinished business; there should be four but I have yet to get around to purchasing them. They are the four characters that bring back the fondest memories of Halloween parties in years gone by. The MacBook Pro on the right represents my career as I see it now, as a front-end developer, the books to the left represent the beginning of my UX journey.
And why the Stranger Things lego figures... well they just look cool if I'm being honest."
The challenge was an interesting experience as it required me to curate objects in my life and assign a weighting on how "representational" they are of me as a person. There were some items that did not make the cut because they simply did not work as part of the composition, despite being descriptive of my life and personality. Therefore one criticism of the piece is that it is not 100% representative of me when taking this into consideration. If I were to undertake this brief again I would ensure that I would not put the initial pressure on myself; stifling my creativity with perfectionism. The brief clearly states to have fun with the process and ultimately once I embraced this aspect, I was able to deliver a composition I was happy with.
References
Chan, J., 2020. Outrun: The Aesthetic Deconstructed. [online] Medium. Available at: <https://medium.com/@cywjoel/outrun-the-aesthetic-deconstructed-dbd3cd8679b7> [Accessed 23 January 2022].
Youtube.com. 2019. How to Give Your Photos the Cyberpunk Look in Photoshop. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq93yph7wek> [Accessed 23 January 2022].
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