My final piece focuses on Online Reality; how people present themselves differently on the internet than they do in real life. For example, Vtubers ( or Virtual Youtubers, which unlike the name implies, they appear in more platforms than just YouTube). The Vtuber models are avatars or Personae, in psychology, a persona is the “mask” (the personality) that you present to the world, the personality you use in front of others that may change drastically or subtly depending on which kind of person/people one is in the presence of.
In regards to the internet this is mainly done through the use of avatars. Which are used as a mask for us to hide in the internet to be safe from strangers. A practice that has gone from a cautionary method into a monetized one, hence my focus on Vtubers.
A majority are English and Japanese speakers.
Most Vtuber models are made through Live2D Cubism, a program that allows one to take illustration cutouts of a character/avatar and create a 3D dimensional rendition using 2D aspects. Another thought, there is also a program called Vroid that allows you to make 3D models instead. 【VRoid】The Making of BlueMallow - YouTube, this is a particularly good example of it.
What I wanted to achieve with theses works is to make my own Vtuber model/Avatar since as an artist I have also streamed before and I can definitely appreciate the ability to express myself in a way that also hides who I am from people online since if not careful you could easily be stalked on the internet. Vtuber Avatars are a great mask to showcase a part of yourself that you don't mind showing to the world while also keeping who you are in real life hidden and safe. However, I can also admit that anonymity allows imbeciles to show the literal worst side of humanity to the rest of the planet while keeping the pretense that they are in fact “normal”. There is a double edged sword to everything.
On a lighter note, I also wanted to demonstrate how Vtubing has gone from a “cringe” way of live streaming to a legitimate way of making money with the popularity that has grown on it in the last few years. As a result, there are numerous way to fund anyone's Vtubing career path from Vtuber companies that sponsor projects such as “NISANJI | EN'' to individual streamers such as “Ironmouse” that support themselves through their following. In addition, professional Vtubers also create “lore”, a backstory, to their avatar as to further distance themselves from their personas/ avatars (since typically they are original characters) while allowing their fanbase to further separate the person behind the voice/creation from the character they are viewing. For example, J.K. Simmons performance in Spiderman movies
vs. his voice acting as The Author of the Journals in Gravity Falls.
The techniques I used to create these are Blender and Krita. With Blender I was able to get a solid idea of what the avatar would look like proportionally
and through Krita I animated it to simulate how it would look if I had done it through Live2D. (Note: save yourself the trouble and take screenshot of all the angles you will be using from the model. I say this because as I was writing this I realized I could do that rather than do it by hand [Like I had done already] and I am very disgruntled by my lack of foresight).
If I had more time to push my concept further I would actually be able to render the avatar in the anime style that is common in the Vtuber community while still giving it my own flare. I would also be able to actually finish the animation in Live2D to make my own Vtuber model. Since along with using the art style (even if one chooses not to use it) making cutouts of the illustration to put it through the program could be called it’s own form of torture. Though I did not have enough experience with the art style that is commonly used along with the Live2D program. (Trying to learn was almost as hard as trying to learn to use Blender all over again, which is not something that can be done in two weeks or less, I tried but anyone lese is welcome to the challenge.).
⬇ I have put some notes on what I used as reference if anyone wants to read it.
Normally Vtuber models are full bodies, as a result I used my full body low poly character as a “skeleton” or “foundation” reference.
For the face I took Inspiration from Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider game, to have a better idea as to where everything would go proportionally to each other.
pixelskylines
kianamaiart
amandla
gracieabrams
gamechangershow
ellievsbear
izzy806
gummygunk
blakekathryn