Putting a Face on Avatars

Article by Richard Smith

So as my first interview for the Blue Report I thought I would interview the Team Leader for Avatars. With everything that is going on inside OTF these days, everyone is busy and that goes double for those working on our online personas. Anyways to the interview:

BR: Thanks for sitting down with me today Soka.

Soka: Not like I had much of a choice, did I?

BR: Of course you did, but I am glad you decided to meet up. Let’s get started shall we?

Soka: Yub yub!

BR: So what exactly does the Avatars Team do?

Soka: Basically, we take care of the Avatars that are available in the chatroom(s).

At the moment, with OTF expanding into a wider area, that means coming up with lots of new avatars, deciding which of them actually will be added and then adding them.

But it also includes looking over the existing avatars. Many of them are not too good; the most common problem is that they are blurred. Some of the existing ones already have been improved - although probably hardly anyone noticed.

In the direct comparison when you have both old and new avatar the improvement is clearly visible, but without that comparison ... well, humans tend to fill the blanks, when you know the character you see it clearer than it is. As my own look at avatar-quality only got sharpened when I was offered this job, I don't expect everyone else to see it.

Another thing we plan to do is remove old avatars which never have been used. The selection-dropdown already is so long that I doubt anyone really has looked through all the avatars that are up for choice; imagine how it will be with new topics added.

BR: How does one lead a team to do such things?

Soka: Good question, would you care to answer it? I try to have people work on series/movies they like or at least know, because in my opinion that is essential for making good avatars. They know which characters need to be included, which pictures of them are good or bad and so on. And, of course, it is more fun to work on avatars of something you like than something you don't know or even dislike/hate.

BR: What projects do you have on the books right now? Any special genres or shows going to make a debut soon?

Soka: If you check out the Avatar Display System you can see that there have been avatars added, Heroes and Stargate Atlantis most obvious. Less obvious is that avatars have been added to existing Playground-categories.

BR: So why aren't they available on the login yet?

Soka: Because every time we make more avatars available in the dropdown everyone's Login-cookie gets broken.

I hope that the first few new avatars will be available when we switch back from the Halloween-selection to the regular ones. However, not all technical questions have been answered, so I can't even promise SG-A to get added when Halloween is over.

Also, not only creating, adding Avatars to the system too is a slow and exhausting process.

BR: How does one make a good Avatar?

Soka: To answer this question I'd first have to define what (in my opinion) a good avatar is... it's quite simple actually: A good avatar is an avatar someone might want to use.

Usually that means the character in it is easily recognizable (if you know the character, otherwise it's hard to recognize someone either way) - which in turn means the selection of borders including at least the face (exceptions like zoom-in-s on eyes exist) and whatever is in that avatar is clearly visible, not blurred.

The hardest part often is finding a good picture of the character or thing you want to make an avatar of. Then you have to decide which part of the picture to drag the selection over, trying to make it the correct size already. You then have to shrink it to avatar-size and control if it fits - if not, correct it. Once you have the size, you usually have to sharpen it a bit, in most cases you are done and only have to save it now. In some cases however, when the original picture was extremely dark or bright, you might have to play around with a few other settings to get the ideal result.

BR: Have you had any odd requests yet?

Soka: Nothing jumps to my mind, so nothing can have been really really odd so far. People keep requesting Crime-Series avatars though, although it has been mentioned multiple times that OTF is supposed to remain SF/FY orientated.

BR: What’s your guilty pleasure?

Soka: If you mean Avatars-related ... I've managed not to give in to that temptation so far. Although it is not easy. Trust me. Must ... not ... give... in.

BR: What is it like to work with Majin Kaze?

Soka: Ask someone else ... I've forgotten how it is to work with him not in the team by now. We were together in the Senate, I've been his ATL in Trivia for 1, 5 years and now he also joined Avatars.

BR: If you could tell OTF one thing about your team what would it be?

Soka: uhm ... well ... we enjoy hanging out in Chalmun's Cantina. As long as Jabba's employees aren't around.

BR: Do you need help? How can one join up? Go ahead and plug your team.

Soka: Of course we need help, and you do not even have to really join us if you don't want to.

You also can contact me and ask if you can help out with making avatars for [enter what you would like]. The only limit here is that it has to be Science Fiction or Fantasy, as that is the border within which OTF is going to remain.

We are always open for requests of topics or even specific avatars, whether you only give us a character name of a topic already in the database, a specific picture you would like an avatar made from, or even have made an avatar yourself which you would like to be added to the system, just email the Avatars-TL (currently me) at avatars@outpost10f.com - I can't promise that it will be added, but what I can promise is that it will be seriously considered.

But not only this, there is another so far secret plan we have to give people the opportunity to contribute to the avatar selection.

BR: Anything else to add?

Soka: I'd like to point out the answer to the previous question again, it is meant seriously - any kind of help will be appreciated, whether you actually join the team or just work freelance.

What we make here is not just for a few people, but for everyone who logs into OTF. And the vast majority of people have no choice but to choose one of the available avatars, so the quality of these avatars concerns everyone.

BR: Again Soka, thanks for taking some time to sit down with me and let everyone know what you're up to.

Soka: I have to thank, Avatars still is a young team and not very well-known. I hope this interview in the widely popular Blue Report helps to change that :)