avatar beauty contest seeking models and other yummies
by Alphaville Herald on 17/11/04 at 1:54 pm
this little morsel is from Variety:
Miss Digital World — An Avatar Beauty Contest
Wired News has a story about a beauty contest searching for the best looking female digital avatar.
The man behind the event is Franz Cerami, an Italian promoter who’s trying to start the world’s first CG talent agency. His dream is to manage a bevy of virtual beauties, posing and costuming them for pinup calendars, videogames, ads, and movies.
The benefits of digital models are obvious – they never age, never have bad hair days, and can be on location in Tokyo, Paris, and Hollywood simultaneously.
There are drawbacks, as anyone who watched Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within knows. The characters, while inspired creations, were a bit on the creepy side. The technology hasn’t quite reached a point where we can generate truly believable CG characters. They still look a bit computery.
ian
Nov 17th, 2004
Another…who gives a shit article
Cocoanut
Nov 17th, 2004
I think this is a good story.
coco
Prokofy Neva
Nov 18th, 2004
More about that evil commodification of human beings by evil corporations, hmmm? Is that the moral of the story? Awful subordination of women to horrid standards of beauty by evil corporate talent agencies?
Or would the evil be in the hearts of those who admire them? Or??? Is it evil at all?
Oh dear, there I “go again” making a gross overgeneralization of humdog’s stories! Woot!
humdog
Nov 18th, 2004
dyerbrook/prokofy_neva:
it seems, apparently, that you don’t know me at all whatsoever. but thank you for the projection — at least i can say now that i know YOU a little better.
if you read the herald, you’d know that some gorgeous avatars have been seen here, thanks to
the sacrifices that uri and others make to seek them out in order that we might enjoy them.
it seemed appropriate in that context.
now please go put on your tinfoil hat,d/p.
your sky is falling.
Pepper
Nov 18th, 2004
Isn’t this just a little bit disgusting?
Computer-Generated “models” is a bad idea, one more way to tell people that they aren’t good enough. Every time I hear/see something remotely self-esteem boosting, I hear/see at least five more things that do exactly the opposite.
Plus, it’s just scary, makes me think of Real Doll…. http://www.realdoll.com
Maria laVeaix
Nov 19th, 2004
I have been in SL for some time now, and i remember my days from TSO.
The greater majority of players opt for Physicaly attractive avatars.
In TSO, i don’t think i ever saw someone with a Fat sim. In SL, i see a great variation in avatar types, but when one chooses a decidedly Human one it is not fat, or spotty, or sporting a large or misshapen nose. These Avs are fantasies, and it occurred to me a long time ago that people do not Fantasize about posessing those features contemporary society deems Unattractive. It doesn’t surprise me that someone wants to hold an Av Beauty contest, but i don’t see the point. Unlike other pagents, it does not judge a real Physical condition. (Many will argue given the prevelance of nose jobs, and saline pouches, neither do the RL pagents. Lol) For me, this appears more like an Art exibition. Each contestand trying to outdo one another in depicting a perfect representation of an idealized form. I don’t see how Self Esteem enters into it, there are no “Selves” involved, Only Pixels. My self Esteem comes from Within. Images i see, or the words of others can’t raise, or Lower it. I Know who i am.
Let them have their contest, In ten years, the Common perception of what is, or is not beautiful will change, and What is shown today will lose relevance.
I will keep looking for the beauty in peoples hearts
Maria
Prokofy Neva
Nov 19th, 2004
You don’t know me, either, hummie, and my, are you the projector! I reasoned that you were delivering another homily about Evil Corporations. SO sorry! Now, why did I think that. OF COURSE I’m aware that Uri loves pretty avatars, especially avatars with “back” as he informed us in his faux ghetto-speak. Baby got back! But geez there were all these, er “linguistic cues” as the professor might call them. The headline uses the word “yummies” and the article is describe as “a little morsel”. The Italian is a “promoter” who dreams of managing a “bevy” — and here it comes — costuming them for “pinup calendars” (what could be more sexist?!). Th models never have “bad hair days” but they are “creepy”. All of these cues signal to us that you are pontificating from the high realms of the Metaverse where you sit in judgement and ironicize over silly promoting Italian designers and let us all know how hilarious you find it that all these adolescent game-players are jacking off to something “computery” and even “creepy”. OK, we get it! How do we know that you don’t REALLY appreciate these beautiful avs? There aren’t any pictures, duh!
humdog
Nov 19th, 2004
maria: that is an interesting point you bring up: no fat sims, no big noses, etc. i don’t think its possible to make a fat sim, just like its not possible to make a trans-gendered sim. seems like all you can make re sims is various flavors of attractive objectified body.
d/p:
did you not read the article? did you not see where it says: “from Variety”. you credit me
with language that i have clearly and openly credited to variety. is not “from Variety” a linguistic cue?
please be more careful. your brain is showing.
Ian
Nov 19th, 2004
“if you read the herald, you’d know that some gorgeous avatars have been seen here, thanks to
the sacrifices that uri and others make to seek them out in order that we might enjoy them.”
Yes, I know Uri makes so many sacrifices to show us avatar porn, and the life of a disgruntled stripper in a virtual world. (those ones bring a tear to my eye, honestly) Perhaps if we were told more about events and in depth stuff, like over at NWN, more people would be interested. Right now the readership mostly contains kiddie porn lovers and perverts.
urizenus
Nov 19th, 2004
Yeah, but the pervs luffed ole Father Callahan the most. Wonder what happened to him…
Father Callahan
Nov 19th, 2004
And where did I write about avatar porn?
I am still around, however I haven’t found anything newsworthy.
Prokofy Neva
Nov 19th, 2004
RE: “did you not see where it says: “from Variety”. you credit me
with language that i have clearly and openly credited to variety. is not “from Variety” a linguistic cue?”
Yikes, YOUR brain is showing. You say it is a “morsel” from Variety — morsel is your uber-cynical word. You have NO quotations marks surrounding any of the text in that piece. NONE! Are you stupid, or something? I thought you had a college education. Didn’t they tell you to use quotation marks for quoted, attributed text? You didn’t. Saying it is “from” Variety is not good enough because we can’t tell if the entire thing is your re-write, Wired’s rewrite, or verbatin from Vanity Fair. Really, hummie, you ARE impossible. You can’t even see when quotation marks are needed — except as “scare quotes” when you have to be uber-ironical?
ian
Nov 19th, 2004
zing
humdog
Nov 20th, 2004
y’know dyerbrook/prokofy, your vast store
of pompous androgynous energy is wasted upon me. i just wish when you feel the urge to write that kind of crap, you’d just go do something
useful instead. your reasoning bores me. i don’t actually give a flying fuck what you think, if you think, and you write like a freshman.
sometimes when i think of ian i think of
worms. except that some worms, like planarian
worms, are interesting and useful. unlike ian.
It's not avatar, it's cg model
Nov 21st, 2004
You guys need to get your facts strait, This isn’t an avatar contest at all. It’s cg artists renditions of fashion models/animation not some 40yr old fat guy sitting at a keyboard trying to cyber someone in a VR brothel ffs.
The whole object of the contest in itself isn’t simply a beauty pangent but how realisticly the artists can make and animate the characters so they do not appear as lifeless pixels. In fact if I were to call it anything at all I’d call it a animation texturing contest. This contest won’t be won by big tits or how nude the characters get either, the talent behind them in making a believable lifeform in animation and texturing abilities will be the final judge.
ian
Nov 21st, 2004
humdog, are you calling me non-useful? whose life consists of impressing uri, with useless articles that any idiot can find…all you have done is post items that someone else wrote…until you yourself construct something semi-intelligent, you will continue to be laughed at and find objectionable. get it over with, you’re a loose cannon
Prokofy Neva
Nov 22nd, 2004
Re: androgynous
Ouch. Is that catching, do you think?
Blazen
Nov 18th, 2008
As I am reading this it cracks me up what people get angry about.This really makes me think those who get angry about basically what this sounds like is a SL beauty pagent.So what whats the big deal people have made quote on quote beautiful avatars its what makes many of them happy its there life they can choose it.Nobody is forcing anyone to do this its all on free will.The ones griping and moaning about this saying its one more way of telling people they aren’t good enough seems they have some self esteem issues of there own they need to get over,I swear people will whine complain and bitch about everything.