History of the NXE Avatars
By JackiJinx 10 Comments
There's a very interesting article up on Kotaku about the creation of 360's avatar system. All those heart wrenching, gut turning details are included, such as the fact that, although Miis came out first, Rare had been hard at work on the system prior to Nintendo's revolutionary revelation. Such as the Lee Musgrave, the basic head for avatar design, states:
"We kicked the idea about internally, did some very scant groundwork on the kind of technical work that would be required to get something like this to work, flung a few emails about our thoughts across the Atlantic [to Microsoft's head offices in Redmond, Washington]...and then Nintendo announced Miis".
It was this little piece caught my attention.
As for what the Avatars wear, Musgrave says that, rather than attempt to dress the Avatars themselves, Rare enlisted the services of a number of fashion consultants. These fashionistas helped Rare "put together hundreds of pieces of visual reference from all kinds of fashion styles and genres", which Rare then modeled and modified to fit the Avatar's art style.
Oddly enough, I was just listening to a podcast discussing the bizarre history of Barbie, which, if you're not familiar, apparently stems from miniature, German sex dolls. That little piece can be checked that out here, with an article all about such a joy, here.
So the big question is this: do you believe that the NXE avatars should've been based on blow-up dolls instead?