From Avatar Screenshot To Virtual Painting: The Mixed Reality Portraits Of Four Yip

Kean Kelly the avatar, and the Four Yip portrait

Four Yip paints mixed reality portraits of Second Life avatars, and you could say her art merges three realities. "I make snapshots from avies I see," she explains to me in her unique chat patois. "I paint them digital how I see them in fact as person. That's a bit how I do." 

In other words, she takes screenshots of a Second Life avatar, then uses those images as the basis of a portrait she paints in Photoshop. "It are imaginative portraits," she adds.  She has made many of these, which you can view here on her Flickr stream.  My personal preference is this one above right, Four Yip's portrait of Kean Kelly, transforming her from an unblemished avatar into a person with a history and secrets to keep (not all of them happy.)

"I like that one most because it suggests a story and a character behind the avatar," I tell her, "with the disheveled hair and the weary look."

"Yes for me she is like that," Ms. Yip answers. "I think if you look at avies and how people choose their clothes and animation overrides or not it tells something."  And in this way, Four Yip creates portraits of avatars digitally made to look like paintings, but somehow, still occasionally seem to capture the soul of the person behind the avatar (behind the Photoshop image.)

You can see more of Ms. Yip's work on display in an SL gallery located in Recursion.  Direct SLURL teleport at this link.

Comments

[Ann Otoole]

Very cool!

[Bettina Tizzy]

They are all good, these portraits of four's... but my fave is the one of Torley with his watermelon-colored eye. And you are right, Hamlet, the portraits are especially interesting because we catch a glimpse of what four sees in the personalities, beyond the pristine avatars.

[Vlad Bjornson]

I <3 four Yip!

These paintings are fantastic. And they really do make the Avs somehow more 'real'. I've loved four's work from the first time I saw her at the Lummerland Show & Tell, but I hadn't realized that she had such skills in 2D as well as 3.

[dandellion Kimban]

Wow, this is great. I guess most of us go that weird thought lane of guessing the look of the humans we interact everyday but never ever see directly.

[Corcosman Voom]

The portraits are definitely worth seeing in world, it's a very different experience than viewing them on Flickr.

[pdecell@gmail.com]

What great portraits and a wonderful technique.