On news of fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent's death, avatar-based caricaturist Christophe Hugo set about creating an alter ego in his honor. "Laurent''s face is so iconic that it didn't take me more than 5 minutes from start to finish to create the avatar upon the news of his death." (Click to enlarge. A mixed reality side-by-side comparison is above right.) Hugo attributes his ability to a mild autism that causes him to cariacture faces, in order to remember them.
As his Second Life profile once read, "Caricatures are to me what Reality is to you". (“And that,” he once told me, ‘was no joke.”) Hugo borrowed the glasses he'd selected for his Bob Dylan
"caricavatar", as he calls them, and Mihr Angel Wings from Material
Squirrel Wings, makers of fine celestial accessories.
Still, while Christophe Hugo is known to wander the world as Obama or Sarkozy, this particular avatar is not one you're likely to see him in. "Note that I have not been 'wearing' that avatar," Hugo says, "except for the photo
session yesterday. To me, it's just a 3D character, but some SL
residents are so good at attaching a symbolic (not to say magical)
value to everything they see in the Metaverse that I won't be wearing
it." It's easy to imagine the angelic avatar version of Monsieur Laurent, presiding airborne over the latest Second Life fashionista runway show.
Screenshots courtesy Hugo. RL photo credit: AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere
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