'Avatar Days' short examines WoW characters and their players

by Mike Schramm on May 31st 2010 11:00PM

"Avatar Days" is a new short by digital artist Cormac Kelly that examines the fascinating relationship between a World of Warcraft player and their in-game avatar. Not only is the animation great (and you can see how he's upscaled the five-year-old player character graphics of the popular MMO), but the premise is perfect, placing video game avatars of real-life players in everyday situations, and asking us the viewers to examine how they're connected together.

Excellent stuff. Not the first time we've seen these characters invade the real world, but definitely the most poignant. Watch the whole four minute short embedded after the break.

Update: Kelly emails to say that he only played a small part in the production -- the short was directed by Gavin Kelly and produced in just four days for Ireland's Darklight Film Festival.

[via Citizen Game]

Tags: activision-blizzard, avatars, blizzard, cormac-kelly, film, in-game, mmo, players, real-life, short-film, world-of-warcraft

Reader Comments (44)

Pretentious crap.

Harsh.

Agreed, this is just stupid.

You can't just downvote everyone for their opinion people. Learn to respect each other, lol huh?

It's the opinion of the people to down vote you and you should respect that a lot of people disagree with your well thought out post on the subject of this article.

That does not mean they have the 'right' to downvote me.

Avatar Day is an episode of Avatar the Last Airbender

it was also a publicity move for James Cameron's Avatar in which James Cameron showed Avatar for free in hundreds of theaters across the US and more overseas.

Yea, no good at all. Well, from a visual standpoint it was pretty cool but everything else wasn't interesting at all. And what's with the music? WoW is intense and exciting, not sad.

maybe the music is a reflection of how the average wow user feels. (no hate intended, i used to play WoW quite seriously, and seriously, it makes for a sad f.ucking life).

"And what's with the music? WoW is intense and exciting, not sad."

Almost like they were making a distinction, eh? But between what, I wonder?

Intense and exciting? What part of sitting in front of a computer screen for hours on end is intense and exciting? Have you ever tried anything that life has to offer? You know, like maybe some river kayaking, backpacking the national parks, or maybe playing a sport?

Let me know how intense and exciting WoW is after you do a little white-water rafting. Otherwise, WoW is a boring and repetitious MMO grindfest. Kill mob/boss/player rinse and repeat.

agree with jerjer.

Once i quit WoW, life became a whole lot more fun, and i appreciate the games i play now much much more.

Here is the beauty of managing your time correctly, you can go hiking and playing WoW. You can go white water rafting and play WoW. It is not one or the other.

I know people that consider hiking a big waste of time, but love to go to bars and drink to their hearts content.

In my opinion, do whatever you want as long as you are having fun. Of course, in moderation.

I find it kind of funny that a lot of ignorant people make fun of people who play videogames as being nerds or having no lives or whatever, and of course gamers decry these people as being ill-informed about the nature of their hobby. And yet here we are as gamers, with a subset of other gamers that we call nerds with no lives. Abuse begets abuse, I guess.

@ Michael

I don't think this is still the case. The majority of the people on the world (not so certain, youth to the least) game in their sparetime. Some even do it as their job.
Most insults made by the public is probably from the younger ones among us anyway?
Wouldn't people that do not play video games be in the minority here?

*snore*

So I guess people with alts have multiple personality disorder?

Also there's nothing sad about enjoying WoW, but then I started playing to play with my rl friends

Why not? Every single personality of mine should be allowed to play WoW!
There's my lvl 19 pvp twink, bit of an orc, hates being polite, spits on you alot...
then my lvl 80 paladin, I'm really questioning that personalities sexuality...
Oh! Then my Tauren druid!

... HOLY CRAP! One of my personalities is a furry!

I want that first dudes Trogdor t-shirt...

I guess I have to be a WoW player to get this.
And what Trogdor Shirt?

Trogdor....
The burninator....

No gnome.

And that raises the question...

Do "little people" play gnomes?

Little people will play the largest characters, just like fat people always play the skinny muscular demigods of perfection in games. It's all about overcompensating for what you perceive as real life flaws. Most of us feel boring in real life, so in games we try to look big and heroic and badass.

So I play a gnome because I'm 6'5" and sick of being tall all the time? Makes sense.

Why are all those avatars walking like the Sasquatch?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOxuRIfFs0w

Has the bar been lowered on what we're calling poignant?

Yeah, I may not be a graphic artist but I was hoping for a bit more than walking cycles incorporated into unimportant recordings of people on the streets. The lack of any real interaction with the people around the character models made it seem cheap.

Plus the overall message was shallow. Perhaps I'd think it was more awesome if I was part of the WoW community but luckily I didn't get stuck with that addiction. The free trial was enough for me to realize I didn't want to invest in that habit. Just touching the surface as to why a guy identifies more with his female avatar doesn't make me understand WoW players on a deeper level. This was an interesting approach to making a point but it's still lacking the quality needed to make it amazing.

At least the upscaled character models were pretty cool.

Of course you're all entitled to your opinions, but I think most of you are missing the point. Showing people as their WoW avatars doing mundane things in the real world addresses how some people self identify, how these same people cope with the world, and puts a positive spin on people who play games in general. If none of these topics are of interest to you, fine. But don't knock it just because it wasn't what you wanted to see or because you didn't get it.

I met one guy in this new guild I joined, he plays a lot, loads of achievements, hear he can't find a job, kept playing no problem big deal. Then one day, heard he got divorced, lost the kids. One day I was on an alt, didn't bother greeting him when he joined our 5 man group, I did that a lot, 'cos I don't really know these people anyway, eventually he tells us, a bunch of strangers that he lost everything, everyone just keeps playing.

Cool...imagine if he also had an alchohol dependency to kick as well also.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym0_irSi6YI

(I rarely approve stuff but) good stuff dudes!

Crap, I mean the link to the video in youtube on the article there, the embedded one is boring as shit.

JerJer

gotta tell ya, that's a bit naive. I have a house, a job, a wife and a kid, and I still love my wow. I play a few hours every other night, raiding and pvping, and it's sometimes more of a thrill then my weekly baseball games and hockey.

It's not up to you to decide what thrilling and what's not, it's up to me. Way to try and make your life sound better then mine though.

I understand this video, and sombid the points are well made. A bit if personality always leaks through

I agree. WoW and a person's decision on what they do for fun is up to that person. The value of it as well.
However I also feel, like most things, are good in moderation.

I don't understand why everyone thinks if you play Wow you play for 40 hours a week.

Everyone who doesn't play wow seems to imagine you either do it with every spare minute or you don't play. These people are misinformed and perpetuating the myth.

People that say they noticed a whole new exciting time in the "real world" after they left WoW played WoW, way too much. Everything must be done in moderation, even WoW.

WoW is just as big of a waste of time as is watching TV, playing console games or browsing websites like Joystiq.

WoW like everything else is ok in moderation.

Well said i agree very much so I dont see how playing wow for 5 hours is worse than playin a console game for 5 hours some people just dont make sense.

Min/Max-ers are laughing at what all these fools think wow is.

I'd hoped for some actual interaction of some kind between the WoW characters and actual people in that video.

Hi
I noticed in your article about "Avatar Days" that you have credited Cormac Kelly (me) as the director. Just to get the facts straight, it was actually Gavin Kelly who directed and concieved the short, I worked on the visual effects alonside John O' Connell and Will Sharkey.

It was completed at Piranhabar (http://www.piranhabar.ie)

Thanks.
All the best,

Cormac Kelly

I don't play WoW anymore but that was rather well done. They have a pretty good artistic aesthetic.

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'Avatar Days' short examines WoW characters and their players

Reader Comments (44)

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