On my first day at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, I was struck by its history, the variety of approaches to fine art, and the institution’s general historical patina. There were beautiful anatomical sketches on the walls, and they made me wonder how I might approach an anatomical study of an avatar in virtual space: a new kind of avatar, complex and endowed with distributed embodiment.

Trusty Manu, whom I designed long ago for Delirious Departures and who went on to appear in its sequels, Anxious Arrivals and Tremens, was starting to feel a little stale.


I have always felt that avatars conceived as skins – swapped as casually as phone or desktop backgrounds – are not enough to create a meaningful, embodied relationship with your virtual self.

I love écorché drawings, so I began with anatomical studies. I found an anatomical scan of a person (a woman, in this case) with separate models for the muscles and skeleton. It was neither rigged nor optimised, but it was precisely what I needed. Not a warrior, not a sexy princess (even if she is perhaps a little too conventionally attractive) but no ogre or fantasy creature either. Let’s call her Anabelle.

Because the models fit together, animating them synchronously gives me an actual layered avatar. But how do I expose those layers? I have some ideas.