Infinite Love, an Introduction to OYoung29

OYoung29 is a bright and bubbly girl who loves playing with her cats, attending her brother and father’s soccer games, and dancing.   She spends her free time playing Minecraft and Roblox and watching YouTubers. When she isn’t looking at a screen, she draws, paints, and sings. She loves going shopping with her mother and watching Dr. Who with her father and occasionally she even helps him with his school work.

When she set out to create her avatar she came up with a number of elements and ideas that weren’t about her, but rather those around her.  A lot of the activities she wrote down like “soccer” don’t yet describe her, but rather her brother and father. She’ll be playing this fall, but she’s largely been in the crowd and not on the field at this point.  Other than “love”, it took her some time to find the elements she wanted to make use of.  Her final design was not her first. The first two she ruled out though due to a mixture of her drawing ability and the rules that Roman Mars set out.  I think she made the right choice. 

OYoung’s final avatar contains a single continuous line in the foreground that combines an infinity symbol and a heart.  This shape was carefully chosen as it conveys love, which she is plenty full of, but it also reflects her February birthday and her favorite holiday.  Additionally, my daughter can’t not bring in a Disney movie here. She told me that the infinity symbol is due to her repeated viewing of Frozen 2 because, “in Frozen 2 they were talking about things that last forever and things that change and at the end Olaf says that he thought of something that lasts forever and he said love”. This symbol really draws my eye–not only because of its design, but also because of the symbolism behind it; it fits who I know her to be. 

Behind this symbol OYoung has placed a background that cuts diagonally from top right to bottom left. The top half is filled with blue and the bottom with grey.  Only within the lobe of the infinity symbol does a soft red color appear.  One of the recurring themes in my discussion of her avatar is that OYoung believes there is a strong connection between sorrow and love.  As her father I’m in awe of her insight, but also sad that she’s discovered this so early.  Her use of blue and grey work to illustrate that sadness (symbolized by blue–in her words “because usually people say why do you look so blue? and usually they say that when they think someone looks sad and thinking unhappy thoughts”) and forgiveness (symbolized by grey) are necessary parts of love.  In her words “sadness is a part of loving someone”.  This is both because people she loves have passed away, but also because when they disappoint you it hurts so badly–even worse than when people you don’t love disappoint you.  However, if you really love someone then you will find it in your heart to forgive them.  She went on to tell me that “when I think of forgiveness I thought of grey because usually when you’re forgiving someone, it might be like your friend because you’re really great friends, and you had to forgive them for something that they did that you didn’t like, so you’d be a little sad so I thought of grey, but then you can also be happy that you’re forgiving them and you can be friends again. So I thought of grey kind of being not black and not really blue, but it could be like in between blue for sadness and yellow since its a light color and I think of yellow for happiness.” My daughter often speaks in run-on sentences because she’s ten and gets very excited.

The use of the diagonal cut and the red in the heart are simple design elements that O thought looked nice.  When I mentioned the use of ombré to blend the blue and grey so that there would not be a hard cut line her response was to remind me that one of the rules was to keep the design so simple that a child could draw it.  She found the paper where she took notes and corrected me. 

I didn’t keep the rules in mind quite as much when I created my avatar. I didn’t go purposefully against them. I just had so much trouble figuring out what I wanted to include that the rules weren’t a priority. I revised for them later, but they just weren’t in mind during the initial process. Perhaps I had trouble because I’ve lived longer and so I have many more items and ideas to draw from. It took me more time to figure out, which items were necessary. Once I pinned down my ideas it felt like I was doing drafts and finding again and again that even though I had settled on some strong ideas I couldn’t figure out the composition and arrangement of items.  That part seemed quite easy for OYoung.  Even when I look at those that she didn’t choose they seem more solidly composed than my drafts.  

Regardless of her rule-following, her avatar suits her. It demonstrates her emotional precociousness–she’s far more emotionally intuitive than I am. It demonstrates her self-awareness and her values. And it makes me smile.

Featured Image: “Water bubble” by @Doug88888 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Avatar by OYoung29