Love, Confidence, and Commitment: An Introduction to Mdrew22

On the surface, Mdrew22’s avatar is simple and basic but looking deeper, its meaning is much deeper than expected. With only red and white for her colors and some stripes, you may think this avatar resembles the Canadian flag. I even asked her about it but she explains that’s not the case and that there was a deeper meaning in her avatar. As stated by Mdrew22 she says, “No my avatar isn’t meant to resemble the Canadian flag. I didn’t even notice that when I was making it but that’s pretty cool”. 

Drew’s avatar has a solid white background with a mere 3 objects filling this background consisting of two horizontal red stripes spanning across the avatar on both the bottom and top of the avatar and one pair of red rings in the middle intertwined in a neat and steady fashion which jumped out at me. It respects all of the rules for a good avatar like being simple in design with minimal colors, minimal detail, and easy to recreate while also having a deeper meaning behind it.

“One of the things I value most in my life is love and commitment. I made this avatar with the intention of showing those values”. First I asked her about the thing that stuck out to me the most: the rings. I didn’t have a clue in my head what they could mean but after hearing what she said about love and commitment I started piecing together why she used the rings. Drew says, “I decided to use rings because unlike a basic heart that is obvious to represent love, I wanted to make something more unique to myself. The rings are supposed to represent marriage in a sense. They’re connected because I value commitment in marriage as well”. She also told me the red color was used to define love and confidence. “When I see the color red I feel confident and I think most people do. Colors are used a lot to give off a certain emotion and to me, red exerts confidence and love” says Drew. While the rings are the main viewpoint she also wanted to use the stripes in a way that would make a person focus on the rings. The stripes basically represent how much she values love/commitment, and coloring them red gives off a sense of confidence in her decision. Sadly the white didn’t have a meaning and she said, “I didn’t really know what color to use so I figured white was probably the least symbolic color”.

When I made my avatar, I made it with the sole intention of telling a story that everyone could understand. Some people would imagine the story a little differently but that was the point of my avatar – to make people theorize and wonder. When I heard Drews’s feedback on my avatar, I was surprised at how much she got right. She even added her own ideas to some of the items that I didn’t even think of myself. While her avatar was simple and neat, she still was able to identify a lot of the defining traits in my avatar like the sun representing happiness. Just at a glance, she was able to figure out the whole idea of my avatar and she also added onto the idea of the tsunami I used. “I know the tsunami is supposed to represent time in the sense that you don’t have much time before you can make it to the summit of the mountain but in my opinion, I think of the tsunami as a rush of emotions that you’ve kept bottled up flooding all out at once keeping you from finding your true self above the mountain”. I think it’s cool how different everyone’s perspectives are and how they vary. It shows how different people are from each other and Mdrew22 shows exactly that. Her avatar is simple yet deep and I think there’s a saying in there somewhere about how much there is under the surface of it all.

“Wedding rings” by apdk is licensed under CC BY 2.0