Creating a Cartoon You

IF Cassandra Lewis ’09 ever feels the urge to see how she’d look with a mohawk, instead of grabbing the clippers, she just opens her laptop.

As head of avatar innovation at Meta, she’s also helping billions of users of Facebook, Instagram and more bring their own style to those cute, cartoony online representations, which the company overhauled in October to allow more customization.

“I do think it’s fun to have something that looks familiar and does look like me, but then I get to switch out clothing, change up looks, change up hair,” Lewis says. “I have a passion around digital representation of your physical self in a new paradigm, the metaverse.”

An avid gamer who favors first-person offerings like Final Fantasy, Cyberpunk and Destiny 2, she created apps for Xbox One before arriving at Meta in 2021. The new role envisioning avatars, she says, was the perfect marriage of her computer science background and her affection for 3D art.

Here’s some of what she says helps make a good one.

“People go into one of two modes with their avatars,” Lewis says. “Either you want it to look like the idealized version of you, or you want it to look crazy.” She tends to go with the first, but she does love costumes, whether a “Tron” getup or sparkly fairy wings.

As you would in the real world, don’t let your avatar leave the virtual house without one last look, she says: “How do I want to show up in the different version of me, and how do I want people to perceive that?”

Realistic animation when avatars stroll throughout the metaverse can improve user experience, she says. “What you don’t want is a robotic walk if that’s not what you were going for.”

Similarly to books or movies, people want to see themselves when interacting online, so Lewis and her team strive to make sure no user has to say: “Well, I did want gray hair, but you didn’t give it to me, so I’m stuck with red hair.”