Maybe I put it wrong. I should have said "your avatar is the ship."

There are no "people" in EVE Online. The "people" are supposed to be biological clones suspended in amniotic fluid integrated with the ship, so although they have the thoughts of the person they represent, they never get to leave the ship, and die when your ship is destroyed, so you get to create a new clone. That means you can't just walk around a station after docking, or get off your ship in space and do a space walk around the asteroids. The only thing you see about your persona is your profile photo that you generated at the beginning of the game, nothing else.

Your character has a name, and even a portrait made by you, of your player's 3D model, but after those initial ten minutes of character creation, you basically never interact with the 3D character again. As soon as you begin the tutorial, you're floating in space in a ship. When you switch ships, the game unloads one model and loads the next. When your ship gets exploded, players see an escape pod. Then you get back in another ship.