Aamina Khan MA Games Design

  In between my Pakistani research I did a few impromptu sketches to practise sketching poses quickly and try concepting quicker (I am still timing myself so I can do sketches in 10 mins). I used Pinterest as reference for the following poses. I thought it would also help with my understanding of how to draw clothes on a person and general anatomy of the human body: I tried to go for variance in poses, styles and ethnicities. These poses took me about 15 mins each to complete which I would say is a plus for me as I wasn't stressing about time and it felt naturally done. I'm not sure when I've not been stressed out about everything during lockdown but it was nice to know I achieved this small victory for myself. I hope I can concept quick sketches like this in the future in under 15 mins and hopefully with some colour too! I just have to keep practising!! Also as a way to relax I decided to draw some fanart (I remember Jim advising this to me last time I was overwhelmed afte

  So, moving forward from the research I did, I decided to focus on skin tone and facial features. I focused on South Asian people, in particular Pakistani people, for this. I guess I wanted to show that even when you are trying to depict a whole country such as Pakistan, there are a lot of variations in appearance that should be taken into account. I hope by doing this I can perhaps inform someone of something new that they might have not known before regarding Pakistan (also the country has a very negative connotation with most people due to um 'terrorism' so I kinda wanted to get rid of that bias too).  So for me Pakistan seemed like an obvious choice to show variations in skin tone and facial features as as a country it's pretty much a hodge podge of different regions and cultures that happen to be bound under the same national border. Within Pakistan the main ethnic sub-groups are: Punjabis (from Punjab region), Pashtuns (originally from Afghanistan), Sindhis (from Sin

  My aim for this semester was to analyse the issues regarding poor representation of minority cultures in video games and address these issues by creating and testing a design process which ensures authenticity. As a concept artist I feel that my artistic input matters a lot when it comes to authentic design. Even if the person in charge (Art Director or Game Designer etc.) has given me a character brief to adhere to, it's up to me to depict ideas which are in essence 'cool' (as I learnt from interviewing practitioners in semester 2) and also interpreting the brief into something unique or less known. If I don't even try to propose a suggestion which may be a bit different than what everyone is used to, then my idea remains in my head and never gets put out there. If the issue with lacking authenticity could be partly down to ignorance (not knowing of something) then I at least can make it so that they are made aware of the concept/thing and therefore clear that barrie

Before I talk about my work I want to address the lack of posts since my previous one. In all honesty, this semester has been pretty difficult for me. Ever since lockdown came into action I've felt this way and still I wonder how I managed to finish semester 2 (although perhaps it was because I had already completed more than half of it in uni). Anyway, with semester 3 this wasn't the case as I started it and had to complete it all the way through lockdown. I was lucky that I could use my drawing equipment at home but not being able to go into studio took a massive hit on my productivity. I was used to going to studio 4 days a week and whenever I was at uni (the physical space) I was able to focus and work all day. Being at home during a pandemic wasn't quite the same and I did struggle with motivation as my mood was low and my eczema flared up a lot over the summer for a number of reasons (stress, environment, weather, temperature changes etc.) so at times it was quite har

Since my semester 2 submission I have been focused on personal development and managed to do a commission for the British Council Arts which tied in nicely with my MA research. The commission was to create 2 A4 pages for a Cultural Heritage Activity Pack for British South Asians aged 11-25. As we are currently in a lockdown, the aim of the Cultural Heritage project was to give young South Asians a series of activities to do at home which connected them with their own heritage.  My proposed idea which was accepted was to create 2 'concept your own video game character' pages which drew upon South Asian influences. I introduced the topic of underrepresentation of minority cultures, created characters briefs and pose templates for people to design from and on to. For inspiration/reference, I concepted my own South Asian characters from my character briefs as line art so they could also be a 'colour in' activity. My aim was to encourage young South Asians and engage with

During semester 2 I focused more on developing concept art by implementing my research into practice. I chose to focus on character design over environment design as I considered it the weaker area of the two (I felt more familiar with building design due to having studied architecture).  I started off by trying different drawing techniques to develop a concept style that suited me and used a video game character (Edelgard) I was familiar with to draw in various art styles. This confirmed what I already knew: I was comfortable with illustration but found quick concept sketches difficult to manage. I then moved onto concepting a book character who is South Asian (Mehr) as practice for having a brief but no visual reference to copy from, so I found my own visual references to create my interpretation of the character. This time I was given a time limit for creating 18 different versions of this character. As I kept drawing I found that once I was familiar with the character, each desig