Post Semester 2

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 them on a creative level they may have not felt was accessible to them. The activity packs were separated into 2 age groups: 11-16 and 16-25. I decided to create a page for each age group. These are the final versions of the pages I made:

On the left is the 11-16 page, the right is the 16-25 page. I tried to take into account the different age ranges and established character briefs and designed my own characters accordingly.

To create the character briefs I researched into various aspects of South Asian heritage as well as video game motifs. I wanted to create a brief that was interesting, thought provoking, which young South Asians could relate to and be inspired by to create South Asian characters. Personally I found it hard to develop character briefs and a way which worked for me was to imagine my own characters and formulate qualities/character traits from that which could be bullet pointed into a brief. The paragraphs in the pages above which tell a story about my characters are a result of that, as well as inspiration for anyone who wants to come up with a story for their own character.

The design development to concepting my characters was pretty difficult. On the forefront of my mind was the fact that I wanted my designs to be well-liked and intrigue young South Asians. I thought about myself at 11, 16, and currently (at 25), and what I would have wanted to see as someone receiving this pack. Constantly I was scrutinising my work so that my designs would be perceived as authentic, as is the ultimate aim of my research, and not stereotypical. I wanted people receiving these pages to think that a South Asian designed these characters with care, consideration and complexity, and they could then also see the possibilities in designing South Asian characters that are 'cool' and not gimmicky. 

I believe my own design process in creating these characters and the pages themselves is almost like a trial run of the methodology I wish to establish for creating authentic design. Having communicated with practitioners in the games industry for my semester 2 research report, I tried to take on board the advice they gave for me. I wanted to pass that knowledge down onto other South Asians in the hopes this inspires more of us to become artists, in whatever field.

Here are the references I used and design development for my characters:

The success of my output is yet to be determined, however, if I can view the results of my work I will be sure to document it here as it would be of immense help in my future work for semester 3.