Semester 3 Work Part 4: Concepting a South Asian Character
So after the ups and downs of my semester 3 I ended up concepting again - this time a South Asian character which I researched and found references for (yep). So after the research I did into how to make representation authentic for players of that culture and focusing on facial features and skin tones I thought it was time to put that into practice to see what I could come up with, i.e. is what I said in the last post actually relevant when it comes to concept art?
I had been playing with the idea of doing a non-human human for a while now (well since the beginning but I had to get humans down first) as I wanted to explore what it would be like to depict something that isn't human but is tied down by human physical appearances. So, depending on what kind of creature they were, could I still depict the character authentically? Or does fantasy really mean to abandon realism entirely? (I'm referencing Schwartz here from my semester 1 literature review, and this is a rhetorical question as I already answered this in the review, okay I'm gonna carry on now.)
I wanted to stick with using Pakistan as my background reference as it felt relevant to the previous work I'd done about facial features and skin tones and ethnic sub groups. Plus I had a bunch of faces who's cultural background I was aware of and could use for reference for any characters I wanted to concept so it worked out well. Because of this and the fact that I seem to draw women more than men, I found a popular creature in South Asian culture known as 'Pichal Peri' or 'churel' which means 'reverse footed' in Urdu. The concept is based on a ghost story of a woman who dies with an unsatisfactory desire and thus comes back as a spirit to haunt men. There are variations of Pichal Peri's appearance depending on the region such as: dark long hair covering her face, feet facing backwards, disguises herself as a beautiful woman to lure men, turns into a demon and so on. In the video game Megami Tensei the churel has vampiric traits as she sucks the blood of young men. As you can see there is a lot to work with so I thought this would be a good opportunity to try out something different from the fantasy fighting classes I had been doing in semester 2.
The variations I found about the Pichal Peri essentially became my character brief so to speak, so I'll list it here so it is easier to see:
Pichal Peri character brief
- spirit of woman who died with unsatisfied desires
- dark long hair covering her face
- reverse footed
- disguises herself as a beautiful woman to lure men
- turns into a demon
- sucks the blood of young men
Although I mentioned this is a character brief I didn't stick to every bullet point when concepting as I wanted to use the brief to try out the different variations i.e. she has fangs, she is beautiful, becomes a demon etc. as different concepts. This way I could use the different faces I'd created for separate concepts. Another thing to note is that in western tellings the Pichal Peri is called a 'witch'. I just wanted to point out that often folklore from different cultures use different terms which don't hold the same connotations. For example, witch in western context is a human who does magic and is condemned for that (whether the magic she was using was evil or not). Whereas the Pichal Peri is a spirit, so a dead human, come back to haunt the living. The situations of both scenarios vary a lot as even in South Asian cultures women doing magic in of itself wasn't seen as condemnable if done for non-evil purposes. I just noticed this and thought that it was important to bring up as using western terminology for non-western things can cause inaccuracy and misinterpretation.
Moving forward, I gathered references based on the brief above:
I started off basic by using the faces I had made and changing the expressions so they turned 'demonic' and vampiric. I thought it was good to see the transition from normal human to evil spirit and how to depict that best. I incorporated the other elements such as long dark hair covering eyes and my own concepts such as the eyes turning blank/light blue along with the vampiric elements such as fangs. The crawling creature came from the image above and I wanted to do a whole body image and especially draw the reverse feet! I thought I captured the transition well with the head images (normal state to demon state) and then showed how the Pichal Peri might travel once 'transitioned' into the demonic state. With these 3 images I wanted to use the faces I had already done as I could along with trying out different faces with different looks, also view how skin tone/ facial features change the image of the concept. For example, the top right face is perhaps the most white passing of all three. I wondered if to another person would her race ambiguity make someone not question her or assume her innocence in comparison to the bottom left who has darker skin and perhaps already shunned for it? Unfortunately the colourism in Pakistan is quite bad with darker skinned people seen as unattractive and undesirable. It made me wonder if people were already calling this woman a demon even before she died? And if this led her down the path of becoming a Pichal Peri.
Finally, there is the woman on the bottom right who I have not mentioned yet. I didn't draw a transition face for her as I assumed it was pretty similar to the other 3. In my head these 4 are a group of sworn sisters who work together as Pichal Peri to haunt men. The bottom right woman is depicted that way (lying in bed with a fancy outfit) because I wanted to draw how she might 'seduce' the man before devouring him. So this is her waiting in bed for her next victim (looking pretty human at the moment). Red is a typical bridal colour in South Asian culture so it is associated with romance. I thought it fit the supposed mood she is going for. Also, red can hide the blood if there's a mess! I thought that if she is reverse footed then she would need a long outfit to hide her feet whilst seducing, hence the skirt and not shalwar (trousers) which is the more typical and ordinary clothing. I can imagine that none of them can go out in trousers and must wear floor length dresses/skirts at all times!
I was pretty happy with how the drawing of the red dress Pichal Peri went as I was more fluid with the colours and didn't stress over the details. I like the pattern of the dress and the way I did the draping of the skirt. I felt quite confident doing this image as the drawing felt more natural and I knew what I was doing. I also did this quite quickly too in about 30 mins (which is quick for me) but it was nice to know I could still draw okay after the low period I had had.
As I had the demonic expression done, I wanted to try put a spin on the Pichal Peri concept and create versions which don't follow the typical folklore exactly. Below I drew 2 more concepts. The one on the right (orange dress) doesn't have reverse feet! Well seeing as she's wearing that dress I thought well she can't show it off so why not make it so it appears as though her feet are the right way round? But actually she's using her power from draining men's blood to conjure an illusion so no one doubts her. If all of these Pichal Peri existed in the same universe I would deem her as one of the more powerful ones as she can pass as not being an evil spirit. This also means she can experiment more with her choice of clothes so I thought I would try to emphasise the seductive nature of the Pichal Peri (they are meant to be beautiful after all) and with the previous red dress one, although her outfit looks nice she appeared deflated as she had already achieved what she had wanted (the man) so this time I drew the Pichal Peri as being ready to go out and find someone to devour.
The one on the left with the green gold dress at first was going to be the same person as orange dress but then I thought about changing her concept as well. So she is still wearing the long dress to hide her feet and she is wearing fancy clothing because the high society Pichal Peri only wear designer clothes (red dress used to be a part of their group but left and joined the low society ones above). But this one is also powerful as she has a special demonic power to conjure flames. She is one of the fighting types of Pichal Peri which is something I made up as I was trying to experiment with these two. I figured in this world where Pichal Peri exist so must other supernatural creatures? And sure by looking pretty they can seduce human men but how do they protect themselves if something/one else comes after them? At this point I feel like I could write a book about Pichal Peri's but to me this would be a really cool game concept.
The game could have these set characters and kind of like Dragon Age: Origins you could pick an origin story by picking a certain character to play as. Then depending on who you are you are either part of the high society faction or low society faction and have missions to kill men at first but then later there is development and plot intrigue as bigger trouble is on the horizon due to other supernatural business brewing. There are a lot of ghost stories in South Asia about different types of ghosts such as the Mamdo Bhoot who Bengali Hindu's believe are the ghosts of Muslims who kill people by twisting their necks (some Muslim representation thrown in there for free) or the Halmasti which is like a fire breathing wolf in Chitrali folklore. Due to time I am unable to expand on this concept and draw more concepts with these characters but the idea was there when I started with the Pichal Peri. I think a game centered on Pakistani women who died and come back as spirits to kill men seems pretty cool and definitely something I'd play. Obviously I'm not sure how many others would find this appealing but I think it could be an idea for the future. Or maybe I'm just getting carried away with the concept of a game that would have me as the target audience.
I am actually really happy with how both drawings turned out. Like I drew them pretty quickly and I think I'm getting better at concepting rather than detailing? Especially with the orange dress as I wanted to keep drawing more details on the clothes but once I got to the stage you see it now I thought to myself no this sells as a concept I shouldn't do too much to it this stage. If I was finalising the design then I would just start a new drawing but with more detail and leave this one as it is. I think all my Pichal Peri drawings serve well as concept ideas rather than finalised designs, which was my aim when doing them. The skill I want to practise most is concepting quickly and getting lots of ideas on a page which I feel like I did successfully here with all my Pichal Peri designs. Of course some of them were lifted from previous work such as the faces but then again it's my work so I can use them for concepting especially to depict the facial expression.
Overall I think I was pretty successful with what I wanted to do for this semester, although I didn't get to do everything I wanted because of my personal issues. I would have liked to expand on the game concept idea and looked more into supernatural creatures and how to incorporate South Asian culture into those concepts, however, I feel like I managed to do that here with the Pichal Peri. I think I did a lot of self reflecting this semester and spent a lot of time analysing some of the issues video games have with representation and what can be done about it. I think by analysing and critiquing the major factors of representation for players of minority cultures I was able to establish a way to overcome these problems by using my ancestral country as reference. I focused on facial features and skin tones as the evidence in the survey showed that non-white players cared how they were represented and it affected how they self-identified within the game, which as we know also impacts their real life interactions.
I tried to use the knowledge I had gained to show examples of how physical appearance of different races can be done respectively and without carelessness. And using my work I went on to concept characters in an exclusively Pakistani game setting which I'm not sure has been done before. Either way my point was to show how characters can be used and with my knowledge of Pakistan's colourism, I was able to comment on how the various character's experiences might differ due to the skin tones I had chosen for them. This is something that not all game designers think about but as someone with experience I know first hand how differently you can be treated based on the colour of your skin or your appearance. I think these experiences and with this knowledge together we can create enriching and fulfilling video games that celebrate the diversity of cultures that exist instead of demonising them. I just need to become a concept artist and hopefully start doing this in practice.
---
Thank you to my tutors for the past year, with all your help and guidance I was able to finish this MA. The end was hard but I managed to stumble across. I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog and going through this journey of self discovery and research with me.
Comments
Post a Comment