Creating Diversity in Representation for Southern Africans in Character Design in Digital Art: A Case of How to Draw Guides

Abstract

There is a knowledge gap within the established lessons of art fundamental application regarding Black African character designs and their phenotypes due to historical depictions and opinions of Black people. This has led to portrayals in contemporary digital art media – video games, comics, animations – that lack thoughtful and diverse representations of Black Africans that show visual cultural elements that represent that character’s culture and ethnic background, and do not carry maliciously ingrained racial stereotypes in their designs. This research aims to investigate what mechanisms can be used by artists to better represent Black Africans in digital character design art, both visually and contextually. I used literary analysis to understand both the formation of popular drawing guides used by digital artists, and the histories that could have influenced the art fundamental lessons of these drawing guides. The histories of Black Africans both colonial, and post-colonial, were investigated to understand what links they have with the representation of Black African character design art. I created an art book to address African-specific features and signifiers that aimed to suggest how such elements could be used in character design. Online drawing guides that represent Black people are less impactful to artists aiming draw them, as they are restricted through specific key words that may not be known to the user, thus widening the knowledge gap. This research indicates that art fundamental guidebooks need to be more diverse, as their origins were miscommunicated and misunderstood throughout the years past. The standards used in the fundamentals of art have connections with colonial and post-colonial histories that misrepresented and did not include Black people, based on the opinions of white people from those periods. It is recommended that in order for people’s mindsets on what is considered the standard of the fundamentals of art to change. Keywords: Fundamentals of Art, Character Design Art, Black African, Phenotypes, Ethnicities, Culture, Representation, Digital Art