Blog Post 2
As I have now begun working on my Better Lives project in developing a character, I have started to make connections with the themes of diversity, social responsibility and sustainability in my creative practice.
Creating a character requires us to think about inclusive characters that resonate with a global audience. We must consider skin tones, ages and disability when creating a character to ensure it is perceived properly from a modern and global perspective. To do so, we have begun to learn about corrective colour theory, ageing from a distant read and realistic skin effects. I have also thought about how key characters that have had recurring representations in film and performance over the last 100 years. An example of this would be how characters perceived as evil would often be represented with facial disfigurations, and how this may be offensive to an audience and how it can lack diversity in a group of character representations.
When considering the lecture on diversity by Shahidha Bari, she spoke about how designers can be ignorant to how it can be offensive to others, designers and teams that are not diverse behind the scenes, which made me consider prosthetics artists over the last 100 years in British performance may have created characters that are not completely diverse due to this possible lack of diversity in prosthetics and costume design teams – leading to an over representation of ‘bad’ characters having some sort of disability or facial disfigurations. Therefore, in my own practice of creating a character, I want to remain as inclusive as possible in order to avoid creating any offensive characters.
Considering social responsibility, I began to attach this theme to areas of health and safety in creating a character. It is vital in prosthetics to ensure that the models that you use are treated appropriately. This includes identifying allergies, using skin safe products and being gentle with the skin. In addition you do not want to spread any bacteria from model to model, so it is important that grease palettes (which can easily mutate and spread bacteria) is disinfected before using, along with the brushes that are used. For this reason, whenever I’m creating a character, I have the responsibility to ensure that I follow all health and safety procedures so that the models I work on are safe. I can also apply this information to my own course in hair and makeup for fashion as a similar practice takes place to put the safety of models first.
There are also some ways in which we should be more sustainable when creating a character. For example, taking off prosthetic makeup can require a lot of cotton pads and some of the prosthetics cannot be reused, which can create a lot of waste. When I create my character, I must consider this and possibly look for alternatives such as reusable cotton pads and a reduced use of non-reusable prosthetics.
Overall, I believe that all three themes have an important role when creating a character. I must remain diverse, sustainable and take social responsibility throughout the creative process of my prosthetic makeup work.