Blog 3 Reflection on how Better Lives themes influenced my project outcome and personal development

For my project outcome, the theme of diversity drew my attention to scarification. The series of questions that I asked myself in the last blog came down to the final challenge: how do I design a character with scarification?

With Nick Fury as a positive example, I thought of 2 other marvel characters from Guardians of the Galaxy: Gamora and Drax. The decoration inlaid on Gamora’s face and the raised tattoos all over Drax’s body can be interpreted as designs of scars as well. Then I looked at more visual references from African tribes, where scarification and body disfigurement is intentionally created as marks of beauty. My final design is a powerful and muscular fire cult priest who has scars from his face to his bare upper body. His scars are marks from the inauguration ceremony in his temple, when he pledged his life to his faith and his gods. He is wearing a skirt, which I took inspiration from a National Gallery VR dance choreographed by Tony Adigun. His 2 dancers wore only black skirts, with upper body unclothed, displaying their strength through their distinctive muscles, in the same time moving with such grace and control. From that performance, I see the masculine elegance in their black skirts that can be applied to my fire priest.

Through this design, I’m trying to evoke diversity on both make up and costume. His scars are designed to appear similar to fire burns, but placed in a deliberate manner. I can see him in a fantasy movie as a fighter, a protector of his temple and his god. He can also be a guru, a wise master or the young apprentice. He can be both a protagonist or an antagonist. Though the latter would fall into the stereotypical “heart of darkness” primitivism portrayal of the “native figure”, the savage and evil plotter, which I’m hoping to avoid. If he were a hero, he might be seen by burn victims as a positive and inspiring representation who looks like them, instead of Freddy Kruger. His skirt is traditional of his religion: all clergy are regulated to wear different forms of dress that match their position, like how Christianity regulate vestments and clerical clothing. Although men wearing dress is common in South East Asian cultures, it is still not mainstream in the west. In my degree subject Costume Design, we are very focused on reproducing western historical dresses. To my surprise, the better lives project has made me steer away from the west and research on cultures around the world. This practice will also help me develop my future projects with considerations and conversations with other cultures, and finally help me understand the background of people from different cultures in the industry so I can work better with them.