Dr. Farley Chery, Interactive Media and Game Development, works on a project aiming to diversify racial representation of animation characters in entertainment and educational environments.
Dr. Farley Chery’s project creates the tools and curriculum that allows game designers to build characters of various ethnicities and races in the entertainment industry. The tools and curriculum are helpful for not only students, but also hobbyists and working professionals who seek to diversify their casts in short films and game projects. Currently available non-white models are very few and not designed with the intention as non-white bodies. Working with a group of computer science and game development students who come from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, Dr. Chery creates a public library of non-white 3D models that has more options than any other library on the internet. This project also develops a tool for curators to quickly convert models into animatable expressive characters.
As the team creates high quality, versatile character rigs available for those who are interested in diversity and inclusion in the field of technical art, they will also document the adoption and integration of the rigs by different projects from large production studios to independent artists. Dr. Chery sees this project as part of his broader research on Black artists. His interviews with prominent Afro-futurist content creators will also be included in the Just T collaborations page.