For this project, we were tasked with creating a character from a simple prompt of “A tech-savvy middle schooler who’s always tinkering with gadgets. She’s shy around new people but fiercely loyal to her friends and quick to solve problems.” More specifically, we had to bring this person to life and display them creatively through 3-4 computer stations.
Rachel Jackson's character design
My station included information about the character’s appearance, musical sting, and mood board. The process of creating our character, which we named Rachel Jackson, was to first brainstorm what she looked like. We were leaning into the shy and nerdy archetype with her large glasses and big hoodie for her everyday look and landed on simple trendy jeans to hint that she wanted to fit in with her peers. Next, we figured out some aspects of her home plus social life and what she enjoyed doing outside of tech; particularly, Rachel’s relationships with her parents and her friends. Overall, Rachel Jackson is a thirteen-year-old mixed girl living in suburban Louisiana. She likes watching movies with her friends on her homemade projector in her garage, learning about and creating new gadgets, baking, reading, Louis Armstrong, and exploring her town. She also doesn’t like Terminator.
Collectively, we tried not to make our character too stereotypical as a basic nerd. Originally, she was supposed to fit the “super-genius kid” archetype, but it was refined to be a struggle and love for learning; she’s learned to like the challenge. Although, we selected certain elements of typical Louisiana culture to influence parts of her character, i.e. her favorite dessert (beignets) and musician.
All the information we compiled was put into a shared document that we would look at when creating our stations independently. I organized my station into three parts I chose to take on: appearance, mood board, and music sting. Appearance was divided into her three most worn outfits, school/home, going out, and movie nights. Each article of clothing could be clicked on to provide more information about Rachel. The mood board had similar elements with clickable images, as well as every few bunches of photos having a information behind them. I included multiple drawings of Rachel and her friends in the station to make it more immersive.
My group members and I should have collaborated more on our stations, since they all seem standalone and varied in quality. There was very little direct communication on the style of our stations aside from the document. It seems disorganized, and definitely needs improvement.
My station:
Full Project:
she's so cute
