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How do you convey what’s interesting and important to you as an artist in a digital world of constantly shifting attentions? For many young creatives, the answer is original characters, or OCs. An OC is a character that an artist creates for personal enjoyment, whether based on an already existing

How do you convey what’s interesting and important to you as an artist in a digital world of constantly shifting attentions? For many young creatives, the answer is original characters, or OCs. An OC is a character that an artist creates for personal enjoyment, whether based on an already existing story or world, or completely from their own imagination.
As creations made for purely personal interests, OCs are an excellent elevator pitch to talk one creative to another, opening up opportunities for connection in a world where communication is at our fingertips but personal connection is increasingly harder to make. OCs encourage meaningful interaction by offering themselves as muses, avatars, and story pieces, and so much more, where artists can have their characters interact with other creatives through many different avenues such as art-making, table top games, or word of mouth.

In this thesis, I explore the worlds and aesthetics of many creators and their original characters through qualitative research and collaborative art-making. I begin with a short survey of my creative peers, asking general questions about their characters and thoughts on OCs, then move to sketching characters from various creators. I focus my research to a group of seven core creators and their characters, whom I interview and work closely with in order to create a series of seven final paintings of their original characters.
ContributorsCote, Jacqueline (Author) / Button, Melissa M (Thesis director) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Committee member) / School of Art (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
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Description
Art is an inherent concept instilled in human nature, which utilizes the abilities of the creative mind to invent. Art has served many purposes in the history of mankind, including, but not limited to story telling, entertainment, decoration, exploration, propaganda, education, and therapy. The primary aim of this creative project

Art is an inherent concept instilled in human nature, which utilizes the abilities of the creative mind to invent. Art has served many purposes in the history of mankind, including, but not limited to story telling, entertainment, decoration, exploration, propaganda, education, and therapy. The primary aim of this creative project was to explore the importance of the art, as a creative process, as a way to supplement academic endeavors. The idea derived from an observation made by myself that contemporary regard for art has been on a decline, which made me question if I also value art as much as I think I do, having done art in the past and recently added a studio art minor. I thought of ways to again incorporate art and the creative process into my life. I asked myself the question: can the creative process be used as a supplement to schoolwork in order to relieve stress? To explore this, an experiment was designed, which entailed my creation of drawings twice a week, accompanied by journal documentation for a full semester of college. Afterwards, analyses were done between the documented journal entries and the artworks to see if any relationships were apparent between various aspects of my life at the times of the drawings and the drawings themselves. Further research was also conducted in related areas of study and documented in written format, which cited and analyzed numerous journal articles, artworks, artists, and research papers. This included art therapy, art education, and the relationships between art and science. Results from the experiment indicated that art as a creative process allowed for the relief of stress by cleansing my mind from any concern or interferences, therefore offering myself a complete break and relaxation, effectively refreshing my mind and allowing me to resume schoolwork or other tasks more mentally taxing. In addition, the research also showed that art therapy could effectively utilize this palliative effect of art making to ease the problems of people in distress. The findings also concluded that art and science go hand in hand, which explains a lot of the similarities in methodologies utilized by scientists and artists. In conclusion, art is a paramount part of mankind in exercising the creative mind and is ubiquitous; we should learn to actively embrace it to enrich our lives.
ContributorsSun, Sean Yu-Hsiang (Author) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director) / Chandler, Douglas (Committee member) / School of Art (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05