Chance Gayles
IMM – 498
Finalized Concept
My final project will be a portion/beginning of a manga (Japanese style comic) about Japan’s gangs and Yakuza (Japanese mafia) along with conceptual and developmental images, splash art, and promotional material. With my project, I wanted to create something that can incorporate my interests in multiple disciplines and challenge myself by putting myself through some of the developmental stages of a multimedia project usually handled by larger entities. By building this project I will be able to incorporate ideas from western and eastern philosophies of storytelling, marketing strategy, character design, and fashion design. In the future, I hope to become something that lies somewhere between a conceptual artist for games, television, and comics, and a conceptual fashion designer, or a combination of both. This thesis project will serve as my introduction to these fields and will give me the opportunity to hone and display my skills with a professional level of quality.
This idea inspires me because it allows me to produce a project that combines my interests in storytelling, character design, and fashion design. There has been a spike in popularity in Japanese style storytelling and media in recent times to the extent that major fashion brands even collaborate with anime intellectual properties. Even as early as five to ten years ago anime and manga have been somewhat stigmatized within America (particularly in the black community) but have quickly gained popularity among the masses in more recent times. Others should be interested because I plan to deliver a high-quality project that will be stylistically and conceptually unique that could easily fit into the category of pop culture and fashion. It will further blend the two mediums of character design and fashion design.
What makes my project different from other existing works is an ensemble of ideas and concepts coming together which could only be fitted together do to my personal experience within the United States and Japan. I plan on using programs such as Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, Clipstudio, and more to complete the digital portions of the project. I will then look towards fulfillment companies to provide the physical marketable portions of the project i.e. poster blanks, and other physical media. Not all of the details are flushed out but will be over the coming semester.