All art is political and all art has meaning. These are lessons I’ve quickly become familiar with as I’ve started to think about my art in a professional manner past it being a hobby. I’ve gone from a kid drawing what they think looks pretty, into building a brand that would garner an audience. It’s an evolution that’s not only in my skills but also in my mentality when it comes to creation.

In my game concept Landlord Therapist, it was a whole new ballpark when it came to developing ideas in the landscape of art. This time I didn’t have to think about what just looks good to me, I had an audience, I had peers, and I had constraints due to the form of the art existing in a game format. Since I was the only artist on my team driving the visual direction I doubled down on making sure I ask and included feedback from my teammates, I never wanted to put something out that anyone else was unsatisfied with.

When it came to the actual art itself there were various things I had to think about past just conceptualization. For our mission statement, we wanted to ensure diversity was a top priority as it was core to the themes and plot of the game we were making. So when it was time for me to translate that into art, I found myself deep into rabbit holes on how to correctly both depict an authentic experience whilst keeping those characters easily “accessible” to a wide audience. 

Another problem I had to work through was background art and UI assets that looked good yet intuitive. Although I didn’t get much experience with this due to time constraints it’s something I actively had to think through which left an impact on me concerning form and function.

With the case of my physical work, Bug-Eyed, I had two take-aways from that work, one during the process of creation and the other coming after the finished product. The relationship an artist has with their work can evolve even after a piece has been finished and that’s exactly what happened to me. When conceptualizing the piece I leaned into anime and drag aesthetics, making things look absolutely campy. I also wanted to play with the ideas of exaggeration in the sense of social media beauty filters.

When it came to the finished product I suddenly had a different reading of the piece. It wasn’t celebratory- it was mocking. The campy feminine aesthetics I leaned into ended up feeling like a critique on beauty, as if it were calling the pursuit of such as vapid. 

Nowadays I feel more aware about my work, even if it’s inconvenient for me, even if it takes hours researching and thinking through my process, that’s something I am willing to do. Artists have a special responsibility to capture the world around them and I don’t want to misuse that in a way that would end up hurting others. Being conscious about my choices and thinking critically about my work has cemented itself in my process and it’s something that I hope to keep developing.