Responses by Jamie Cordwell, executive creative director, Edelman.
Background: Data shows that 85 percent of Black gamers believe video games poorly represent textured hair, and 91 percent of Black gamers are eager to see themselves as characters reflecting their own experiences. That’s why Dove joined forces with the Open Source Afro Hair Library to create Code My Crown—the world’s first and complete guide for coding natural hair in video games. In partnership with natural hair experts, Dove and Open Source Afro Hair Library identified the top natural and protective hairstyles currently missing or misrepresented in video games, from twist outs to afro fades. Together, we enlisted a team of Black 3-D artists, animators, programmers and academics from around the world and across the Black diaspora to develop fifteen original hair sculpts that can lay the foundation for hundreds of virtual hair possibilities.
Design thinking: We felt that raising the issue was not enough, and we needed to empower Black 3-D artists that were already creating 3-D models of beautiful natural hair so they could share and celebrate it with the entire gaming industry.
And we did it in a big way. Code My Crown, a 230-page guide, is half a celebration of culture and half a tech training manual, all authored by the community itself. The ambition is that this guide will live on as the ultimate resource until one day when it will be completely unnecessary and video games reflect the real beauty of natural hair.
Challenges: Addressing the existing gap in knowledge and tools for accurately representing natural and protective hairstyles in virtual spaces. In the absence of established methodologies or software tailored for natural and protective hairstyles, the Black 3-D artists had to invent new techniques and tools. This not only required technical expertise but also a deep understanding of the cultural and aesthetic nuances of Black hair. And, to be ultimately useful for developers, we went the extra step of creating 360-degree photo references to ensure the sculpts were true to life.
Favorite details: The positive reaction from the gaming and development community to the project—including from Xbox President Sarah Bond, who has championed the campaign on LinkedIn and Twitter—has been amazing. This initiative was over a year in the making, and to see it being embraced by all the communities makes all the hard work and late hours totally worth it.
Specific project demands: While we’re knowledgable about the gaming space, we needed to ensure that game devs found value in what we were offering up. While that complicated our delivery, it was well worth it in the end as it meant we were delivering a product with integrity and utility.
Alternate paths: We wouldn’t change a thing. Starting with the right partnerships with the Open Source Afro Hair Library, Black 3-D artists and natural hair experts meant that we were pointed in the right direction from the start. This was a first of its kind, and as a result, it took everyone working together to create an end product we could all be incredibly proud of.
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