Human Neopets project test

[lovejoy1997]

As promised, I finally did sketchdump of the Neopets as humans but I'll start with the Battle for Meridell characters. I almost made Lord Darigan a bit like Voldemort but I thought of giving him a bit of color to avoid it. Sally and Kayla have freckles while the Court Dancer is naturally black haired but dyed her hair orange and Lord Kass, who is unfortunately, from Germany since his name means "blackbird" in Eastern German, has a shaved Mohawk style and some of his hair dyed icy blonde. I have no problem with Morris and Count Boris. Jeran and Lisha's race is British but I speculate them having German, Israeli (because Jeran's name is a variant of a Hebrew name, Jaron meaning "Cry of Rejoicing") or Scandinavian mix. The skin color and hair color are kinda indecisive because the perfect natural hair color for Jeran is black so he and Lisha can have a Northuldran look but Lisha's yellow color can make them blonde, only Jeran would be platinum blonde, almost making the two look like Anna and Elsa. There are other hair color options for him. 




Soon to come:
Hannah and the Ice Caves (Hannah might be from Brazil or in the Carribean isles and Kanrik would be Japanese or Southern Korean while Armin and the Bori are Scandinavian)
The Lost Desert Plot (Would be composed of Egyptians, Persians, Arabians, and Indians. I thought of Jazan being a Tamil Indian because of the tone of his fur color and Nabile as a Gujarati Indian with Persian heritage while Amira and Vyssa are Egyptian with Persian mix.) 
The Tale of Woe (All the characters are British but there are Romani people in there too)
The Curse of Maraqua (Kinda imagine the Maraquans to be Filipinos because they're located in the same location as my country.)
The Cyodrake's Gaze (All are East Asians.)
Journey to the Lost Isle (The cast would be British but they are of mixed race or mestizo descent.)
Atlas of the Ancients (The Moltarans can be Australians but Clara Chatham is a British immigrant in Japan)
The Faerie's Ruin (Hanso can be Mexican while Brynn is British with Scandinavian heritage)

Any ideas are open here, let me know so that I can correct or make it. 

[Celestial]

Your art is good. The faces are simple but there is a nice style, and the colours are bold. It's good to look at and I like it.

I do have a few quibbles with how you humanise the Neopets properly. It feels like you are taking ethnicities and assigning them arbitrarily to characters still, or at least with fairly shallow reasoning. There is nothing particularly wrong with it, it just feels a bit odd.

The main thing I want to highlight is that "British" is not a race. Most people take it as a synonym for "English" which is...very yikes, especially given the current political climate over here (I live in Scotland). Putting aside immigrant minorities for a second, the British Isles have several nationalities and ethnicities living on them (the primary ones being Scots, Welsh, Cornish, Manx, Irish and then English), with four of those living on the main island of Great Britain (Scots, Welsh, Cornish, English). The English are distinct from the rest, with the former three all being Celtic peoples. It is much, much more complex than that in reality (not even going into the mixture of immigration and Germanic influence and all that jazz) but this is the short, simple version. So "British" doesn't really mean anything and you might want to be more specific.

You seem to have taken the advice to heart regarding research but it does not feel like you have done it in enough depth. And it is nice that you want to include people of colour and some ethnic diversity, but if you want to do that, you really do need to be careful about stereotypes and making sure you understand the ethnicity without accidentally causing offense.

[Liou]

Hehe did you put Sally next to Mr. Scary, yes, these are good good friends c:



Yeah, figuring out what country people come from is a different thing from figuring out what people look like.

Saying "character has X skin, Y eyes, Z hair, etc." is separate from saying "character comes from country A".
And the origin of someone's name is not necessarily indicative of where they're from, either.

The main things that we do know of these little furry animal characters is their personalities. Deducing someone's ethnicity and/or nationality based on personality is uncomfortably close to prejudice.

It's tough because these are characters from fictional lands, Neopian lands that are obviously inspired by real-life cultures, but the characters look like little virtual animals, and the fictional countries are not supposed to be direct parallels, so they stop short of crossing that line. (Although, some of the Neopian lands are cliche in ways that might not have aged well.)
I'd be especially careful with trying to design Romani characters, as Romani culture has been misrepresented for a long time and the way the g**** characters are depicted in neopets cards and Tale of Woe was already not okay (the costumes, jewellery, expressions, hints of supernatural influence), and people's cultures are not a gimmick to give characters. Heck, I wouldn't dare do anything with those Neopets characters at all.

So how on earth is it possible to do a cool thing like designing human versions of the Neopets characters without getting entangled in stereotypes?
I really have been giving this some thought,
and if I were doing this project, my personal approach might be similar to picking a dream cast of actors:
if I were directing TFR as a movie, who would I pick to play Brynn? Let's saaay... idk, Tessa Thompson as Brynn, for instance. And Oscar Isaac as Hanso. (Gal Gadot as Aethia, aaand Florence Welch as Fyora. C: ) Based on the way I imagined them acting as these characters, I might use that as inspiration for a character design - only loosely, without directly copying features.
I'm not sure this would actually work, but here, it's a suggestion.
Much luck!

[Ian Wolf-Park]

I've been quiet up until now with your posts on this, but I definitely think I have to voice my opinion on this as I am a bit worried on what you would do with upcoming characters, seeing as now you've told what you're going to be doing.

My main issue is similar to Celestial, and that's lumping together multiple ethnicities into one, in this case, 'East Asians'. While it is unfortunate that people out there have made that same mistake because of similarities physically, you don't have to be one of them. For example, those living in China speak either Cantonese, Mandarin, or both. I'm simplifying things, of course, as there are other languages within China, but those two are the main languages spoken. Meeting a person in China is completely different from meeting a person in Japan. I'd still be wary about stereotyping, especially with the various ethnicities that comprise of Asia

[lovejoy1997]

I found out that Medieval Britain was such a cultural hub and the best picks would be Irish, Welsh, North African, Moorish, or Central Asian. The Romani have a widespread diaspora back then.

When I researched the name meanings behind Jeran and Lisha, I found out that the origin of their names is Hebrew, with the name, Lisha having Indian and Latin origins so should I go with the headcanon that Jeran and Lisha are Israeli-British as humans?