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Skin deep: an interactive comic and exploration of body image

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Skin deep: an interactive comic and exploration of body image

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Content Skin Deep
An Interactive Comic and Exploration on Body Image
by
Abigail (Abby) Ann Sherlock
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(INTERACTIVE MEDIA)
May 2022
Copyright 2022 Abby Sherlock
Dedication
For my beloved family and their support of furthering my education. I am very proud
to be the first MFA Sherlock. And to all our furry friends who are there in our times of need
and are the inspiration for the cat in Skin Deep. For my cat companions (Cao and Mushu)
for being by my side for more than a decade and who passed away during my time at USC.
ii
Acknowledgments
This project was a great example of ensemble work across the board, from ideation
to post-production. This all begins with the first person who read my script back in early
2020 and encouraged me to work further with the material, Maureen McHugh. To my Thesis
advisors for their flexibility and understanding, Gordon Bellamy, Martzi Campos, and
Francesca Palamara. The wonderful feedback and edits from the IMGD MFA Cohort of 2022,
for late-night Discord pings and references to other helpful work: Sebastian Baracaldo,
Yang Cao, Madison Emery, Claire Hu, Israel Jones, James Kim, Meny Menzel, Olivia Peace,
Cloud Tian and Zian Zhang. Special thanks to my constant creative partner within the
program Kathryn Yu, art mentor Michelle Ma and red wine maestro Taylor Dinwiddie. I am
the first person in my immediate family to receive a Masters and I’m immensely thankful for
my cohort’s support and community, answering my questions when I was clueless where to
start. To the kind and thoughtful professors at USC who have changed my work as a
creator and artist. I’m so proud to be a Trojan and join our department’s legacy. (It was
worth waiting out the waitlist plus rejection in undergraduate.)
On the technical and research duties, to Dorothy Bernard, MS, RDN, CPT for books
on the history of treatment for eating disorders and Vivian Lau from the UC San Diego
Eating Discord Clinic for her advice and wisdom in presenting this content. The biggest
thanks to my team assembled across academia and external forces that put this thing
together over the course of a year: from Production (Amanda Sharkey, Halle Cottle), Art
(Sherry He, Tianyue Gu, Claire Barnhart, Anju Murphy, Toto Lin, Jun Ishibashi, Tricia Vo, and
Vincent Lee Labitoria), Sound (Jacob Ruttenberg, Seowon Hyun, and Dayna Ambrosio),
Programming (Zhaopu Wang and Emma Lisowski) and UX (Chen Qian.)
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On the personal front, to my Panhellenic and Chi Omega sisters and old colleagues
from UC San Diego who sent silly Youtube videos and lovely messages whenever I was
down. So much of who I am today is because of you. To the one and only Eric Choi for being
my hype man and supplying me with countless meals to fuel my dreams. Finally, call-outs
to my loving family, Sherlocks, Burns and the like in Washington DC, Texas and Canada. To
the best parents God decided to bless me with, all the way across the country who were
there to buy me my first gaming console and are my strongest champions on any day and
for any Twitch stream or project no matter the size. I love you to the moon and back.
Always.
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Table of Contents
Dedication ................................................................................................................................................. ii
Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................... iii
Table of Contents.....................................................................................................................................iv
List of Figures ......................................................................................................................................... vi
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................. vii
Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................................1
1.1 The Phase “Skin Deep” and it’s Connotations 2
1.2 Gameplay Experience 2
Chapter 2: Inspiration ......................................................................................................................... 5
2.1 Personal Connections 5
2.2 Prior Art 6
Chapter 3: Story ....................................................................................................................................11
3.1 Plot and Characters 11
3.2 Environmental Elements and Setting 13
Chapter 4: Project Breakdown…...........................................................................................................15
4.1 Research and Data on Body 15
4.2 Scope and Mediums 17
4.3 Intended Audience 18
4.4 Comics and Interactive 18
Chapter 5: Goals and Measures of Success .................................................................................21
5.1 For Player 21
5.2 For Team (And Myself) 22
Chapter 6: Production and Team Process ...................................................................................25
6.1 Challenges and Lessons Learned 26
6.2 Communication 29
Chapter 7: Resolution .......................................................................................................................30
7.1 Current Status 30
7.2 Next Steps 30
7.3 Conclusion 30
Glossary ................................................................................................................................................. 33
Bibliography ......................................................................................................................................... 35
iv
List of Figures
1 Skin Deep Protagonist Kira as Child.........................................................................................3
2 Skin Deep Protagonist Kira as Adult……………………………………………………………………………………………..4
3 Consume Me by Jenny Jiao Hsia…………………………………………………………………………………………………….7
4 Studio Ghibli’s Only Yesterday by Isao Takahata……………………………………………………………………….9
5 Skin Deep Ending Storyboard……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…9
6 Skin Deep Therapist’s Establishing Shot of Oce………………………………………………………………….14
7 Skin Deep Therapist’s Oce Watercolor……………………………………………………………………………………..15
8 Chart on Body Representations within Video Games from Geena Davis Institute…….16
9 Skin Deep Dragging Mechanic Layer 1…………………………………………………………………………………………19
10 Skin Deep Dragging Mechanic Layer 2 ……………………………………………………………………………………..20
11 Skin Deep Finished Panel…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………21
12 Photo Reference for Cat………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….24
13 Skin Deep Concept Art for Cat………………………………………………………………………………………………………24
14 Skin Deep Demographics of Team……………………………………………………………………………………………….27
15 Skin Deep Father’s Shrine……………………………………………………………………………………………………………...28
16 Skin Deep Father’s Funeral…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 28
17 Skin Deep Innovative Ending Watercolor…………………………………………………………………………………..32
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Abstract
Skin Deep is a 2-D MAC/PC/Browser interactive graphic novel dealing with body
image, loss, and cats. In a “slice of life” story the player experiences core memories or
vignettes of Kira O’Malley-Park, an adult trying to make sense of her past, relationship with
food and childhood. These gameplay moments take the form of interactive metaphors,
simple and user-friendly to understand ways of keeping the player engaged with the
unfolding narrative. These simple but vital elements represent on the larger scale Kira’s
own psyche or emotional state. Adjacent to webtoons and visual novels, the game
challenges our own preconceived notions of just how digital interactivity has to work to be
considered gamelike. By touching a subject matter (self-esteem and intersectional
representations of bodies) Skin Deep encourages new types of characters and themes
worthy of exploration in our digital media that have not often been discussed enough in
video games.
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Chapter 1: Introduction
The thesis question of Skin Deep, as a thesis project, is innovative for me as an
individual within the games space. As someone who often did not feel like they saw many
others that looked like them within their stories, or gaming events, representation or there
lack of has been vital to how I view myself and my identity. Skin Deep asks this pointedly
and repeatedly when its young protagonist searches for role models and a community that
understands her struggles with body image, standards of beauty and familial trauma. Even
as a medium, visual novels or interactive comics can be viewed as a non-genre of games.
They are games technically since they are interactive (and in this definition I use the
largest scope of the word, meaning a player controlling digital elements on a screen) but
are not normally given the same amount of respect as other genres. They can be seen as
not up to the level of triple A action adventures, nor are they competitive lands of FPS
where there are clear winners and losers in the games they create. I saw this in how other
comparable creators in the space are treated and how their projects are treated. As a
medium filled with many marginalized creators and diverse audiences, (Trevino, 2021) I
argue that even the platform and presentation of Skin Deep itself is an anti hegemonic act
itself.
As a browser build primarily it is in our core bones of its inception to be as inclusive
as possible: to any player who has a computer and an internet connection. No high
processing graphics cards, fancy headwear or money needed to play. With this thesis my
team and I seeked to challenge these preconceived notions of what is the line between
graphic novels and typical gameplay, forging a new genre that doesn’t subscribe to either
but is its own form of “interactive graphic novel.” It’s subject matter of themes we do not
see in games (Kocurek, 2019) is reflective of that very mission itself and myself as a creator.
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It proclaims loudly to the world what I care about as an artist and the types of work I seek
to create in my post-graduate career.
1.1 The Phase “Skin Deep” and it’s Connotations
The title of the project is core to the questions it poses and also core player
experience goals. Skin Deep is a shortened version of the common English saying that
“beauty is only skin deep.” What does this mean? Cambridge dictionary defines it as
emotion that is “not carefully considered or strongly felt, superficial.” (Cambridge
Dictionary) Of course, this can be seen as correlating the idea that beauty is superficial and
fleeting, which can be true but the ocial definition frames it in a more productive way. It
can be actions not strongly considered.
This relates so well to the piece and Kira, the main character’s experiences with
bullying, comments from others on her looks and her journey. Her bully does not carefully
consider what her mean words do to her confidence nor does her family’s roundabout
comments on her looks seem strongly thought out. Beauty is skin deep, and Kira finds that
out when at the climax of her journey she finds that even though she has switched her
outsides to match those of her society’s expectations she is still hungry and empty at the
same time. (Physically and emotionally!) Kira did not strongly consider how her actions
would a ect her later. It did not fix the deeper problems inside.
1.2 Gameplay Experience
Skin Deep is a 1st person, 2-D interactive graphic novel that has the player take the
role of Kira, a young woman tracking her emotional journey through childhood, bookended
by conversations in therapy. The player’s goal is to unfold the mystery of why Kira is there
and what she is trying to work through. By going through these interactive metaphors,
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(Dragging the mouse, timed clicking, scrolling) they understand a deeper meaning why Kira
was in a certain mindset during specific places in her life. The design pillars that helped
guide the experience and overall project included:
● Easy to understand Interactive Metaphors within the narrative that increase the
agency of the player
● Simple Art that shows a change in environment, physical change in Kira’s
appearance, and lets the player feel a sense of worldbuilding
● A direct narrative told in vignette scenes showing the passage of time and the most
important moments in Kira’s journey
● Immersive music and sound eects that clearly mark the chapters and their
locations, emotionally cueing the player to where they are
Figure 1 Skin Deep Protagonist Kira as a Child
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Figure 2 Skin Deep Protagonist Kira as an Adult
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Chapter 2: Inspirations
The medium that Skin Deep is in, is a newer genre but there are comparables to
measure against and learn more about established standards of what players expect. One
of the largest was the multi-platform Florence in which a similar fashion uses small puzzles
to dive deeper into the intimate moments of her romantic relationship and young
adulthood. With a simple visual style, and a strong emphasis on the story line, Florence
challenged players' definition of what a meaningful game could look and play like.
2.1 Personal Connections
The script of the project was originally developed in Maureen McHugh’s Introduction
to Interactive Writing class during the first year of the MFA program in 2020. As a part of
the webtoon or comics section of the class, Maureen encouraged me to go further into the
story and potentially in expanding it. She pointed out the reliability of the subject matter
for potential players, the layered meaning of food and loss and the audience’s standin of
Kira’s loyal cat companion were all strong elements of a potential thesis. Focusing on the
tough subject matter, I claimed that I wasn’t probably in a good enough place emotionally
to lead a project dealing with body image for over a year.
Fast forward to thesis discussions in Spring 2021 and the script still remained one
of my personal favorites I’d worked on during my time in the program. I worked on another
thesis idea getting to the pre-production stage, working on concept art and a large project
macro document. It was in the midst of this time period that the real world came too close
to the topic, with the Activision Blizzard harassment lawsuit from the State of California
(Browning, 2021) echoed too strongly with the toxicity within online gaming communities
that the potential thesis studied. (Goodrum, 2018)
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Almost two years later, I went back to the script of Skin Deep and read it again with
new eyes, imagining it in digital format and not simply words on a page. Potential
prototypes and what the story would mean for others to experience on a larger platform. I
was emotionally ready to lead it and work on it more. To clarify, I am not Kira and she is not
me. There are similarities in that we both struggled with food in our developing years, and I
was on the edge of being diagnosed with an eating disorder while in therapy in my youth
but was able to work through many ideologies that individuals with ED’s cannot address.
There are also elements of feeling like the friend who didn’t belong, or the outsider among
your peers which are common in adolescence.
I was also interested in putting the main character’s struggles with weight and body
image at the center of the story as a countermeasure to some common misconceptions
about diverse bodies. To those who have been always hegemonically privileged in thinness
it can be dicult to empathize with an issue some people believe to be self-inflicted or not
of equal importance to other elements of intersectionality. (Felkins, 2019) This was a
challenge that also inspired me and the team to gather empathy from our players, who
even if they have not struggled with body image, can imagine how the weight (both
physically and emotionally) can have on someone’s psyche.
2.2 Prior Art
Due to the subject matter not being the most common theme in media, there were
few places to gather inspiration in games. One of the biggest discoverers was that of
Consume Me by Jenny Jiso Hsia. Recommended by a classmate, it is a collection of
playable prototypes from a NYU Games Center student dealing with gamifying her
experience with disordered eating and weight management. Since being showcased at
GDC 2019 it hasn’t been released in a full game but I believe even the concept being shown
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at a large-scale gaming convention shows that there is an audience for this type of
experience. The tagline that she explains is that the only villain in the story is yourself
which is deeply impactful.
The topic of self-loathing or self-hatred is hard but complex and powerful. It can
come from external sources (as in Skin Deep where Kira deals with the loss of her father,
bullying from classmates, and family genetics which all lead to her self-destructive ways,)
but also kept up internally by Kira herself. Consume Me didn’t have a positive ending or
resolution, whereas Skin Deep does. There is hope and a movement forward for Kira and
hopefully the player. Many of the articles and journals reporting on Consume Me post GDC
2019 discuss how ethical it is to “make an artistic point at the possible expense of the
audience.” This was something to be mindful of in my production process. Being kind to the
audience while also letting the work breathe is something I kept in mind while directing.
Figure 3 Consume Me by Jenny Jiao Hsia
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Another medium to gain inspiration from was a film I saw for my preparation to
study abroad in Japan, Studio Ghibli’s Only Yesterday. Recently given a re-release in
America with an updated English language dub, this is a gem of a film that has flown under
the radar until 2016. It is deeply domestic, intimate, personal, and small in scale and scope.
In a simple concept with a female gaze in it has a woman looking back at her life through
vignettes and figuring out what stuck out to her the most and made her the woman she is
in the modern day. It is only through reviewing these scenes in the past is she able to move
on with her future and make new changes in her life. It does pass in a sequential order
showing main character Taeko’s youth and childhood growing up but does it in slideshow
fashion similar to Skin Deep. We don’t need to see the everyday rituals but move the plot
forward with these memories that stand out the most. The creators were interested in rural
vs city life but also the passage of time. The film did extremely well in the Anime genre that
doesn’t have much of this particular type of story: realistic drama for adult women. I think it
proves there is an audience here who craves these types of tales that explore everyday
situations with grace, respect, and love. The ending is also an inspiration for Skin Deep
where Kira as an adult is comforted by Kira as a child. A similar story archetype happens in
Only Yesterday where it is Taeko as a child that leads Taeko as an adult to making a big life
decision. The last image of Kira seeing her younger self encouraging her to move forward is
directly lifted from the imagery of the film which I believe is an extremely strong
conclusion.
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Figure 4 Studio Ghibli’s Only Yesterday by Isao Takahata
Figure 5 Skin Deep Ending Storyboard
The final inspiration was a novel of Crying in H Mart (2021) by singer Michelle Zauner
about the death of her mother to cancer and their relationship, tracked by the moments of
when they spent together cooking or eating. As a prior art piece, it translated well to Skin
Deep where food acts as a conduit of community, love, and relationship-building is present
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in both of their stories. There is also the overlapping element of the loss of a parent and
how that throws one's life out of balance. Michelle tries to reconcile who she was in the
past when her mother was in her life vs. her life as an adult singer in a modern world.
Present in Skin Deep too where the story is bookmarked by the therapy sessions Kira has in
the beginning and ending of the plot. Food is memory and love, and Kira tries to fill the void
after her father's loss with their favorite foods. By using these di erent mediums and
comparables we were able to make our game richer and specific, doing research culturally
within the world and around these topics was important to the planning and ideation
process.
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Chapter 3: Story
To further understand the project overview and how it operates it is necessary to go
through the plot of the game since it is linear even if it is interactive. By highly controlling
the narrative the players go through there is a level of specificity that was allowed by our
team by narrowing down on what was possible for the player to experience. This design
principle encouraged richness: I believe that it gave us an ability to build out our world and
how it operated. This meant a linear or “on rails” narrative, meaning there was a very
specific kind of experience we wanted the player to undergo. While this can constrict
replayability, I believe that there is still a need for these types of games where if it does its
job right the first time, it can still be a lush, layered game.
2.1 Plot and Characters
Starting out in a therapist’s oce we are introduced to a kind therapist and a young
adult woman named Kira. This is our Chapter 1. She is nervous and by dialogue we
understand one of her assignments was to write a letter to her past self, talking about her
childhood. Her therapist asks her to read it aloud if she is comfortable. She starts and we
start a flashback to her childhood. In vignette comic form, sometimes with dialogue,
sometimes with just visuals, sometimes with music we as an audience and pseudo-player
of Kira go through some of her memories. We begin with Chapter 2, young childhood where
Kira is about 9 or 10. She is joyful with a cat at her side and they play with legos. We then
see her hiding in a closet when her parents fight over money. She explains that it wasn't
always stressful where in a vital moment of development she and her father share fast food
and laugh in the drive through. We learn that her father is a firefighter and his job can be
dangerous. We are introduced to a house on fire and an idealized version of her father,
determined and ready to do right by others.
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Chapter 3 begins with a shrine of Kira’s father, who has passed away by being a
hero. His funeral and death is a prominent memory that frames much of what is to come.
She eats with her cat while home alone, trying to fill the void that is now there with her
father’s loss. Her mom now is forced to go to work or work more to provide and she is
overworked with less time to prepare meals. It is easier to go through fast food at the end
of a day for Kira than to make a full meal at home. She snacks a lot on Asian-American
treats, sugary filled relics of memories that she shared with her father as she ages up to
middle school.
She is still happy to spend time with friends at school and has the childhood joy of
not being self-aware of her appearance that much. It is here those little moments pop up
that are seeds for trouble later. As many young teens go through, her mom doesn’t like the
clothing she likes when they go shopping and her belly starts to round out when she looks
at herself in the mirror. We move to Chapter 4 where we find external elements now acting
upon Kira’s psyche. She undergoes bullying at school about her body and her mother o ers
ideas of weight management to try and help. This instead just makes her feel isolated and
she takes matters into her own hands. At school, she skips meals and lies to friends about
her hunger and at night she over exercises on calories and energy she didn’t consume. Her
cat is also worried about her and as our audience looks on, sees that this path could start to
be dangerous.
Chapter 5 shows the fruits of Kira’s labor and society's acceptance of her
self-destructive ways. She is praised by her peers, flirting with a crush for the first time,
and championed by family members for her change of weight. This has a dark internal
psychological weight that we see has reached a climax in the game. Kira kneels over a toilet
post making herself throw up. This is gross and shown in a non-glamorizing manner. It is
only when she is almost awakened by an outside source: her loyal cat hiding in the bathtub
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of the bathroom does she have a moment of clarity. The realization of having another living
being, even if it’s simply a cat, seeing one of her darkest moments is a dose of reality. We
then go to Chapter 6 where we are back in therapy with Kira where there is a breakthrough
in the (aforementioned) letter. She has written declarations of love, mantras of hope and
healing that have taken a long time to actually sink in as everyday lived values. We also
noticed that the cat from her childhood is a logo on her bag. This story or comic might even
be Kira’s job as an artist and the visuals change to the cat performing actions of self love.
The metaphor is there and we end with the realization that if we’re not okay today, we and
Kira will be soon. An adult Kira smiles at a younger version of herself with her loyal cat
companion at her side.
2.2 Environmental Elements and Setting
There were multiple places the world takes place and our art team had a task with
building out the details of where we were and what the characters looked like. Early on our
team determined that we were in the United States in the Midwest suburbs. The
complexities of the spaces the characters operate in from therapy, to school, home, malls,
and more meta-physical places such as the ending chapter with the cat’s anamorphic
states all needed to be explored and thought through. In our visual language the setting is
modern, computers are seen and clothing is obviously in the 21st century.
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Figure 6 Skin Deep Therapist’s Establishing Shot of Oce
In the background we had a great time researching some of the most popular
posters or books for Kira’s bedroom and brainstorming what decorations would a therapist
have? (She has her degree hanging proudly and trinkets from her travels and possibly some
Japanese manga for her younger patients if they don’t feel comfortable talking yet.)
These small details were important in making the world feel fleshed out and
relatable to the audience. They could even stand for deeper metaphors within the story
such as when Kira is over-exercising in her father’s old oce and it is filled with boxes of his
stu her Mom has not cleaned out yet. She is physically running on the treadmill to purge
her demons of the past but also she is emotionally surrounded by mementos of her father’s
spirit, reminders of his lack of physical presence now in her life. In storytelling, I believe the
more specific the better for the audience in establishing their entry into this world and the
details also slowed down the player experience which is helpful for a visual novel.
Another example of in depth environmental storytelling comes from the end of the
game. The team early on decided that Kira in her late adult life becomes an artist. The cat
that she was drawing with friends in middle school later became her mascot for her
cartoon series. We see her canva bag with a drawing of her childhood kitty companion
itched upon it. She now has become successful enough to have her own merch!
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Figure 7 Skin Deep Therapist’s Oce Watercolor
Chapter 4: Project Overview
The game is approximately a 15 minute experience broken up into 6 chapters played
by clicking, dragging, and scrolling through panels and all that is required to play Skin Deep
is a computer and headphones. Built in the Unity engine by using the Panopoly plug-in, the
story is told through comic form with a series of flashbacks as a young woman reflecting on
her childhood and relationship with her body.
4.1 Research on Body Representation
This game was not intended to be a large empirical data collection or qualitative
number analysis on body representations within media. There are many organizations that
have conducted surveys and studies on the subject matter which I believe prove by
numerical data that we have a massive inconsistency of diverse bodies and it is worthy of
study and investment such in a year long thesis. One of the most pointed reasons that
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show that this thesis is honoring an area worthy of exploration, is the substantial lack of
examples there even is within the space.
One of the most comprehensive studies on demographics of video game character
representation done in 2019 said that when looking at race, age, gender, sexual identity,
disablity and body diversityth “In the most popular streamed video games, 1.5% of
characters have a large body type. Of the characters with a large body size, nine-in-ten are
male, reinforcing the rarity of female characters with large body types in di erent types of
media.” Out of every single area of intersectionality reflected today there is still a distinctive
discrepancy and body type is still the least thought of or included.
Figure 8 Chart on Body Representations within Video Games from Geena Davis Institute
4.2 Scope and Mediums
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One of the biggest strengths of our project was the clearly defined scope at the
beginning, which guided our actions. The 5 page script did what it needed to do: laid out
the characters and world, had swift and dynamic changes that were easy to see, and a well
packaged resolution. The audio pipeline was simple in that we laid out all the chapters and
locations, it was a static list and didn’t balloon to an uncontrollable size. For programming,
it was also simple in that we worked o the interactive metaphors that seemed to emerge
naturally from the narrative, such as clicking as fast you can when on the treadmill to
simulate Kira’s speed when running. The largest undertaking was that of our visuals and
art: we had 19 di erent environments overall and in total, over 78 comic panels of di ering
characters, props, emotions, and scenes. I can’t emphasize enough how important it was to
break down the large amount of art needed into sprints that made it more manageable and
gave our team expectations and little breaks when needed.
For the medium itself it is no secret that platforms in which games are accessible on
is political by its very nature, (Gray and Leonard, 2009) inherently passing along values or
implicit bias in the way it is presented and consumed. Originally, just on PC and MAC, our
programming team had an excellent idea since it was possible due to the small size
technically the project takes up on Unity, it was possible to upload the project as a browser
playable. This discovery changed the primary build to the browser and increased it’s
accessibility so that even more people can play it! This action is also reflective of the thesis
statement itself to challenge the constraints of typical prescribed notions of what is elite
enough to be considered a game.
4.3 Intended Audience
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When thinking about our audience there was one primary concern regardless of who
they were demographically and that was of care. Something that our team was united in
was that since these were dicult subject matters we were treading in we wanted to treat
them with respect and grace. For our content warning we reached out to the UC San Diego
Eating Disorder clinic in order to help us format some resources for players, one at the
beginning to warn away if the topics could be triggering for some and then again by
providing multiple external vetted resources at the end if the emotions conjured needed to
be addressed in a productive and mindful way. As a creative, needless gore, violence, or
excessive despair is one of my pet peeves and we strived to illustrate a holistic game that is
purposeful, polished, and well researched when presenting what can often be traumatic
themes. The audience is two fold: I believe on one side for those folks who don’t know or
think about issues of body diversity, eating disorders, fatphobia, or weight and equally for
those who know too much about it. While the topic is gendered intrinsically by its
connection with female beauty standards and impossible pressures young women are held
against (Millard 2009) this is truly a topic that touches every person who has turned on a
television in the past 30 years or looked at a marketing campaign or advertisement in a
magazine. It is dicult to get away from societal beauty standards unless you are
completely disconnected from all media and entertainment.
4.3 Comics and Interactivity
The visual and expressional style we decided to use was that of comic books and the
exciting world of visual novels and webtoons. Originally inspired by Pixar shorts, we also
looked at other serious comics such as Fun Home (Warhol, R., & Warhol-Down, 2001) and
how they addressed transitions, character placement, and speech bubbles. The moments
in which there was no player input were important too in that our team knew when players
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had specific actions to take they would be more engaged but how do we make those static
scenes just as engaging. That means going through the entire storyboarded panels and
working through with a cinematographer to work out the transitions. Like a director edits
and steers the eyes when watching a movie, we had to select specific ways in which the
panels would come onto the screen or leave for pacing reasons. This level of precision
helped us control the player’s concentration and focus. For our design process of
interactive metaphors it was also narrative focused where interactivity was added at
specific moments that were most vital to Kira’s emotional journey. We did not want to add
superfluous, tedious actions that were there to check boxes. The example most impactful is
that of the dragging mechanic seen in Chapter 3 where a young Kira looks in a mirror. We
are presented with two bodies, two looks and two Kiras in essence where the player drags
and shifts the reality of Kira’s world. This represented the multi-layered (physicality in our
Game Engine) but also in reality that Kira has started to view her daily life. There is her
everyday self, then the other version she realizes people would like her to be.
Figure 9 Skin Deep Dragging Mechanic Layer 1
19
Figure 10 Skin Deep Dragging Mechanic Layer 2
I have to shout-out a plug-in we used for Unity in which our programmers would
code on top of to make our specific features possible, that of Panoply. Comics and visual
novels are such an open field for experimentation and di erent types of creators creating
wondrous new storytelling formats. Comics as a medium use visual motifs to illustrate
deeper meanings within sequences, and as our game takes place over a suspended period
of time this art form is reflective of the story itself, with Kira’s struggles being with herself
visually, appearances based. It was a smart choice for our aesthetic, the memory focused
lens and ability to transition through large swathes of time easily.
20
Chapter 5: Goals and Measures of Success
The goals of the project were broken down into di erent categories. What did I seek
to do with the project, what did my team want to accomplish and what did the player have
as a goal when starting the game? Making these as specific as possible for each di erent
intended stakeholder was important in my pre-production phase and carried over into
production. Having these goals as guiding principles and pillars was helpful when faced
with questions about design or the execution of the overall project’s success. In my view
success was binary, and determined to be a finished product of the original script in a
playable format.
Figure 11 Skin Deep Finished Panel
5.1 For the Player
In my opinion, it is impossible or deeply dicult to measure success of goals when
creating an empathic game: Is it making the audience cry? Is it having them exclaim at the
end jumping up from their seat, “I now feel di erently about my fellow man by this piece of
21
art!” This is a tough area to systematically measure either by empirical data or numbers, but
the goals of Skin Deep were simple in design for practice and play. The game is the opposite
of skill-based or challenging; it is almost ease based, made to be as simple as possible to
get through. This was due to the fact that the game is a tough subject matter already and
we didn't want the gameplay to be tough skill-wise too. The player drags di erent mirror
images of Kira when she looks at the mirror during one of her lower emotional periods. This
has a simple goal or action, to drag, to change the image on the screen in order to process
the story. It isn’t deeper than that physically but can be seen emotionally as goals-based in
relation to the narrative. As the player, we change the image to reflect Kira’s inner
emotional state of wanting to change her body. We are able to see the ideal image of her
body vs. her current reality. By having that power of agency over the image we are even
more immersed in her psyche and journey by physically being the ones to perform the
action.
5.2 For Team and Myself
By having our script locked in by early Fall 2021, our team was in a good place that
helped with laying out our production process and scheduling. I marketed the project to
others within the USC Games program and to external partners as the final goal being that
of a polished, short and sweet experience that my team could add to their creative
portfolios. I wanted each person on my team to point to a specific part of the game they
were a stakeholder for and could describe their process working on a project from the
beginning to the end. This was a hard balance of growing our skills and talents with the
hard deadlines we needed to meet in order to remain on our timeline. After watching
multiple people go through the program and work on their thesis it was also useful to see
what went wrong almost more than what went right. One of the biggest factors we focused
22
on as a goal was a manageable scope and an openness to “killing our darlings.” This
ideology made us as a development team, both flexible and productive. Being able to
distance ourselves and having that 3rd person voice of what is good for the overall project
was a mentality that made us stronger. Personally, my goal was growing as a director but
also as a manager and developer of people. I learned so much about myself as a creator and
the creative process. Most importantly, I like directing and I’ve received positive feedback
from my team. I’ve coined this learning experience as wearing di erent hats, meaning I
have di erent forms of communication when talking with di erent people on my team in
their various departments. They each have diverse priorities and goals and communicating
with them on their priorities and specific goals to achieve the best results possible was
needed.
23
Figures 12 and 13 Photo Reference for Cat and Skin Deep Concept Art for Cat
24
Chapter 7: Production and Team Process
To narrow down the entire game development pipeline to just a year was a learning
lesson within itself. The previous class of Richard Lemarchand’s Immediate Design and
Production section from Fall 2020 was a guiding principle in how I organized my
documentation and assets for the project. As someone who loves production and
organizing, it was a gift to have an assistant within the process who I could teach what I
knew about producing while helping them develop their own skills. Team recruitment was
essential and being self aware to track my strengths and weaknesses.
By hard hitting introspection I asked myself who I needed to reach out to and what
areas I could accomplish on my own. Some of my professional background is based in
marketing and my network outside of the USC Games program and I used this as a strength
to recruit people to work on the project. I opened myself up to be a resource, a mentor and,
to members of my team, that if they worked on my project and donated your time, I would,
in turn help each one of them. I have been honored to write letters of recommendation for
some, or reach out to my professional contracts within the industry to promote members of
my team for internships and other roles. I believe this management style helped to keep
people interested in the project over a long period of time but also that I am personally
invested in their growth as peers within this industry.
A production sca olding element that was encouraging also included the script of
Skin Deep which was broken up into equitable chapters of comparable length to one
another. This made the pipeline of deciding when to work on each chapter easier as it was
more a puzzle of math with the school calendar for assigning deadlines and dates for
milestones and team members. Breaking down what needed to be done was simpler when
the script had strong clarifications of specific story beats and assets needed. By using a
25
team calendar everyone could access, a Google Drive filled with clearly marked folders,
weekly meetings where I met with di erent individuals on the team, it was simple to make
goals for each week and adjust accordingly to meet them. Having a team and learning from
them was essential and made the project so much richer.
7.1 Challenges and Lessons Learned
There were multiple challenges that one can not plan for when embarking on a
creative endeavor and especially during the time my particular cohort, the Class of 2022,
has had to undergo due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Having to switch from platforms of in-
person learning to online randomly and adapt as needed were picked up as tools along the
way. Some lessons came early on where I sought advice from a trusted mentor who gave
me contradictory feedback as compared to the rest of my playtesters. This was not helpful
and instead threw my confidence out of whack, calling into question one of the only areas I
felt comfortable about. The lesson learned that I have carried forward into the future is that
when I need advice: I need to tailor my requests for specific feedback to their strengths and
not general advisories. The more detailed the better and the more fitting to their natural
strengths and talents, the better my project will be for it.
Another challenge with a satisfying resolution was the timing of balancing di erent
abilities on my team. My art team is wonderfully gifted with folks across diverse ages, who
are in school full-time and levels of experience. In December, I along with my thesis advisor
Martzi Campos, realized if my team progressed at our current pace , we would not meet our
Spring deadlines for art assets. It was then that we explored ways of addressing this issue,
of scoping down which would not have been possible with the current script or outsourcing
particular parts to another artist who had more time to work on the project. I reached out to
an old friend who was looking for commissions who recently graduated from UC Santa
26
Cruz’s Games program. They had an abundance of time and talent which we desperately
needed and the work matched up beautifully! By bringing them in at a later point in the
development process it was also a shot of espresso to the other members of the art team,
seeing assets and panels coming in at a speedy rate. Their responsibilities seemed more
manageable and attainable with added reinforcements.
Another case study worth mentioning within many lessons learned was that of the
richness the team also brought within story changes. When writing the script back in 2020,
it’s characters were white as is my background. It was during the development process my
art lead and storyboard artist (both belonging to AAPI identity) stated, “Lots of this
(referring to familial comments on body image) are common I’m sure in white families but
it's really also common in Asian culture where celebrations and life events are themed
around food.” So the choice to make Kira a mixed race individual (Korean father, White
mother) was decided to make the world richer while paying respect to the demographics of
our team. (Our thesis team is majority People of Color.)
Figure 14 Skin Deep Demographics of Team
I believe the diversity has made the story and characters much richer while being
reflective of our team. Due to the loss of her father, Kira has lost a link to her heritage and
identity, and finding comfort in emotional eating to somehow try to reconnect with him and
deal with her loss makes logical sense. We then added more elements that were true to her
27
Korean identity to more fully flesh out her experience. Including both her father’s Korean
shrine and a Christian funeral that would have been held in tandem and the food of both
cultures making up her childhood as a Asian and Irish-American. Greasy fast food and
potatoes plus chocolate covered Pocky snacks.
Figure 15 Skin Deep Father’s Shrine
Figure 16 Skin Deep Father’s Funeral
28
7.2 Communication
This is touched a bit in my goals section but one that can be discussed more fully is
the type of communication a director needs to have in their toolbelt when starting a year-
long project with over 15 people involved. I quickly found myself adapting my personality,
style, word choice, and energy for di erent teams when in meetings. This doesn't mean I
was duplicitous but that separate folks required special management styles in order to
work productively and feel supported and comfortable. In certain situations I could
continually ask questions of my programmers as I have a place of deep respect and
admiration. I would ask what a word meant or how long a feature would take since I didn’t
have personal experience with the level of coding they had to perform.
This made me a better manager while also giving them a high level of agency of
their own workload. On the other hand when I was in production, I was the one with more
knowledge of production pipelines who only needed a helping hand on tasks such as how
to format outreach emails to external organizations, or make art asset lists. Being able to
perform multiple roles and switch between them was needed and a good learning
experience as both a manager and student learning and advising at di erent times.
29
Chapter 8: Resolution
8.1 Current Status
At the time of this writing, we have finished our Beta and are working on polishing.
Polishing includes sound balancing with the multiple audio elements, and editing details
on character’s outfits to better reflect the timeline or making the loading screen on the
browser version happen more seamlessly. These are important in a healthy and positive
player experience and when playtested by peers in February 2022 were some of the
emerging issues I wanted the team to focus on as we come to the conclusion of our time
together. Some of the last elements were the small things that can often fly under the
radar without a good production team, such as credits or content warnings that are vital
but sometimes can’t have a specific individual responsible since they fall under multiple
teams disciplines.
8.2 Next Steps
For further work this semester I will be helping my composer organize the
soundtrack of our project and distribute it as expanded songs she plans to put them on
Spotify. We are planning on submitting to a couple of festivals that focus on women centric
stories or new kinds of gameplay. Our editor, Halle Cottle, will also be composing a trailer
once we have finished art for marketing and festival purposes! I’ve done this on previous
games and I’m excited to release it to the general public in early April 2022. Please follow
along on Twitter @SkinDeepThesis!
8.3 Conclusion
The project set out from the start to prove that a level of skepticism from others is
due to the genre and its “gendered expectations.” (Goodrum, 2018) Within the department,
30
the industry and the constraints of this degree, due to its medium and ideology
surrounding it’s community and types of respect those who play these sorts of games
deserve. I sought to challenge what the constraints of the genre Skin Deep was
entrenched in from comics, visual novels and games entail in practice and theme. By
framing originally how interactive does a piece of media need to be in order to be a game?
If it is not obvious by now I shall state it as I believe. If a player interacts with an object in an
analog sense and a correlation happens on a digital screen, that is interactive media at its
most basic of definition. By opening our minds and definitions of what determines a game
we open our hearts to more sorts of people, stories, designs, and audiences to enjoy this
medium. By zeroing in on a subject: body image, not represented well in any media forms
and especially, games, I also wanted to elevate characters and themes not often respected
in storytelling and it has been shown that our media does have an impact on how we form
opinions of ourselves in our daily lives. (Alexandra Henning, Alaina Brenick, Melanie Killen,
Alexander O’Connor, & Michael J. Collins, 2009)
It is in the best interest as academics, creators, and industry to daily challenge
ourselves to narrow hegemonic preconceived notions we might have. To be stagnant is to
cancel out growth and change, aging is the essence of life, and in dramatic terms on the
opposite coin: death. I am a reflection of this very statement, I am one of the few
non-engineering majors in my cohort and I like to hope that my inclusion into the program
made a di erence in the types of feedback and perspective I was able to give during my
time at USC and potentially, the future kind of individuals we have in our programs. The
surprising and layered conclusion I also gained was how much I loved directing and helping
others grow in their skills while championing a creative vision. This was a role I would have
never been able to accomplish without my time at USC and the opportunities provided and
for that I am forever grateful. If one person plays through Skin Deep and has a di erent
31
perspective of their fellow human and their struggles, then I believe it did its job. Like the
cat who helps Kira out of her, “Dark Night of the Soul” (Manganaro, 1992), I hope we too see
there is so much more to our fellow man than what is just skin deep.
Figure 17 Skin Deep Innovative Ending Watercolor
32
Glossary
Triple A - In the video-game industry, AAA (pronounced and sometimes written Triple-A) is
an informal classification used to categorize games produced and distributed by a
mid-sized or major publisher, which typically have higher development and marketing
budgets than other tiers of games.
FPS - First-person shooter (FPS) is a subgenre of shooter video games centered on gun
and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player
experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the player
character in a three-dimensional space.
Webtoon - A type of digital comic that originated in South Korea usually meant to be read
on smartphones. Has a large population of female creators and female readership, often
discussing issues related to femininity from relationships, family, and many more in the
domestic sphere.
Visual Novel - Often abbreviated as VN, is an interactive fiction video game genre, featuring
text-based story with narrative style of literature and interactivity aided by static or
sprite-based visuals, most often using anime-style art or occasionally live-action stills (and
sometimes video footage).
Eating Disorder - any of a range of psychological disorders characterized by abnormal or
disturbed eating habits.
Fatphobia - Used as early as 1993, irrational fear of, aversion to, or systematic
discrimination against obesity or people with obesity.
33
Unity - Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, first
announced and released in June 2005 at Apple Inc.'s Worldwide Developers Conference as
a Mac OS X-exclusive game engine. The engine has since been gradually extended to
support a variety of desktop, mobile, console and virtual reality platforms.
Manga - a style of Japanese comic books and graphic novels, typically aimed at adults as
well as children.
2-D - it means that the composition possesses the dimensions of length and width but
does not possess depth, as opposed to 3-D.
34
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Asset Metadata

Creator Sherlock, Abigail "Abby" Ann (author)

Core Title Skin deep: an interactive comic and exploration of body image

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Degree Conferral Date 2022-05

Publication Date 04/12/2022

Defense Date 04/20/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag body image,comics,digital media,eating disorders,Family,Food,gaming,Loss,OAI-PMH Harvest,video games,visual novel

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Bellamy , Gordon (committee chair), Campos , Martzi (committee member)

Creator Email asherloc@usc.edu,contact@abbysherlock.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC110937261

Unique identifier UC110937261

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Sherlock, Abigail "Abby" Ann

Type texts

Source 20220412-usctheses-batch-922 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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