Split Personalities

 

I decided, after seeing ‘Alter Ego,’ that it would be interesting to explore the kinds of characters people liked to play as when not given customisation options; not how they choose to present themselves to others, but rather the kind of character they like to be in control of, the kind of persona they like to dabble in; good or evil. I asked several classmates who their favourite video game character was, and placed an image of that character next to the image of the person. However, I found it was more effective to split the faces down the middle and link them. This really served to highlight the differences between the characters and the people themselves. This shoot not only served to demonstrate the contrast between the gamer and the character they play as or like, but also between gamers themselves; each character I received was very different. I then realised I could use this as ammunition to attack the attitudes of the mainstream media, who like to tar all gamers under the same brush. One thing the shoot certainly shows is that gamers are not some form of violent cult as tabloid media seems to suggest. Most of the characters chosen were good, and could even be considered childish. Ultimately, there were several examples in this shoot, labelled in more detail below, which deviated from stereotype, which was one of my original intention for the piece. The editing for these images involved splitting both the photograph and the image of the character from the internet, then using the quick select tool and the Hue/Saturation sliders to even out the background colours.