Graduates
Back to Projects

Jackson Carnahan

BS in Entertainment Design - Concept — Entertainment Design
Course:
Grad Project 1 + 2
Faculty:
Ricardo Delgado, Gwyn Conaway
Term:
2026 Spring

Heart of Ash

In a world where the city and its people run on burning incense, a girl must deliver her assassinated mother's ashes to a godly mountaintop with the help of various artisans to save the city.

Process:

I wanted to create a world and story that was both personal to my life experience and interesting to navigate as a player. So, a lot of initial research was required to develop a unique culture and anatomy for the character cast. Beyond creating costumes and bodies that were fun to explore and showcase personality, I wanted everything to tie back to the root of this world. The root being informed by my experience with grief and incense present at the many buddhist funerals I've attended for my family.

Learning Outcomes:

It's vital to design characters' appearances and movements when considering how they interact with the player character. This presents new challenges to problem solve to ensure pleasing yet functional characters. In comparison, when designing the quest-giver and personality driven characters, much more freedom was allowed. In creating a new world from scratch, I learned how to research and incorporate uniquely constructed cultures, motifs, and systems into my characters and their surrounding world.

Tags:
Character Design,
Production Design,
World Building