Bohan Wang is an artist and visual experimenter who enjoys creating interesting characters through illustration and experimental animations. He hopes to express humor through his works. Drawing inspiration from video games, animation, and sci-fi culture. Influenced by sci-fi classics such as Silent Running and Dark Star, as well as the allure of retro-futuristic aesthetics, Bohan delves into the realm of unreality, exploring the potential for a fresh and transformative order.
Bohan Wang
In my artistic endeavors, I try to blend traditional mediums and combine illustration, modeling, 3D animation, and VR sculpting to push the boundaries of character expression.
Retro-futurism acts as an anchor for my aesthetic, providing a specific temporal context for my artistic vision. By channeling the retro-futurist spirit, I intertwine elements of nostalgia with futuristic aspirations, forging a unique visual language that resonates with both the past and the future.
As I navigate the fascinating realms of character design and embodiment, I am driven by the question of how we truly inhabit the personas we portray. Influenced by Jacques Lacan's mirror stage theory, I explore how the interplay between player and characters blurs the lines between avatars and personal identities.
I aim to transcend the boundaries of perception, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the vibrant worlds I create. By blending humor, character embodiment, and a retro-futurist aesthetic, I aspire to evoke joy, provoke introspection, and spark new dialogues about the transformative power of art games.
How do we become convinced that we are the characters themselves? I studied the Mirror stage theory by Jacques Lacan, who mentioned that we build our sense of self from the reflection of other people, which made me think that in games we also build our perceptions of our characters based on the reactions of the non-player character.
I see this project as an experiment. Players don't know what kind of character they are at the very beginning of the game and can only gradually build your knowledge of your character through conversations with NPCs. I envisage that such an experience would be absurd and without a clear purpose. It is just to see if the player can build a perception of the character in such a situation and see the avatar as himself. That is, whether the mirror theory holds true for the perception of virtual identity.
I see game characters as an entry point to virtual identities, and the profound implications of studying how we connect and empathise with virtual identities is that it will allow us to think about how virtual identities can help us escape our real bodies, speculate, narrate and unravel the identity crises we find ourselves in.
Medium:
3D modeling, digital game
A paranoid android traversing through dimensions teeming with abstruse monstrosities that defied all logical semblance, to dispel their grotesque essence with the radiant aurora of its own resurgent luminescence.
Medium:
illustrationSize:
148.5 x 210 mm