Hansen: The next generation of art is in good hands

When Sora Prakash lived in Texas during his senior year in high school, most people thought he was Hispanic.

But he is half Japanese and half Indian, and he rarely corrected them because it didn’t matter to him. He had other things to worry about, like how to draw the perfect game warrior.

Now 21, Prakash is a sophomore studying at Laguna College of Art + Design to be a game artist. It is a new discipline that combines intricate character development, lavish backgrounds and plucky storytelling.

Prakash arrived via Greyhound bus last spring, having never seen Laguna Beach. Now, he says, he feels at home.

“I think it’s awesome,” he said. “I love it. It is really cool to be around people who have similar interests. It’s a cool community. It’s really small too, which is nice.”

Prakash is no stranger to new environments. His dad was a U.S. Air Force pilot, so he moved every few years. Consider this life map:

He was born in Japan and was a toddler in South Carolina. He spent kindergarten through second grade at Edwards Air Force Base in the dust bowl of Central California. In third grade, he was in England at a private Catholic school because his dad wanted to expose him to Catholicism.

By fourth grade he was back in Japan. For fifth through seventh, he was in Texas, then eighth to 11th in Virginia. Finally, for 12th grade, he was back in Texas.

This disruption apparently did not faze him. It’s all he knew. When asked if it was hard, he shrugged. He has that young, optimistic, Teflon approach to life, as if he can don the shield of one of his characters when needed.

It’s not as if he is deflecting his feelings. He just redirects them into his own private passion.

“I’ve definitely been able to see a lot of cultures,” he said. “It helps everyone relate to the character. It’s not targeted to one race, so it’s more universal.”

This cosmopolitan ambiguity plays well with game characters. They look human but with an alien veneer. There are no clear races to speak of, only good and bad capabilities.

Prakash’s diversity, travels and desire for something more came to a head in Texas. He had been drawing for several years but didn’t know what to do with his talent.

“When I lived in Texas my senior year, I lived in a really small town, so not that many people did art, let alone digital art,” he said. “I didn’t really know anyone in person that could guide me, so I had to turn to a lot of online resources to try and figure it out.”

The virtual became real when he saw the LCAD program. Suddenly, his dream was not to pursue what some might consider a real career, like doctor, lawyer or astronaut, but to create something ephemeral and yet vivid and memorable as seen through the eyes of game characters.

“There’s different perspectives you can look at with an object,” he said, trying to explain his fascination with gaming. “Before, when I looked at a design, I thought it was a cool design, but during my time here I’ve learned like different ways of what makes the design cool. You start to see things a little differently.”

Prakash thinks it’s a perfect time to be a digital artist. The technology is advancing quickly and the costs are dropping, making innovation accessible to more people.

“It’s really cool to see technology progress, and it’s really opened up more things to do and removed some limitations that we had before,” he said. “For example, at LCAD we do 3-D modeling and before there were technical limitations on how high the resolution could be with your models, but now that computers have gotten better, you can get much more detailed and realistic, so that’s kind of exciting.”

He’s in that time of life when everything seems within reach. He is limited only by the tools he has, and yet if the tools are too basic, he makes do with his imagination.

He embraces the challenge but respects those ahead of him, knowing he still has a lot to learn.

“When you look up at the seniors’ work, it’s definitely way better and really cool,” he said. “There’s a wide range of skills.

“When you compare yourself with other people there’s always going to be someone better than you and someone worse. Sometimes it’s hard to not compare. I guess it depends on how hard you work in the end.”

If the next generation of art students has this much grace, skill and dedication, I think we’re in for an exciting journey.

We will be seeing completely unexpected results, enriched with a global view of humanity.

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.