Developers “Don’t Have An Excuse” When It Comes To Creating Authentic Black Hair In Games Says Naughty Dog Character Artist

Del Walker is a character artist currently working at Naughty Dog, though he also previously worked on Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League and designed Deadshot.

Speaking with Kinda Funny’s Blessing Adeoye Jr. in a recent interview, Walker makes the point that today’s developers “don’t have an excuse” to be putting in-authentic Black hair on characters.

“The advantage now is you don’t have an excuse, because the tech can support what you need. Now it’s just about having the knowledge and using the resources of Black people to ask ‘is this right?’”

Walker is right to point this out, though many popular franchises still fail to meet what should already be a basic standard.

Adeoye’s thoughtful video goes into detail as to the importance of hairstyles in Black history and culture, and names titles like Elden Ring and Animal Crossing as big sellers with recent releases that still fail to authentically represent Black hair.

In contrast to that, Walker and Adeoye go through games that do a better job of representing Black hair, like Street Fighter 6 and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

You can check out the full video, here.

Source – [Kinda Funny via VGC]