Tada! Presenting: my entry for the Celebrating Diversity 2023 event. The version above is what I meant to submit, but I accidentally sent in one where Frita had a darker jean jacket that blended in more with the background. Ah well, I'm still very satisfied with how this came out.
I wanted to talk about the villagers I chose and the dishes and outfits I planned for them. I didn't want to put all this info in my main entry and clutter up my message. If you glance at the speedpaint, you'll see I started with taking notes on villagers and what I might dress them in and what dishes I might serve them:
I thought I knew the roster well, but I had trouble thinking up more than 4 "ethnic" villagers that I could associate with different regions of the world. I basically sat on villagerdb and paged through their database.
Margie popped in my head first. I was craving Indian food anyway. Most of the restaurants near me serve either Nepalese or South Indian cuisine, so I'm not familiar with anything that comes in between. I'm sure what I've eaten is fairly Americanized, but my Indian co-workers like to vouch for the authenticity of some places. I have Margie in a
Sari dress and with a few bangles. I considered adding facial jewelry, but nothing I considered seemed natural or looked right, so I kept her bare-faced. I have her poised with some samosas, a 3-tier tiffin with some lovely curries and sauces, and a hot pot of chai. I love chana masala (a sort of chickpea curry) and could probably go vegetarian easily with the support of Indian cuisine.
I am ethnically Cantonese-Vietnamese, which means I am pretty familiar with some of the things that Tiansheng might eat of he's from southern China. I opted to serve him soup dumplings (one of my faves!), egg rolls, and a big bowl of noodles. I modeled the bowls after Chinese
Ming dynasty porcelain bowls. Many Asian households have a set or something inspired by this era. If I was rich, I would totally collect dishes and plates and bowls, etc.
Cousteau, I learned from the Nookipedia entry, is not actually French-themed in the Japanese version of Animal Crossing. But in the Western version of the game, he is Gallicized (made French), probably referring to the frog legs in French cuisine. I'm not bothered by eating frog legs or snails, btw; they are just food that have been normalized somewhere else. I was worried about having him be too stereotypical, so I looked up the history of the beret and the striped shirt; there are red berets originating from a specific region of France, but they're not otherwise commonly worn. For his French foods, I served ratatouille, croissants, and he's holding a flute of champagne.
June is vaguely Polynesian. She is wearing a grass skirt over some hidden fabric, but only a grassy necklace instead of a floral lei. I think it's a missed opportunity, and now wish I had given her a lei garland or some sort of top, instead of letting her go topless like in the historical depiction I found. Oh well. She has a leaf tray featuring a variety of goodies: pineapple, poi, roasted meat, taro... I really need to visit Hawaii or another island again. I feel so landlocked here in the middle of Texas. My mother's bloodline has lived next to the beach for generations, so alas...
Genji already had the Japanese name and I was overconfident that I knew enough to handle his Japanese origins. He is dressed in a vague approximation of a hakama inspired by his default Misty tee. I have him holding an onigiri and there is a sushi tray before him. I considered adding another tea set to the table, but... I didn't know what made a Japanese tea set significant or unique from other tea sets, so I left it off since the chai pot was already by Margie. If I could only pick one cuisine for the rest of my life, I would probably go for Japanese.
Frita, my darling. After Ketchup, Frita is my favorite villager and the first uchi I ever encountered. Her hot dog shirt cracks me up, and the word play on frites (French fries) and her hamburger headgear... I just love the food villagers. She's my American gal. I find Americans represented by hamburgers all the time in foreign media. I love her clicking those tongs. I also placed some sodas on the table, though carbonated drinks were not invented in the states-- but the global brand Coca Cola originated in Atlanta exactly a century before I was born. The real struggle was figuring out what to have Frita wear. I once visited a mural in Asia with kids in the national garb of different countries, and the kid representing America was in a cowboy outfit with a bunch of frills. I definitely did not want that on Frita.
Originally, I had her wear the progressive pride flag, but I didn't want to be seen as pandering. I believe in accepting our differences, and that love is love, but I am a very plain, hetero, neuro-regular gal-- so I can hardly be considered the spokesperson for the cause.
I did recall that riveted jeans were invented for California miners by Levi Strauss and Co. -- something that led to modern denim fashion today. It was hard to find something that was 100% American (I mean, truly, that is the case for everything, as this country is a melting pot of so many wonderful cultures and history), but I figured denim fashion would be the closest thing to a national costume.
Boone and Ankha are in the background-- not because I have anything against Africa! I just have very little exposure and knowledge surrounding that area and its cuisines.
I learned that Boone is not actually a Baboon, but something called a
Mandrill. The wiki shows that the Mandrill population is concentrated in west Africa, and so I quickly googled traditional attire and cuisine in that area. My search could be faulty, so I'm happy to be corrected by anyone with better knowledge. Boone is wearing a dashiki and holding a plate of jollof rice (something I've always wanted to try eating). I wish there was African cuisine nearby.
Ankha's costume is based more on ancient linen robes worn by women. She has a plate of Egyptian street food called
ful medames, which is mashed fava beans served with other typical Mediterranean sides like hummus and tomatoes.
Artistically, there are a lot of things I would still like to fix on this piece (particularly the lineart and some of the missing details), but I had to make the deadline. You might've noticed in the speedpaint that the first sketch had them sitting horizontally, but I wanted to have a more dynamic view. The composition has the angle of the table and the grouping of villagers flowing toward Frita-- which was not a conscious choice. I guess I just love Frita that much! The only real consideration I had for positioning the villagers was that I knew I had to separate Genji from Margie because they would be large sections of white against a mostly colored background and other colorful villagers. I was concerned that there would be too much yellow with Cousteau / Frita / Ankha, so I changed the green background to an evening blue for better contrast.
I appreciate that you've made it through this wall of text-- it really just demonstrates that amount of thought / effort that goes into this kind of piece. There have been so many thoughtful entries in this contest, and I am a little sad that spending so much time means my entry was later and will probably go unnoticed, but I am very proud of this result and if my printer was working, I think it would make a lovely postcard. Ahhh ok, I better stop blathering before the mods get flagged for spam or something, lol.
What an interesting story you have there, and it's great that you're pushing yourself to expand your art skills further! Oh, and that train advent calendar is awesome. It must've taken a lot of effort to make it look good.
who takes commissions off of photos you provide, too 
It's so interesting to see your works side by side! They are stunning. 
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