AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Whether it's video games or animated movies and TV, you may have noticed that Black characters have matching hairstyles time and time again - often flat, two-dimensional and straight up unrealistic hairstyles. And this isn't a coincidence. While advancements in depicting straight hair have been happening by leaps and bounds, Black hair animation has been stuck, until now.
A.M. Darke, an artist, game maker and professor in UC Santa Cruz's Department of Performance, Play and Design, co-authored algorithms last month that animate three major characteristics of Black hair. Professor Darke joins us now to talk about her research. Thanks so much for being here.
A M DARKE: Thank you so much for having me.
RASCOE: What are these three attributes that could be illustrated in animation?
DARKE: So I'll start by saying that whenever you're tackling a research problem, you get to define, you know, what features matter and are important. So with straight hair, there have been certain features that say, oh, OK, if we hit this look, then we've got it, right? We've succeeded. For Black hair, that hadn't happened. My part in this research is defining those targets. So the three targets that I defined to say, OK, these are essential features of Afro-textured hair was phase locking, switchbacks and period skipping. So I want to break that down.
RASCOE: Yeah, let's start with the first one.
DARKE: So, phase locking is what we're calling the kind of spongy matrix that happens when you have coilier and kinkier hair textures. So before the hair actually turns into sort of a defined curl, you kind of have this matrix of hair that - I say it's kind of spongy because it's sort of like each strand is sort of going in different directions.
RASCOE: Well, that's my hair under my wrap right now.
DARKE: (Laughter).
RASCOE: That's what my hair is. It is spongy, and it is not quite curled and then going in all different directions. And then what's the next thing?
DARKE: Switchbacks - they're the - sort of a secret sauce for adding a level of realism. For those of you who are old enough, we used to have telephone cords, and they were stretchy, and you might stretch the telephone cord, and it gets a kink in it. And so that is a switchback. It's just when the curl doubles back on itself before rejoining or going in a different direction.
RASCOE: And then what's that final third thing that you came up with in the paper?
DARKE: Period skipping - so this was another essential feature. And to simplify it, period skipping is really the frizz factor. So if you think about a coil and each sort of wave, we'll call those periods. In clumped curls, all of the hairs are spiraling in the same direction, and that's what we see as a defined curl. But as we know, curly hair very rarely just falls in line, and so you'll have hairs that break out of the pattern, and so they skip the period. That is what gives the appearance of, like, frizzy or undefined hair.
RASCOE: And is it that Black hair is more difficult to animate, or is it that the research has lagged because the idea was to just start from a European framework?
DARKE: I speak a lot about the technical limitations having been a long-time excuse for why this work is so difficult, but I believe that the cultural literacy is the biggest component. Black hair is more difficult to animate with existing models because those models were built for straight hair. So if you compare the 25 years of research on straight hair and how far that's come to the barely five years that we've been working together as four researchers, I definitely feel that it is a lag because of the focus and prioritization of European features.
RASCOE: Back in 2020, you created a public database, and that is what's been, like, a huge help with this research. Can you tell me about that database and what inspired it?
DARKE: I created the Open Source Afro Hair Library, and so that is a free resource for Black hair textures and styles in 3D. As a game designer and a media artist, I was creating virtual reality projects, and I wasn't a character designer. So I'm using, like many people, accessible free tools, and they were extremely problematic. Black was being listed as, like, a color but not a culture. So my first initial results were like animals and fur. When I searched for Afro hair, then there were derogatory depictions of Black people, often not even with the hair. So it'd be like, OK, here's a prisoner, and he's bald, or here's a homeless man, and he's got a beanie on. I started the library, because I wanted for Black people to be able to author our own depictions of Blackness and not have to set them side by side with things that look like they came straight out of Jim Crow.
RASCOE: You know, I obviously, with - I have two daughters, and my son has locs, and it can be tough to find the hair that I think is representative. So what does this algorithm mean for representation in animation and video games?
DARKE: Well, I'll say it is a starting point. Black hair is not niche. The hair texture in this paper is based off my partner's hair. So this is a person that I love, right? Seeing that hair lovingly recreated on the screen for the very first time - I mean, it brought me to tears. I can only imagine what it does for, you know, folks who - I mean, there's over a billion people worldwide who have Afro hair texture.
RASCOE: That's artist, game maker and UC Santa Cruz Professor A.M. Darke. Thank you so much for joining us.
DARKE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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