Elote Man
This project treats environment and motion as interaction variables, exploring how minimal cues—sound, repetition, spatial scale—can convey cultural presence without dialogue or instruction.
It began as an observation of a familiar street moment in Los Angeles: an elote vendor moving through a South LA neighborhood on a bike. I’m interested in how everyday, culturally specific experiences, often overlooked or treated as background, can be translated into time-based digital environments and how ambient interaction and non-goal-oriented systems can foster empathy through sustained presence rather than task completion. .
As a Black man living in LA, this work is also informed by the city’s large Black and brown communities and the quiet solidarity that exists between them. The elote vendor represents the Latin community within this shared urban landscape, and this project became a way for me to acknowledge, celebrate, and say, “I see you,” through my own creative language.
Moodboard
Sunsets, palm tress, and old school-style buildings scream “LA” to me. These things had to be represented in the work. I went straight to my own personal photography collection, rich with travel photos of everyday life, local neighborhoods and street scenes. My goal was to better understand movement, scale, light, and environmental texture. How is the cultural presence of LA embedded in everyday moments?
From Observation to Pixel Abstraction
To move away from literal realism, I translated the observed environment into a simplified pixel illustration, which allowed me to reduce visual noise and focus on essential forms, proportions, and relationships between the character and their surroundings.
Working in pixels functioned as an intentional constraint. It forced decisions about what information was necessary to preserve the spirit of the scene and what could be left behind before transitioning into 3D.
3D Development (Work in Progress)
As the project evolves, I plan to explore motion and looping behaviors—treating the scene as a small system rather than a static animation. Subtle movement, environmental sound (ie., the honking of the bicycle horn), and sky color changes may become ways to reinforce the feeling of everyday continuity and presence.
My goal is for its final form to be an interactive, artful, nostalgic representation of South LA, and its vibrant, diverse communities, reminiscent of a late 80’s video game.
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