Ziggy Stardust &
the Space Oddities

Character Creation project
through Alter Ego
development

When David Bowie created alter egos, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane & the Thin White Duke, he created them with traits heavily inspired by pop culture and social identity. They embodied traits that he wanted to achieve or improve and had abilities to do things he felt he himself wasn’t able to do as himself. With this project I aim to use this method of alter ego creation to create new characters of the people around me.

I conducted a survey asking questions about the participants such as what aspects of pop culture and society they feel inspires/influences them the most as well as characteristics they wish to embody or things they want to achieve.

Based on the answers, I will try and come up with a character design of an alternate version of the them that can coexist in the world of Ziggy Stardust, the space cowboy, in his world of Space Oddities.

This is an experimental new form of character creation aimed at making developed characters with depth and implied backstory through use of the cultural iconography within their design.
Rather than the traditional method of creating characters from a preplanned and written story, we get the characteristics and motivation of them organically from people around us and the culture they consume. That way, the character that is created inspires the story instead.