When researching my chosen target audience demographically (aimed at a sector of the population), I needed to decide on a couple of factors that would appeal to my chosen audience for my diorama. These contributing factors include their age, gender, social status, and geographical location. When creating my piece, I have to aim my design on these areas based on information, personal experience, and statistical study to determine what they would most likely want to see within my artwork.
My chosen audiences age range –
When deciding on my age market, I had to take into consideration that my range could be no greater than 10 years, as this prevents me from generalizing my age audience, and ensures I am keeping to a specific target. Because of these factors, I had to take into consideration my art style, which will be based upon the stylization of ‘Overwatch’. As the games Pegi rating is 12+, I decided to make my age range between 14-21, as this focuses on the pre-teens and young adults. The game includes non-realistic violence, and the voices of the characters have no offensive or adult content within their vocabulary. Other influences for this age range include the bright-bold colours, and the exaggerated styles of the buildings, as these are all common features that typically tailor towards a younger audience; whereas the cultural and semi-accurate interpretations of the art-style, appeal to young adults too, which is why my range focuses on both of these sectors individually.
Primary gender I will be aiming for – Although my art style could be argued it appeals to both male and female audiences, I am specifically targeting my designs towards males, as the evidence supports that males prefer blue over females by 22%, the colour blue signifies a sense of balance and happiness, as well as being a naturally occurring colour used within environments. Further to this, men and woman both share the same percentage of the colours green and orange, which are colours I plan on using within my diorama; although my target audience has been made male, due to considerably larger dislike for the colours grey and orange, which I plan on using throughout my project. One issue here is the evidence that suggests that woman prefer brown, as brown is a colour traditionally used in Western structures, although this is a complication I can discuss further in my project when adjusting the colour schemes.
Social Status/location of my audience – In terms of my audiences social status, I would be assuming they had the wealth to be able to view my diorama either on the internet or on social media. Depending on my target audience, a 14 year old would be likely to be living with his parents, although able to be self-independent and possibly earn some money themselves. Whereas an older teen or young adult between the ages of 19-21, are likely to have wages of their own, but would again need to be wealthy enough to own an electronic device, which could be harder for a young adult just starting out on their own. In terms of location, my audience would have to be put in a wealthy country with access to computers, and internet sources, typically the most obvious countries would be America and the United Kingdom, as these are two highly recognized areas with large amounts of wealth and resources.
My Audiences favorite genre in films?
A genre is a specific style or category of art, music or literature; for the purpose of my research, I needed to focus on the visual types of genre I can use within my art diorama. The two I am deciding to focus towards are films and game genres, as these conventions will help me build a body of research to determine what visual style my audience within my age-range prefer. I gathered some statistical graphs that represent the different age groups and what particular genre of films they watch the most. The only relevant age groups are the 12-14, and 15-24, as these areas fall in to my target market age range. The percentages differ drastically, as the 12-14 show a much higher increase within the film industry, reaching 35-49% in the family and animation sectors. Whereas other genres such as crime, horror, romance, adventure, and sci-fi are all reach higher percentages than most of the other age categories. Due to my age range being between 14-21, it would make sense to focus on the 15-24 age range, as this makes the most logical and mathematical sense being as the majority of my age range doesn’t focus on the younger audiences. This data has given me a great perspective on which genres I can include within my diorama, (as long as it meets in line with Western) as I have evidence to suggest my age audience market prefer a large range of genres from both family and adult depictions. During my age-gap, adolescents prefer bold and vibrant colours during their development stages, which could explain the fond nature of a wide selection of genres, in addition to this, the age focuses on the youth of today, meaning areas of romance and adventure are high areas of interest for them particularly.
Shown in the below graph, ranking number 1 for the most favored genre by males is action, closely followed by adventure and sci-fi. Conducting studies for this reasoning, it is because of the typical targeted male conventions such as the super hero and villain plots, in addition to this, males like in-depth well written stories, provided well by action. More men than woman appreciate combat and violence, which is typically shown in action films, although this stereotype is purely based on an ideological assumption of gender roles which could be open for interpretation. Featured colours such as blue, and shades of black, grey and white are shown thoroughly in both action and science fiction genres, and these colours are known to predominately be favored by men, represented in the above colour charts.
My Audiences favorite genre in games?
When studying my audiences favorite genre, I first had to research the comparison of what genres both males and females prefer. According to this graph, men and woman generally like puzzle games. This makes sense, as word or trivia games can be more casual and played on multiple devices such as mobiles, board games or video games. As well as appealing to both male and female audiences as they usually provide no bias gender audience.
Focusing on the age ranges percentage of people who play video games, you can see that between the ages of 8-17, children are the majority of the gaming population. Closely following this, is 18-24 which is the age margin of young adults, again within my age criteria, I need to take both of these numbers into consideration between my age groups, as they fit into both a teen and young adult sector. Although these statistics make it hard to see data for my exact audience, it allows me to clearly see that between this younger age group, is where most of the video gaming industry is profiting from, meaning that more games would be tailored towards this age margin.
Finally, I looked into the favorite video game genre of men, and found that 80% favor action RPG, as well as other genres including sandbox, action-adventure, and Sci-fi MMO. Comparing this to the research gathered for males in film genres, you can clearly see the correlation between both action and science fiction, especially compared with the percentage of woman who like these genres. This makes it clear to me that during the development of my diorama, it would be appropriate for me to include something that implicates these genres within my concept art, so that is it more appealing towards males between the ages of 14-21.
Zachery, 17: Audience Board
This is my audience research board describing the interests of a male between the age ranges of my target market. I showed interests in generational areas such as Snap-chat, and Instagram that someone of this age would most likely be using, as well as interest in technology and computers. I specified games and films that I thought related to my research on what statistically boys favor, although some are purely based on my audience and reference such as the art style used in Over-watch. Someone with an interest to the game would be much more likely to be interested if it has the same art style.
Morgan Clark: Games Development L3 Year 2 