Initially, when we were given the character design template, I found myself designing completely imaginary superhero characters. Personally, I am not a fan of fantasy and more into non-fictional genres. I then tried to design more real-life based characters which was interesting as (naturally) I began to base these designs off real people in my life. While I was doing this, I began learning more about these people and I thought, I wonder what a character based off me would look like? Would I learn more about myself? And I did just that.

Sharukh Daya is essentially a character based off my life and essentially, he represents myself and most importantly my hobbies.

Why did I want to base my character off myself? Over the course of last and this year my life has changed dramatically. I have realised and learnt more about my self in these two years than ever before. With this knowledge, I have changed significantly. Learning about myself there are many aspects of my life that I wonder what would have come of it if I paid more attention to it. For example, I really enjoy writing (mostly poetry) but did not think much of it as a career. Presently I would not want to get into poetry as a career…but what if? The main reason for Sharukh Daya’s existence is that I want to carry on this journey over the last year and learn more about myself. And I thought that essentially documenting my life through a character is a unique way of learning more about myself.

I chose to give my character my surname to make the character seem more ‘real’. I did this so that I could make appropriate social media accounts for the character as I did not want to create a fictional social media accounts (I wanted my character to be as real as possible). The use of social media accounts is aimed to promote his writings and himself as a person. (How would I portray myself through him).

Note: the character is based off me and my experiences, but Sharukh is not me. I will be over-exaggerating events in his life, making up stories, fictional lovers, satirising parts of his life etc. One reason for this is that these fictional events are some I wish I could experience in real life so I will put Sharukh though those events and consequently learn how I, in real life, would experience such events.