‘Killmonger Locs’ Are Everywhere in Video Games. This Artist Is Sick of It

Technical artist and digital creator Ebonix (real name Ebele Udogaranya) has developed a new tool for Blender, the Loc & Kinky Strand Generator Tool, to address the persistent lack of authentic Black hairstyles in video games. For over a decade, Ebonix has created custom hair content for life-simming games, but the process has been time-consuming and technically challenging due to the limitations of existing 3D animation software. Game developers often default to simplified, stiff styles like the "Killmonger locs" from Black Panther due to the difficulty of accurately rendering textured Black hair. While initiatives like Dove and Open Source Afro Hair Library's Code My Crown aim to improve this, Ebonix's new tool, inspired by recent scholarly research on coiled hair, significantly speeds up the creation of natural Black hairstyles from potentially weeks to under an hour. Her plug-in automates aspects of the process, allowing creators to generate various kinked and loc'd styles with greater ease. Ebonix, who has consulted for games like The Sims 4, plans to make her tool a standalone app and is exploring licensing it to major game studios.