Meaningful Play 2022 presentation: Art, Play and Winsor McCay - the Critical Art of Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends
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In this presentation from the 2022 Meaningful Play conference, I discuss how we are using the art direction and animation of the indie game Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends as a critical tool for understanding an important work of comics history with the hope of helping others use art more meaningfully in games.
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Meaningful Play 2022 presentation: Art, Play and Winsor McCay - the Critical Art of Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends
- 1. Art, Play, and Winsor McCay The critical art of Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends
- 2. Christopher Totten - Bio ● Program Coordinator ■ Kent State University Animation Game Design (AGD) ● Founder and creative director, ■ Team Nemo ■ Pie for Breakfast Studios ● Co-founder, Smithsonian American Art Museum Arcade ● Author/Editor ■ An Architectural Approach to Level Design (2nd edition 2019) ■ Level Design: Processes and Experiences (2016) ■ Game Character Creation in Blender and Unity (2012)
- 4. Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends ● A video game based on Winsor McCay’s 1905 comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, with elements of McCay’s other comics and cartoons ● Our game, Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends, brings this property back for new audiences with ○ Art style influenced by the comics ○ Hand-drawn keyframed animation ○ 4 playable characters – Nemo, the Princess, Flip, and a new character, Peony ● Use of game art production methods as a means of critical analysis. Game Original comics
- 5. Background: Why adapt Winsor McCay and Little Nemo?
- 6. Who was Winsor McCay? ● Born c. 1867-1870, died 1934 ● Early pioneer of the comic strip and animation ○ Did not invent these forms, but seen by many as one who perfected them ● Major works ○ Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1904) ○ Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905) ○ Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)
- 7. Winsor McCay in context Little Sammy Sneeze – September 24, 1905. Winsor McCay Little Nemo in Slumberland – December 3, 1905. Winsor McCay
- 8. Little Nemo – 1911 Winsor McCay Gertie the Dinosaur – 1914. Winsor McCay
- 10. Left: Little Nemo meets Arzach, by Moebius Right: Frames from Dream of the Rarebit Fiend by Winsor McCay and Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
- 11. Top: Little Nemo in the Land of Wonderful Dreams, April 06, 1913 Bottom: King Kong, 1933 Top: November 1984 Batman comic cover Bottom: Intro sequence to Adventure Time
- 13. Theory: Game Art Production as Scholarly Investigation
- 14. Goals and takeaways ● McCay’s work is a popular topic of scholarly inquiry ● Comic adaptations frequently remix or subvert elements of McCay ○ Can game art and animation be a tool for critical interpretation? ● Topics of inquiry: ○ McCay’s intertextuality with his influences and contemporaries, ○ Connections between McCay’s foundational work and later works inspired by it ○ Challenging problematic attitudes in the original work by intentionally subverting them through the work of artists from underrepresented groups.
- 15. Theoretical underpinnings ● Derivative works – A creative work that includes major elements of an original, especially in subversive or critical ways ● Visual rhetoric – The ability of visual artworks to persuade or embody discourse (Bogost 2008) ● “Critical Design” – Product design processes; research, user experience, and iteration, visual appeal; commandeered for social critique (Dunne & Raby, 2013) L.H.O.O.Q (1919), Marcel Duchamp
- 16. Theoretical underpinnings ● Animation as a critical art ○ Early animated works themselves represented creative applications of technology ○ Animation is inherently analytical – nuance and study required to create believable performance ○ Cuphead and the reclamation of “rubber hose” animation ○ The Cuphead Show! and the subversion of racist tropes in rubber hose animation ○ “[Miyazaki] uses animation to imagine the world from another’s perspective” (Niebel, 2021)
- 17. Theoretical underpinnings ● Game art as critical art ○ Single Work Theory – approaches to games and game design that focus on games as singular objects whose main element is interactivity ■ Serious and persuasive games ■ G/P/S model (Djaouti, Alvarez, & Jessel, 2011) and MDA Framework (Hunicke, LeBlanc, & Zubek, 2004) ○ Collected work theory – approaches to games and game design that see games as collections of artworks contributing to a whole experience ■ Fan and industry communities ■ AGE framework (Dillon, 2016)
- 20. Ever Yours, Vincent, 2015, by Federica Orlati Lissitzky’s Revenge, 2015, by Pie for Breakfast Studios Precedents
- 22. Art style analysis – “Art Noveau line”
- 23. Art style analysis – Integrating McCay’s actual drawings
- 24. Left: Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends, Night Sky level with castle drawn after McCay Right: 1893 Columbian Exposition, Chicago, IL Art style “what ifs” - Architecture
- 25. Left: Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends, Ice Palace level Right: Sagrada Familia; Antoni Gaudi; Barcelona, Spain (construction began 1882) Art style “what ifs” - Architecture
- 26. Art style “what ifs” - Animation
- 31. Conclusions ● Game art and animation were remarkably effective tools for gaining in-depth knowledge of an artist’s work ● Elements influenced by McCay or which subverted McCay could be integrated seamlessly to diversify his world (visually and socially) ● Critically/commercially successful ○ Multiple awards/festival appearances ○ > 81K raised on Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sources for development ○ Audience/community interest ○ Press!
- 32. Conclusions ● Questions for future practitioners: 1. When creating critical, “serious”, or transformational games, can your art or audio assets contribute to the game’s critical language or rhetorical systems? 2. When making certain types of critical or “serious” games, have art styles, settings, or soundscapes been shown to positively or negatively affect a player’s understanding of the critical elements within that style of game? 3. How will or are contributing artists integrated into the team – are they contributing to the planning of the game itself (internal or senior member), or are they hired to provide illustration (external or junior member)? 4. What values do the game art or audio assets represent or contribute within the game?
- 33. Thank you! (any questions?) ● E-mail: ○ chris@teamnemo.com ○ ctotten@kent.edu ● Twitter: ○ @Totter87 ○ @PFBStudios ● Website: ○ www.LittleNemoGame.com
Editor's Notes
- So first of all, who am I?
- I’m here to talk about the artwork production of our award-winning indie game, Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends, and how it uses game art production as a means of critical investigation.
- The game is based on the groundbreaking comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, first published by comics and animation pioneer Winsor McCay in 1905. We’re drawing heavily from McCay’s original work with an art style based on the original comics, hand-drawn keyframed animation, and characters and settings from the originals.
- Before I get into this process, I want to talk a bit about WHY we chose to adapt this artist’s work in particular, and what opportunities it affords the study of games.
- First of all, Winsor McCay was a newspaper cartoonist and animator active in the early part of the 20th century. While not inventing many of the forms he worked in, he is seen as the first genius of them, creating works whose grandeur and impact would not be replicated until years after his death.
- McCay came into his chosen art forms when they were in their relative infancy. McCay not only worked in these art forms, but began innovating within them relatively quickly. His comics were beautifully drawn in an art nouveau style, and incorporated metatextual elements and experimented with features like frame layouts and color.
- In the early 1910’s McCay began experimenting with animation. His first film, based on his Little Nemo characters, stood out not only in the detail of the drawings compared to other early animations, but also in the believability of the characters’ movements and their personalities. His third film, 1914’s Gertie the Dinosaur, is his most influential due to elements of the animation giving Gertie a sense of personality and life no other animated character had yet shown.
- These works would inspire the generation who would go on to codify many standard practices in animation, such as the Walt Disney animators who conceived of the 12 Principles of Animation.
- His fantasy dream worlds have inspired the likes of French comics artist Jean Girard (Moebius), Maurice Sendak, and Bill Watterson.
- His imagery also recurs throughout contemporary pop culture. Scenes from his original run of Little Nemo comics appear frequently throughout the 20th century and today.
- There are, of course, also direct adaptations that continue to be made, such as cartoons, classic video games, comics, and an upcoming film on Netflix.
- With such a foundational body of work, McCay is still ripe for not only adaptation, but scholarly investigation.
- This is already happening in more traditional forms in the field of comics studies, but as a game designer and animator, I’m also interested in whether McCay offers opportunities to investigate the work of an artist and its context through actual art production. Topics of inquiry include examining McCay’s intertextuality with both his contemporaries and works that he influenced, and addressing the problematic attitudes of his works through subversion.
- In art, recreating or remixing art by previous artists, especially those whose work is in the public domain, is not only a known practice, but a common one. The art creation process is seen as a means through which artists can intimately examine other works, and also use them to make new arguments or critiques.
- Likewise, animation itself hinges on its critical elements. The methodologies now standard in animation exist to build nuance and believability into characters’ performances. By incorporating new principles into old styles of animation, these styles can be reclaimed or critically dissected. Artists like Hayao Miyazaki are even known to use animation as a tool to consider other perspectives on the world.
- Game art can also become a critical with the proper perspective. In my own previous work, I’ve spoken about two methods of critical understanding for games. A common one in scholarly areas is single work theory, where games are considered an instrument for social understanding or change. Models analyzing games in this way focus on games’ interactivity as their defining feature. What if we were willing to see games not only as single interactive objects, but as collections of artworks that form critical networks? This is the mindset behind collected work theory, which represents the views on games demonstrated by fans and members of the industry.
- To stick on this idea of collected work theory: the question becomes how to view games not only as singular texts, but also appreciate the craft of individual elements like the artworks within the game, the architectural level spaces, the musical compositions, and others. This view not only gives us new possibilities for analyzing games themselves, but also allows us to foster connections between games and other fields within the cultural landscape, such as visual art, music, architecture, and more.
- This slide is based on one from Wednesday’s panel on using games and books as paired texts, but by approaching the art, animation, architecture, and music of games as relevant elements of meaningful games, we can find aesthetic or thematic pairings with lots of texts, works of art, or other media forms.
- There are already games developed with this mindset in smaller art-game circles, but can approaches like this sustain larger commercial projects?
- These are the factors at play as we develop the artwork and animation of Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends.
- Part of our approach to examining McCay is recreating elements of his art style, such as his “Art Nouveau line”, a term used by McCay’s biographer John Canemaker to describe the thick outline McCay put on foreground elements in his comic panels.
- Recreating parts of the original artist’s style is critical for investigating how their work might be in conversation with works that came after. While this is easy to manage on small-scale individual projects, games of this ambition often involve outsourcing to artists who may not be deeply enmeshed in the research aims of the project, so we’ve also standardized elements of McCay’s style into things like shaders.
- Beyond mechanical reproduction, we’re also doing several “what ifs” with our art to explore McCay in the context of both works that influenced him, but also work that came after. It’s well known, for example, that McCay’s Slumberland is heavily influenced by the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, an example of Beaux Arts architecture.
- But what if McCay knew about other contemporaries, such as Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi? (Here’s a picture of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona from 1905 when Nemo was first published.) What would happen if Slumberland were also built from Gaudi’s amazing architectural language?
- Or what if McCay had access to animation practices that came after him like the 12 Principles of Animation, which were only just starting to develop when he passed away in 1934? Our version of characters like Bosco the Dragon use many of these principles in their motion.
- We’re also exploring what would happen if McCay’s Slumberland were touched by other McCay-influenced artists. Moebius drew many surreal dreamscapes and in fact, did concept art for the 1989 Little Nemo film by TMS. Some of that flavor has made its way into our backdrops to create a blend of McCay and artists who came after him.
- Another artist who worked on the TMS Nemo film was Hayao Miyazaki. While his experience on the film was much less pleasant, much of his work he did for Nemo that was not integrated into the final film became elements of the film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, an integral work in the formation of Studio Ghibli.
- We’re particularly proud of this shot, which incorporates elements influenced by McCay, Moebius, and Gaudi directly in one screen’s space.
- Finally the, public domain status of many of McCay’s works also let us critically reinvent them to address things like McCay’s racism. McCay’s original work features many troubling stereotypes of non-white people, including a racist character that was one of Nemo’s travel companions. Later adaptations usually gloss over this character with an animal friend, but for our game, we hired a POC artist to create a new character named Peony, who has much more agency than characters that came before.
- That’s only a brief overview, but if you’d like to see more, I look forward to talking with everyone. Here’s also info on how you can reach me or check out the game! Thank you!