MAGFest 2015: Is game art art - game art's parallel's in art history.
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In this presentation for MAGFest 2015, I explore game art's current trends in relation to trends in the history of art. I then explore what opportunities lie in the breaking away of these styles for developing new visual interest in games.
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MAGFest 2015: Is game art art - game art's parallel's in art history.
- 1. Is game art art? Christopher Totten MAGFest MAGES 2015
- 2. Introductions Game Artist in Residence – American University Author: An Architectural Approach to Level Design (CRC Press 2014) and Game Character Creation in Blender and Unity (Wiley 2012) Chair – International Game Developers Association (IGDA DC) Founder – Pie For Breakfast Studios
- 7. genre
- 10. genre History painting – Religious, historic, or allegorical topics Portrait painting Genre painting – scenes of everyday life Landscape Animal painting Still life
- 11. genre History painting – Religious, historic, or allegorical topics Karl Bryullov, The Last Day of Pompeii, 1827-1833, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
- 12. Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans, 1849-1850, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
- 15. Diablo III wallpaper, Found on diablo3sanctuary.com
- 16. Jesse van Dijk, Concept art for Destiny, 2014, Found on Kotaku Australia “Fine Art”
- 17. Left: Andy Park Concept art for God of War III, 2010 Right: Screenshot from God of War III
- 23. Left: Gomez sprite from Fez, 2012 Right: The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer by William Morris’s Kelmscott press, 1896
- 26. 20121985
- 29. Dominique Pamplemousse, Dierdre “Squinky” Kai, 2014. Steam and mobile game created with clay, paper, and cardboard
- 30. The Empty Kingdom, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, 2013. “Hypercomic” game on Kongregate
- 32. Left: Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, El Lissitzky, 1920 – lithographic propaganda poster Right: Lissitzky’s Revenge, Chris Totten, 2015 – paper cutouts in the Construct 2 game engine
- 34. Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure, Ryan Creighton (age 33) and Cassie Creighton (age 5), 2011, Flash game with scanned crayon art
Editor's Notes
- I have a confession to make as the person who came up with the title of this panel discussion. To me, the question of whether game art is art is a bit of a difficult one. It highly depends on what your own personal definition of “art” is.
- This is what made the fallout of Roger Ebert’s arguments that games cannot be art so difficult to parse, because the idea of “art” itself is difficult to define. We just have to say whether we believe or don’t believe something is or is not art.
- So let’s assume that game art IS, in fact, art.
- The question is, what KIND of art is it?
- In art history, there is the notion of “genre.” Today, we think of genres mainly in their literary or film contexts as they relate to the type of information the piece is transmitting or the type of story being told.
- Today, we think of genres mainly in their literary or film contexts as they relate to the type of information the piece is transmitting or the type of story being told.
- In games, we think about the format of the game: 2D, 3D, First Person, etc.; or the game mechanics – platformer, adventure, role playing and so on.
- Between the 17th and 19th centuries, during the “academic art” period in France, art was strictly organized into a hierarchy of genres. These genres were separated not by style, but by topic of a painting, and had strict rules for how one could create art in each genre.
- Looking particularly at history painting, these were the paintings for which you could use monumental canvas sizes, nudes, and non-static topics. To have any of these elements in genres lower on the hierarchy was considered controversial. You could also only gain exposure as an artist under this tradition if you exhibited in official academy events.
- Gustave Courbet challenged this tradition by painting the funeral of his commoner uncle – a scene traditionally utilized for “genre” paintings – at roughly 24’ x 10’. This painting is indicative of the “realism” movement that celebrated common events with realistically rendered art works.
- Courbet and other artists’ breaking with the hierarchical form opened the doors for artists to explore other subject matter and techniques in painting, resulting in a plethora of styles and even entire art movements – Impressionism, Pointillism, Fauvism, Art Nouveau, Modernism, Cubism, Surrealism, Pop Art, and others.
- So what does all this have to do with video games?
- In modern popular video games, it’s common to depict scenes of epic setting or scale. Many big-industry commercial games, AAA games, utilize exhilaration a means to elicit “fun.” In many ways, they are like the history paintings highly valued by the academy art movement.
- Unlike history paintings, these pieces of art can vary in subject. Some eye-candy or mood-setting pieces of concept art show epic scenes just as The Last Day of Pompeii or the myriad of history paintings derived from the Bible did. Others conceptualize landscapes and close-ups of characters, depending on the production needs of the game.
- Regardless, these works are painted at very high resolutions to photorealistic standards and reinterpreted within games as scenes that best utilize the power of modern consoles while exciting the player.
- One can even argue that AAA studios function much like the French academy scene – reinforcing these standards and controlling an artist’s ability to “get into games.”
- But by observing these trends in the art of popular games we can find parallels in the history of art and theorize where games may go next visually.
- Now, I know what you’re thinking…
- What about pixel art Chris? (Well, what about him?)
- In a Digital Games Research Association Conference paper by scholar Jesper Juul titled High Tech, Low Tech Authenticity: The Creation of Independent Style at the Independent Games Festival, Juul explores the art history of winning games at the Independent Games Festival.
- By observing the transition from AAA-like 3D games to retro pixel art, he contends that pixel art has become for many designers, a sort of return to the roots of video game graphics. An effort to recreate the authenticity of the game medium much as the Arts and Crafts movement of the 19th century created hand-made objects as a rebellion against the Industrial Revolution.
- Pixel art also has advantages: not only can it be very beautiful, it can also be accomplished in a very short amount of time. For many it is ideal for game jams and other quick game-making events. It also has a much lower barrier of entry for people who are otherwise “not the artistic type.”
- The downsides of pixel art, however, are that now it’s EVERYWHERE…
- …and that it is not much different from how games looked decades ago. In many ways, it’s become just another “way video games are supposed to look.”
- So if we can argue that we’re currently stuck in a few heavily enforce art styles for game art, what’s next? How do we get there?
- An important engine for experimentations in art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were places like Le Chat Noir. Much more than popular poster in college dorm rooms for kids that want to look sophisticated, it was a nightclub and meeting place for Toulouse-Lautrec and others in the Art Nouveau movement. Online indie communities and local game dev meetups work very similarly – allowing devs to share their work and develop their styles.
- Observable trends also point to the ability to digitize real-world art as a potential method for creating new forms of game art. Last year, games like Squinky Kai’s Dominique Pamplemousse made waves with its art – created with real-world clay figures and craft materials.
- Likewise, designer and comic scholar Daniel Merlin Goodbrey is exploring the intersections between comics and games by creating “Hypercomic” games, which utilize the storytelling mechanics of comic strips.
- Being a developer myself, I’m looking to see how such methods can be integrated into production pipelines. Are they faster? What kind of look or novelty do they generate? One such exploration was a game called Zup!, which is now available on the iOS and Android app stores. Foam core cutouts, cotton ball clouds, and a scanner created not only a novel art style, but also an entire game’s worth of character, environment, and UI art in under a week.
- Likewise, I am undertaking a project called Atelier Games, named after the method of learning art by studying under renowned masters. The first in this series is a single and multiplayer action game that explores mechanics and themes apparent in the work of Russian Suprematist artist El Lissitzky and utilizing the game mechanics of Yar’s Revenge, titled Lissitzky’s Revenge.
- Other works in the series will explore the art of Rene Magritte, Clyde Singer, Ladislav Sutnar, and others.
- In conclusion, if we see parallels between the established techniques of game art and certain periods of art history, we can find opportunities not only to explore next steps, but also to include more people in the art of game making. With our modern ability to digitize easily created real-world art, we can open the doors to new artists to express themselves through video games.