So I really appreciate you being here.
My name’s Georgina Goodlander, I’m the exhibition coordinator for the Art of Video Games here.
This is actually our last public program in connection with that exhibition, so it’s a sad moment
for us here at the museum and the exhibition closes at the end of this month.
Just a couple of housekeeping, if you could turn off your cell phones.
We are webcasting, so when we do the Q&A at the end, if you could use the microphones at the sides, that would be great,
and Chris is going to do a book signing after the talk, just out in the auditorium lobby, and we’ll have the books available there, too, so I hope you can stay for that.
We’d like to extend a big thank you to Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council, who have generously supported this program and allowed Chris to be here today.
Chris Solarski is an artist-game designer and author of “Drawing Basics and Video Game Art:
Classic to Cutting-Edge Art Techniques for Winning Video Game Design.”
He’s interested in classical art and design theory, and how video game interaction has changed the way in which we interpret and engage with images.
His particular focus is on iconography and primary shapes, and their ability to convey complex emotions.
He received a BA in computer animation, and began working as a 3D character and environment artist for Sony Computer Entertainment in London.
Eventually, he enrolled in art classes at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts,
where his interests in applying classical art techniques to video games began.
He currently develops his own video games under Solarski Studio,
with the aim of exploring new forms of player interaction
and creating more expressive and varied emotional experiences in games.
He also works as art director at Gbanga, a location-based gaming startup in Zurich, Switzerland, so please join me in welcoming Chris Solarski to the stage.
[Applause]
Okay, thank you very much, and hello everyone. It’s an honor to be here, a part of “Art of Video Games” exhibition.
I have quite a big presentation to give to you today,
but I would like to thank a few people for this event and for those who actually
contributed to my book, “Drawing Basics and Video Game Arts,” and one
firstly, of course, the program team here, so Laurel Farenbauch, and Georgina Goodlander,
also the Swiss Arts Council have been very generous with their support.
My editor, Martha Moran, and the team at Watson-Guptill, for their ongoing
time and energy that they’ve invested into the book.
Mattias Sala, for kindly giving me time off from my duties at Gbanga, whenever important deadlines came up,
including this tour in the US that I’m currently doing, and my wife, Edith, who endured a year of my virtual absence as I was
very much buried, buried myself in my work whilst I was writing.
And my presentation is about exploring visual links between
classical art and video games, and why this is important.
Well, it’s because by better understanding video games place in the history of arts,
we automatically increase our creative scope and sources of inspiration
and we also have the potential to learn significant lessons from the old masters
to help us create more expressive and meaningful experiences in games.
Why this is particularly interesting to me is because I originally started off doing computer animation course at Portsmouth,
and after I graduated,
I started working at
Sony Computer Entertainment, sort of as a digital artist,
but then I realized that the job I really want in video game development is that of a concept artist, so the person who gets to visualize
the visual style and the look of a game before any actual production takes place in terms of
3D assets, and the sort of technical implementation of the video game.
So what I did was I started doing part-time courses
in painting, traditional painting, from a very good portrait artist in London,
but I quickly realized that this, even this isn’t enough, that if I want to reach the level
of the typical concept artist, and that it, and concept artists are generally
very classically trained, they have a very strong drawing and traditional training backgrounds.
So what I realized that I have to actually quit my job, which I did, at Sony,
went to Poland, where my family is originally from,
and studied sort of did a lot of life drawing and life painting, for the next two years.
I eventually ended up in Switzerland, where on one side I was working for Gbanga, which is a location-based gaming startup for my Pol friends.
And Solarski Studio, which was, for a long time, I was focusing on portrait painting.
That’s what I really, really wanted to do, and Gbanga was something that I did sort of more to earn money, but it's sort of the,
one was on the digital side, the other was in a traditional side,
and I kept these two disciplines very, very separate,
and that was until
Game Culture invited me to, which is sort of a program organized the Swiss Arts Council, they invited me to give a talk
about classical arts and video games.
And this is the first time I started to actually think what are the connections between these two disciplines,
and I started to realize there are actually a lot of
things that we can learn and that are really not commonly used in video games, which can be a very much
benefit to us as game designers,
and that eventually led to my book, which I spent the last year working very hard to complete,
and the book really covers everything from the fundamentals
of drawing and the human figure, including anatomy, sort of quite advanced anatomical concepts for
art, elements of design, character design, environment design,
but the running theme is emotions.
Something that we can apply to every artistic discipline, so emotions in terms of
the artist’s desire to express emotions to an audience, the sort of driving force of every artistic endeavor.
And what i’d like to focus on today, in particular, is composition, because the
scope of the book is very broad, so I’d like to just focus on one particular concept, and that’s composition.
But before I do, it’s just as important to highlight sort of the basic similarities between
classical mediums and video games, because
if we look at the mediums on which the artworks are displayed,
and look at them sort of from an angle, so in a very abstract sense, then,
the canvas, and the piece of paper, and the video screen, they’re all
very similar in terms that they’re all static,
2-dimensional, sort of lifeless surfaces,
and in every instance, whether you’re an old master or a contemporary video game designer,
it’s the artist’s job to create this illusion of depth and this illusion of life.
One thing that the old masters didn’t have that we have as game designers can take advantage of, is of course, this
animation, and all these special effects which add,
make this illusion much easier to create,
but it’s interesting for us to actually look at classical art
to better understand how they managed to create these illusions with,
sometimes, just a pencil and a piece of paper.
And when we begin to look at
how the artwork is actually constructed, then an excellent example, on the left is a preparatory sketch by Luca Cambiaso,
a sort of Italian master,
and this so well illustrates the conceptual approach
that the old masters would use to understand the figure
because reality is so complicated
and that without abstracting realities, without abstracting a figure or a landscape
to just very, very simple components in terms of boxes, spheres, everything can be reduced to these very,
these very simple abstract volumes and shapes,
then they would have a very, well, an impossible time to transfer reality onto the piece of paper or canvas.
And so, Luca Cambiaso’s sketches are very explicit
in terms of, so what the old masters, the techniques they used to conceptualize the figure,
but even artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo,
even though their concept sketches, their preparatory sketches may not be so explicit,
all of the old masters were trained in this approach, and so contemporary artists, figurative artists,
also reduce reality into these much simpler, more manageable volumes.
And what this meant was that Luca Cambiaso could actually create these compositions from his imagination,
because once he know what the general proportions of the figure are, you’ve memorized them,
then sort of the box form, which is what he used to try and work out the composition,
is such a useful volume, because you can
then very, well he could then very easily sort of decide, okay, the light will be coming from the left,
which surfaces would be in light, which surfaces would be in shadow,
and he could sort of compose sort of this very complex images, which would be very difficult
to do, even if you had sort of digital photography today, so it would involve a lot of manipulation.
But in, in 3D terms, if we’re thinking, considering what the approach of video game design is, then
it is very similar, because in, with 3D software packages, we also
start with these very basic volumes,
and then it’s the artist who stretches, cuts and pulls, and manipulates these very basic volumes
and turns them into sort of recognizable figures and characters.
The next stage where these very, very basic shapes go
is sort of the, where the finish, where the sort of identity of the characters is developed.
Colors, textures, the setting are added.
But what’s interesting to note is that when it comes to emotions, how we communicate emotions, or how does the artist engineer
emotions, is not sort of located at this very finished stage, it’s actually at this very base level
where emotions are really engineered. So this is what we’ll explore now.
Okay, so I’m not sure if anybody has sort of studied classical art and sort of the techniques of classical composition,
because classical composition is...
The approach that classical artists use to construct their image.
So they would think of a topic,
so they would decide on maybe how many figures would be in the image,
and before any significant work went into the painting, they would actually try and manipulate
objects, elements within the painting
so that they fell upon these subliminal lines, these very hidden lines which the viewer was not supposed to
be fully aware of, but they’re very much incorporated into the image.
And so what we find is that
these are very, very powerful ways of communication, because
if we remove, if we scale down the image to this very, very small thumbnail,
so this may be easier to illustrate that
when we remove all sort of cultural iconography, the image is the elements which relate to the particular story
that Vermeer was referencing in this painting. So what are the strongest, the largest images, sort of the largest shapes and lines that you see within this painting?
What you find is that the composition by Vermeer was actually based on this very circular concept,
and so things like the, the primary figure’s right arm
leads onto this piece details on the floor, the
arm of this figure also carries this line,
and so nothing in this painting was placed sort of randomly.
Everything was engineered or designed by the artist
to create, to reinforce this concept and sort of this circular motif.
So this is very, very important to understand this.
Okay, so we go from a painting, which is very delicate in nature, to one which is much more aggressive in theme.
So what you find is this concept of classical composition is applied, so it’s a different artist, this is a painting by Rubens,
so if you just look through all the detail, and for us,
maybe the majority of us may not be aware of the story that it references,
sort of any cultural iconography that’s hidden within the painting,
so what are the dominant themes when it comes to classical composition, which, upon which this painting is based, and what we find is that,
whereas the Vermeer painting was based on a circular concept,
the dominant shapes within this are two colliding triangles.
And Rubens was such a master at drawing the figure
and sort of really constructing these images so well that
we’ll find many more lines within this sort of composition, although the two dominant triangles are the primary shapes,
but there are plenty more that sort of, around the corners, to keep your eye
locked in the image,
but it’s also sort of interesting to note that he even placed the majority of the female figures in the top bottom left triangle,
the majority of the male figures in the top right,
and so there is very, very strong collision between the two sides.
So, what we find is that it’s not actually the details, the sort of very small details which
communicate the emotions.
It’s actually the composition, these larger shapes, because if I could just ask you to try and imagine
swapping the compositional concepts of one image, the circular
concept of Vermeer and transpose it to the Rubens, and vice versa,
so that the emotional message that each artist wanted to communicate,
would be entirely lost.
So it’s really the composition over details
which are the strongest in communicating emotions,
because even if we look at small details, like the plant in the Vermeer painting, or the sword in the Rubens, then in a very abstract sense,
these are very, very similar, so it’s really sort of the more dominant, the larger shapes
which are sort of communicating the emotions.
And this concept isn’t something that’s just relevant to the Renaissance or the paintings of that time,
because, even if we look at a Degas painting,
sort of a drawing, we find that there is a continuity, so it’s something that has continued
throughout art history
because Degas was historically placed in a very, very interesting time, because he,
he was at a transition between the classical approach to art and a very modern one,
and the reason why this is, is because he lived at a time when the camera became very, very commonplace, sort of the photographic camera,
and so although he was trained classically
and sort of his master Ingres, who he very much looked up to,
told him to study line and just like we saw, and the compositions of Rubens and Vermeer,
so he was very much aware of this line approach to composition and the value of the classical training.
What Degas found very interesting was how the photographic camera
registered reality,
and so although line and volumes were used sort of for hundreds of years and before Degas arrived,
what he started to do was sort of
start to compose his images in terms of light and shadow shapes, just like the photographic camera registers reality.
So, Degas and the impressionists, which is the art movement he belonged to,
they were actually ridiculed so their, a lot of people said the feeling at the time was that this was not art,
and that they were just childish drawings,
but if we actually consider what he’s actually done in this drawing is that,
and we had the circular concept of the Vermeer painting, and the triangular angular concept of the Rubens,
so what that these lines have turned into in Degas’ drawing, are a circular shape
and a triangular shape.
So it’s just like it’s an evolution of these from lines to shapes, which happen at this time.
And sort of this was interesting about
sort of the emotional impact that these actually shapes give us,
is that even though we can’t see
any sort of very little of the faces of each of the characters, each of the characters featured in this drawing,
there’s still a very strong emotional tension between the two, heightened by the fact that
one is white, the other black, and also
the two figures are positioned slightly off to the left,
also adds a stronger tension, but it’s very interesting how simple this image is.
And, even more abstract, so this Kandinsky’s work,
and he was very, very much interested in this concept of this, these very, very basic shapes, and so he even removed sort of references to reality altogether, and just
composed his paintings just using these very, very primitive shapes,
and so what he wrote was in his book, “Point and Line to Plane,” was the phenomena which seemed to be fundamentally different on the surface,
and completely separate from each other, derived from one single root, so he was really describing these circles and triangles and squares.
Something else which Kandinsky says which applies to all of the images that we’ve looked at is that,
that of composition, and he sort of stressed this by saying that the content of a work
of art finds its expression in the composition,
in the sum of the tensions inwardly organized for the work.
Okay, so, but this is something which is very, very important for game design,
but it’s been very difficult for us to understand how could we possibly
transfer these concepts of classical composition to video games
when the player is in full control and in most cases, of where they look, where they move.
Because we have this, and it’s a very significant challenge, and I’d like to use “Journey” as an example, because,
sort of, how a game is constructed, how the visuals are constructed, is, we can start with color to set the mood.
We start at the backgrounds, middle ground, foreground, just like in any landscape drawing or painting.
And then we add a goal for the player,
some obstacles which are the basic components of every narrative,
so we have everything we need to tell a story
to ask the player, “you need to go there, you need to overcome these obstacles,”
and then we place the player in the environment,
and this is where the problem occurs in terms of composition, because
with a painting, sort of a Renaissance artist would have painted something, sort of fixed the composition, several hundred years ago,
and every person visiting the museum will experience this composition in exactly the same way.
Whereas with video games, we ask the player to stand in one position within the environment,
and all they have to do is turn the camera,
look around, and realize there’s players, much more interesting to interact with.
And so this, so this idea of composition having a fixed
image, an arrangement of elements within an image which are there to create a specific emotion,
this concept is completely lost because, just because of this
problem that the player has control over where they can look,
where they can go.
So what we have to do is just
rethink sort of what are
the, so what are the actual basic elements that we’re dealing with, because,
as I’ve demonstrated, it’s really just lines, shapes, and volumes, which are communicating these emotions,
and there’s nothing in the definition of composition which suggests that these elements have to be static.
So what we have to do is just sort of, in a way,
take this painting, very valuable painting, off the museum wall,
and consider it as something laying down on the ground,
as something that, rather than having, sort of thinking of these lines and volumes and shapes,
as things we can just look at in a static sense,
just we can think of them as pathways among which we can travel in a 3D environment.
So an excellent example of this is “Gears of War”
by Epic Games,
and so what they--and this is just a multiplayer map, so top down view just like you would see a treasure map--
in the top left we have the logo of “Gears of War,”
and one thing to note, of course, is that it’s very interesting that they’ve
kind of identified, this is the sort of the icon, the DNA of the video game, sort of a skull,
and they use this very often in their multiplayer maps, to reuse this
visual iconography within the environments,
but with video games, of course, this is not something that’s necessary that we're just there to look at.
With video games and these lines actually represent pathways which we can actually experience as a 3D, in a 3D environment.
So, if this was a painting, this is as far as we would go.
I would travel around the image, imagining
so there won’t maybe subliminally being guided around these environments, and it’s up to us just to consider what we could do
to explore, but in a video game, these angular lines,
which reference the Rubens painting, the angularity of the Rubens composition,
these actually become environments that we can move through.
And this is very, very significant because it doesn't matter where the player looks,
or moves,
these elements, these line elements
along the pathways along which the player moves are there, are a constant throughout the whole video game.
And also, the character movement. So this was an introduction to level design.
Also the character movement is very, very important, because
in a game like “Journey,”
when the player presses the jump button,
what happens is you have a very, very delicate animation so the character jumps very delicately across the screen.
And unlike “Gears of War,” which has a very different emotional message,
which the designers wanted the players to feel,
in “Journey,” it’s a really beautiful sense of freedom that you get,
and if you use this drawing metaphor,
to apply the animation concept, to apply to animation concept,
what we have is more of an open canvas in Journey, where the player can really draw their way around the environment, using very, very gentle lines
which in some way, in a very strong sense, reference the Vermeer painting.
And now if we sort of contrast
“Journey” with “Vanquish,” which has a completely different emotional feeling to “Journey.”
So what happens in “Vanquish” is that the character moves, zips around the environment, very fast and very angular, sort of, very angular animation,
and so what we have here is really this contrast between the Vermeer and the Rubens painting, so these
concepts sort of can be directly applied if we just remember that,
so we’re thinking on a very abstract level.
And I showed you in a previous slide that this open canvas that “Journey” employs to create this sense of freedom,
in “Vanquish,” the pathways or the possibilities for movement are much more restricted.
And so they create something much more claustrophobic, and sort of more possibilities for
collisions and also the player has to constantly choose and reevaluate new pathways through the environment.
Even in games like “Grand Theft Auto,” this is applicable to
sort of every artistic discipline even, so even if you’re thinking, you work in, up in space planning.
Now how do people move through an environment. So it’s
individuals walking around a city are free to go where they want,
and this is illustrated in this example of “Grand Theft Auto,”
I haven’t got videos of these video games, so I have to ask you to imagine
what it’s like to drive around a very slow bend
in the environment versus pulling the handbrake and skidding around a very, very tight corner.
Now these are very, sort of, strong emotions, but they contrast each other just like the Vermeer
and the Rubens painting in terms of the emotional
feelings that we feel, playing in these environments.
And because we have this, these circular, rounded forms on one side,
more angular forms on the other side, and what comes in between are sort of the vertical and horizontal lines, or the square.
And traditionally, these were used to create something
more static, stronger, something that sort of is
very lasting. And in a fantastic game “Superbrothers: Swords & Sorcery EP” for the iPhone,
the feeling of this video game is very delicate and very quiet.
And the character moves through these environments in a way which is sort of very much related to the square concept, or these vertical lines as well.
The character either moves horizontally or up, and down,
and if I could just ask you to imagine how the environment would look if we actually skewed
these trees to one side,
what we’d find is they would be a chevron effect through the environment, and it would completely change the emotional feeling,
even if the character continued to move in a very slow way.
Just the backgrounds alone, shifting this element
would automatically influence the emotions of the player in a different way.
Another thing we have to consider is the relationship between the character
and the environment, and so what this very abstract image represents is
the character as the purple shape, so the purple circle in the foreground,
and the background represents the environment.
One great example of how this
circular character in a circular environment come together is in Mario.
A very fantastic example. Nintendo is very, very good at this.
Because if we look at how Mario is constructed, then everything about him is based on the circular concept,
or the spherical concept, all these shapes and lines are very much connected, and volumes as well,
so his very spherical body, his nose,
even his mustache is sort of constructed on two overlapping circles with smaller
sub-circles, and this is so important in communicating
Mario’s character, sort of his energetic and good-natured character,
because if,
if Mario wasn’t so circular and so spherical, he would be Wario.
So these basic, these very, very abstract shapes
are so important in communicating emotions.
In Wario, of course, has maybe eaten a few more cakes, but fundamentally, it’s just
pulling out and sharpening different elements which automatically creates a much more aggressive looking character.
And this is applicable to the majority of the characters in the Mario franchise,
sort of Bowser and the Goomba characters
also fit in line with these two contrasts of how these emotions are communicated,
so how we respond to each of the characters.
So going back to this concept of the character in its environment, what we have here, conceptually,
is that Mario lives in the round, spherical Mario lives in a round, spherical world,
and his job is to clear it of triangular shapes and restore a sense of harmony
to his, to his world.
And, and this is exactly what we have, if you think of a circular character in a circular environment,
then there is a sense of harmony that the character looks like it belongs.
And the interesting thing is that if we have a triangular character in a triangular environment,
we also have a sense of harmony, even though the shapes are very different,
it’s the relationship between the character environments which is very important.
We also have sort of a sense of dissonance
if we place the circular character in a triangular environment, then,
in this case, sort of it’s the circular character looks threatened,
whereas if you place a triangular in a circular environment, bottom left,
we, it’s something that the character looks like the aggressor in that environment.
Okay, and this is something which a game you’ll find on my website is a very simple
experiment that I created that you can play in a web browser,
and it plays with this very concept that you play through two levels
which are technically identical, but
you can’t die, you can’t, your character can’t lose energy,
what changes is just the skin, the surface detail.
One, the first level is very rounded, and the second one is very triangular,
and I had the opportunity to present this at an art exhibition where a many visitors who
either had never played a video game before, or rare played,
and what was very interesting was that they were very free, sort of, in the first level, so the one in the bottom right, which is
very rounded, they didn’t feel threatened,
but when they played the second level and would accidentally land in, within the sharp areas,
even though nothing could happen to them, this is just an illusion that we’re creating,
and they would use words like, “ouch,”
which we take from, which we use in reality sort of when we hurt ourselves,
and so this is very, very powerful tool that we can use to design the emotional experience.
So what does this mean for the future of video games?
And of course I’m, just to reiterate, that I am just highlighting one concept within the book,
very much to do with shapes and composition,
but what does this mean for future video game in terms of these design theories?
And so what we have, so in terms of narrative and character development,
just to consider how
video games have dealt with character development, and in most cases, up until now,
is in this way, so, and I’ve picked “Zelda,”
not because I want to criticize it, this is still actually the “Ocarina of Time” is still one of my favorite games of all time,
but it is a typical example of character development, and if you don’t play video games,
then the character development doesn’t happen
so much with the character, it happens in the user interface, so
Link, the main character’s got three hearts here,
a lot more, sort of, just
how many weapons Link has,
and so this is, this suspension of disbelief is very important for you to
really identify with the character’s growth, and you grow as a player as you go through, progress through the game, because your,
you become more skilled at using the weaponry, navigating the environments,
but
because the character doesn’t really change
so much, so the animations when the character is standing, when the character’s moving, from start to finish, they, they more or less stay the same,
and this is applicable to the majority of video games.
So, in a...
In a sense,
video games have conceptually stayed, sort of using this concept,
or a very, very similar to paintings in a sense, that an artist paints a character,
and that character is frozen in time, they are reduced to that role,
whether we look at that painting a hundred years later or a thousand years later.
And our video game characters are the same, they don’t really change after this one role that we assign them.
And so, just like Eugene Delacroix, sort of an artist who
very much inspired the impressionists,
you know, he wrote that “there may be ten different people in one man, and sometimes all ten
appear within a single hour,” and that’s of course referring to the complexity
of people, so we’re never one personality. Sort of a good narrative,
if we’re talking about film, sort of books,
depends on a character’s growth, that’s what we enjoy about all the other mediums, storytelling mediums.
And so, all we have to do is just,
you know, we, conceptually, we can see how one
video game communicates emotion, a specific type of emotion versus another,
you know, why don’t we start to combine these abstract elements into something which is much more dynamic?
So really putting more emphasis on change
using these very abstract elements, and of course it’s important to understand
how the different emotions are generated in each game for us to successfully do this.
And there are games that do this already, and “Journey”
is, I think, the most used example in my book, because it is a fantastic game,
and very, in a very subtle way,
you go from the beginning of the game where the character is much freer, sort of jumps much higher,
to later stages in the game where the characters reach near the top of the mountain and struggle against the wind and the forces.
But even here, so there’s still some room, I’m curious, haven’t had the opportunity to ask the designers of "Journey,"
there are sort of dangerous elements within the game, so all give you a sense of danger.
But the animations stay similar to the earlier ones, that there is,
I was wondering whether they would be possibilities to have an animation which
looked more timid or vulnerable.
Also, what about the player? The player’s role, because we’re very much focused on what happens on screen,
or I have focused very much on what happens on screen,
and with motion controllers, there are amazing possibilities that were not open to us just a few years ago.
Including the Xbox motion controller, and the Nintendo, Playstation, they all have this, and of course
iPads and touch screens as well, have
changed the way, have changed the way in which we interact with these environments.
And so, never before has the role of the player been so closely to that of the artist themselves that,
in a way, this is a very strong artistic collaboration between the game designer
and the user, so the person who’s viewing, but it’s up to the player to press the right buttons
and jump when they want, and actually execute all these artistic design concepts that the artist thought of.
And one example, sort of to keep this,
sort of connect this
concept of player movement with the original two examples of the Vermeer and Rubens painting,
what we had was that Vermeer was very much based on a circular concept,
the Rubens on a much more angular one,
and in “Mario Kart,” we have generally much more softer handling, so you can sort of turn around corners much softer,
and I’ll give you a flimsy, sort of demonstration.
It’s much softer like this.
What the player actually has to do, sort of using the motion controller, because it’s, it becomes a physical movement, which can influence the handling of the car,
and if you contrast this with “Tron: Evolution,” also for the Wii,
then it’s much more angular, sort of the car--the vehicles move in a much more, sort of faster and angular movement and so
this, not only looks different on the screen, but actually feels different to the player.
And so,
you know, we, because we are thinking on these very, very abstract, on a very abstract level, which is how artists, as I said, reduce
reality to very abstract elements because reality is so complex and
what we can do with this abstraction is
analyze all the paintings, deconstruct them, and try to
get inspiration from them, so when we’re thinking of an, on an abstract level, then everything
is open to influence our artwork.
And so, Renoir was known for being, having a very, very gentle character,
and you can sort of see this in his delicate brush strokes, and how he sort of constructed his paintings.
And, on the other hand, we have an artist like Giacometti, who was a very, very nervous,
had a lot of sort of very, very different temperament, a very edgy character
to Renoir, and so in one sense we can deconstruct these images, and we could potentially turn them into video game environments, just based on the line quality
of the, of the charac--of the artwork,
but because of this concept of motion, sort of using motion controllers to influence the player,
we can actually get them to actually feel what it might have been like to be Renoir
or Giacometti, sort of what was their temperament while they were painting, so all of their physical motions.
And playing with the, the player’s expectations is one other thing that we can
use to design our characters and our video game experiences.
Because we have this scale of emotions, so to speak, that
characters, which are very, very rounded
tend to communicate a sense of youth, or dynamic energy, or innocence,
sort of the upright character, something much more stable and static,
and again characters which are angular are generally much more aggressive, and this is very, very useful for video game design because
video games often give you so little time to understand what you have to do, what you’re often,
in many cases, given a gun, enemies come towards you, and you have to pick out who’s the biggest threat,
so we’re, this, immediate action requires immediate communication.
But of course, the reality is much more complex than this,
and we can really sort of create much more interesting situations for the player to experience something unexpected.
And this is something, just this concept alone, of circular and triangular shapes,
isn’t just restricted to classical painting, or drawing, or video games, because even in films like
“Lord of the Rings” and Tolkien actually designed, did drawings while he was writing his books,
which sort of talked about the roundness of the characters, of the hobbits,
their round hobbit holes and even the landscape
is very much rounded, so you know, everything about the hobbits is based on this round
concept which relates to their innocent character
and also the textures and colors of the fabrics and the environment
also compliment this emotional message. And of course, on the other emotional end of the spectrum, we have Sauron
with his triangular volcano, sort of triangular, spiky elements of his costume. Now these are,
if I can just ask you to try and imagine swapping these shapes over,
then the hobbits would instantly look very aggressive, even if they had some nice, friendly smiles on their faces,
the message is very much based on, is working on this very, very abstract level.
Also,
applicable to every artistic discipline, as I said. It doesn’t matter
if you work with furniture, if you work with space planning,
you know, what does it say, what does a circular shape say about the Volkswagen, that it’s a fun vehicle to drive around in.
On the end, a Lamborghini, much faster, more aggressive.
For all we know, none of these cars could have an engine, they could be engineless,
so we’d have to push them all along
to get them moving, but one looks definitely faster, that we would get it up to a much faster speed.
Another one, the Range Rover in the middle, looks much more heavier and more static, and it's just
the surface details, we do judge books by their cover.
And that’s why games like “Journey,” for example, are very interesting, because,
in general it’s a non-aggressive game that’s sort of about sort of the friendships that you make
with people that you’ll never get to meet, and you can’t actually talk to,
and so this non-aggression, in general, there are also dangerous aspects to the experience within the game.
The designers could have gone for very sugary, rounded character, and rounded environment,
but it creates an interesting contrast to this freedom of movement, this very soft animation,
that the environment
and character is more angular and you can see this concept of harmony as well, that the character looks like it belongs,
if we just analyze the abstract shapes of the image.
And GLaDOS as well, from “Portal” is just a fantastic example of character design.
This is a villain,
and villains of course, are usually male, very aggressive looking,
but a strong inspiration for
GLaDOS was actually something very much rooted in the Renaissance, and so I’m not sure if
you can maybe get an idea of who it was if I turn the image upside down.
Yes, yes.
So it’s just based, it is,
Venus, that sort of we have this circular clam shell,
and also, there are other concepts which relate to anatomy and the concept of movement, which are
a whole different topic covered in the book,
so we have the opposing curves, which give
the contrapose, this feeling of energy,
which are also incorporated into GLaDOS’ sort of structure, her body.
So, what we find is that
this character which is a villain,
but is very much based on this iconic image of beauty, the feminine beauty,
and so what the designers did, because they understood
abstraction, and sort of and they very much worked with the as the Renaissance artists did, using volumes, lines, or understanding images in this sense,
they’re, they were able to literally and metaphorically turn Venus, the concept of Venus’ feminine beauty on it’s head and apply it to create a very, very complex villain.
And so, just to finish, like what this sort of understanding the theory of composition,
also understanding how images, or how artists construct images, and how they interpret reality on this very, very abstract level,
is very important, because it enables us to
really look for inspiration in all artistic disciplines in reality as well, and
this is very much separate to
cultural icons, because cultural icons give another layer of emotional information for the player to react to, but
these very basic shapes are much more international, so they give a,
they communicate a much more universal level.
So when we design video games, so what’s important to just consider
is not, sort of what style the game is, what
is typical of that genre, it’s actually what’s the emotional experience
that we want players to have.
And so that’s the end of my presentation. You’re all very welcome to visit my website,
and of course, I’ve got a hashtag, #newgameart, it would be very interesting to have your feedback
and questions on these concepts. Well, we’ll have an opportunity to
take a few questions now.
Thank you.
[Applause]
And again, if you have a question, please could you just step up to one of the microphones.
Audience member off-screen: How many of you dudes are there in the world
that have looked at art at that depth, going back,
and now applying to video games. Are you, like, one in
five billion? Or are there more of you?
Solarski: Well, as far as I know, I’m sort of,
I’m, my book, I think is, well, it’s the first book to explore
the connections between classical art and video games,
and the interesting thing is that there are so many artists working in video games who had a traditional background,
who understand this instinctively,
and so when I talk about creating emotions in 3D environments,
it’s such an obvious thing, but it makes sense, it’s not something that we’ve
made a positive connection to before. And it was only because
I originally wrote an article about classical art and video games, and then was approached by Watson-Guptill to write the book
that I had the luxury of pondering for one year these concepts, and it was just because of that, that I
came to perhaps more solid conclusions that were always there, it was
and while I was writing as well, I came, I was
directed to Kandinsky’s book, “Point and Line to Plane,” and also I wanted to highlight
Maitland Graves, an artist-teacher wrote “The Art of Color and Design.”
He also very much, his book explores the common shapes that we see and his book was written before computers were around,
but he also looks at ballet, graphic design, and sort of using these very, very simple shapes
to communicate emotions.
Audience member: I enjoyed your lecture very much 
Solarski: Thank you.
A couple of things you said caused me to question whether you are applying quality,
the notion of quality in this new medium, the way it was traditionally applied for more conventional art forms.
One was, you said, "immediate action requires immediate communication,"
but in the past, so many of the great art forms have required, not
immediate communication, but long, sober reflection and digestion in order to really reach
the heights, unless you understand the nuances which don’t seem to be effectively presented through this kind of medium.
And then the second is, when you talk about the collaborative nature of this medium,
where the player is an active participant with the artist.
In the past, you had an artist, that particular pinnacle, and you’d have Guter, you’d have Beethoven,
and the viewer or the listener, would try to ascend to that pinnacle and work hard over time to do it,
but in this collaborative process, don’t you really dilute
the talents of the artist by making the player a participant, and kind of dumb down the art form that way?
Well, to answer the first question,
I think this, this, that’s why I wanted, I gave the example of the Vermeer painting, originally, that I scaled it down to a very small thumbnail,
and that was really to emphasize the fact that when we, how we understand our environment, how we respond to it,
is initially very, very quickly. We sort of decide whether something is a threat
or not in an instant.
And when we look at images, if you walk around the museum, it’s this first impression
which tells you whether it is a very delicate painting in terms of theme,
or something which is very, very aggressive,
and it’s these very big concepts. We don’t have time to register the details
and this is very important when it comes to 3D environments, this immediate response, that it must be very calculated
so that the player can understand the space, because they often, you don’t have time to sit there and take in
the information,
and with classical painting, you do have this, just like with every artwork, you have this other
level, so that this base one is very much psychological one, a very immediate response,
whereas these cultural icons,
which you know the Vermeer painting referenced, and the Rubens, which make,
to most of us, very little sense, you really have to be an art historian to understand
what the costumes related to, what the story was based on.
These are equally important, and we do use them in video game environments, but it’s
important to really understand
that the two levels, like I do, in the book,
have a chapter on character design, which
after guiding the readers through an understanding this psychological level of communication, we can take it even further by applying cultural icons,
to create even more nuances in terms of emotions, but the psychological level is
something that we all relate to because it relates to this sense of touch,
whereas the cultural icons, you have to be more careful because it depends on your audience that you’re communicating to.
And I hope I’ve answered your first question.
The second one was,
I’m very sorry, I’ve...
Oh, collaborator, the collaborative process. So,
it, I think it no way reduces the role of the artist, because the whole experience is,
is their design, so the environment that you walk though,
and so how I would try to
illustrate this is to think about
taking all the, taking one painting, hiding,
sort of locking away all the lines, paint strokes, sort of the colors, everything, into a box,
and having this emotional package just waiting to be unleashed, and it’s just the player, up to the player to choose
when these brush strokes and lines are actually activated.
So, it’s like the emotional experience, the design,
is still the mastermind of the artist, this is just a collaborative process in the sense that
the player can execute the lines in their own time. They,
they have seemingly very little control over
the actual movement because, like in a game like “Journey,” the jump arc is very delicate,
and the player can just choose which direction to make that jump and at what time,
but the jump arc is fixed. It’s something the game designer chose, or the artist chose.
So it’s still the artist decision and it’s just
the player has an influence on when it happens.
I hope that answers your questions.
Audience member: Hi, good evening, thank you for your lecture. It was actually very excellent.
I guess my first point is, I might debate you on whether GLaDOS is truly a villain
from a rhetorical,
as a piece of text, I might debate you on that, but I’m actually presenting in Manchester in October, on divergence in gaming,
from a technological standpoint and a
storyographics, and what I looked at was movie tie-in games,
and what I think is interesting is that,
in the process of convergences, games have gotten more
technologically sound in that the
gaming console is now the centerpiece of the entertainment in our world,
and in every living room across the world, that the gaming console is the center of all of that activity.
How there is a struggle, in a sense, to represent all forms of art
within that gaming console,
and so I would like to ask you,
we talked a little bit about the future during the presentation,
how do we get more representative
pieces of art involved in the gaming console, on a mass-produced basis,
because, in the end, that’s who’s buying the games, and that’s what gets published.
Solarski: Well, the,
we as game designers are sort of it all, game design in a mainstream sense,
is very restricted because
the people who video games are a small niche, so I think if you think of the general population,
the world, and so we have the game players have very specific expectations of what they
want from a game, and games originating from
tabletop games, very puzzle-orientated,
still, sort of, the game designs are very much focused on this, and one example is Pixar’s “Wall-E.”
That, for me, the whole experience, the touching moments in the film are
Wall-E’s loneliness within the environment, and this has very specific,
this is communicated through very specific design elements, so having Wall-E,
so the camera’s zoomed out very far to show emptiness,
and what the video game cover, what the write-up of the video game, is like
experience Wall-E’s, the most exciting moments of the film, the action, the running around,
whereas Wall-E’s journey just to have contact
with a friend, just the handshake,
and so these are things which we can very easily communicate in a video game,
but players don’t expect it. The people who buy video games want an action game,
and so what’s interesting, I think, is that it’s changing now, because we have
very big mainstream conferences like GDC,
sort of and E3, which have, so what E3 is
for the public as well, so where you have these very traditional video games,
and on the other hand, we have the Indiecade as well, and I think in this year,
there was a very strong change where people started to
move towards Indiecade, and Indiecade represents independent game development, where
it’s often much smaller teams of one or two developers who,
because they’re not tied down to a big publisher, they have much more room for experimentation, and I think,
slowly we’re going to see more and more games appear this way, because,
one example is the “Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery” that I showed
for the iPhone and iPads, and the costs involved with this are much smaller, and the tools used to develop video games are getting
much cheaper and more accessible, so like the Unity game engine,
where the, the possibilities for a single person to create a video game
are much more open as opposed to the old,
the more mainstream approach where it costs, sometimes thousands or millions to produce a video game, and
those mainstream developers that are kind of stuck with the one audience who expects action in most cases.
Audience member: Thank you also for your presentation on the circles and squares, angles that has helped a lot.
I have done a little bit of character design and found it very difficult because
I have an image in my mind, I have to quickly get it down before I forget it,
and I’ve experienced frustration when the image doesn’t come out to the one that’s in my head. Have you, what do you do to get rid of the, that frustration that
you, you have an image that seems so perfect in your head, and when you get it down to paper, it’s not that way, it’s not what you want.
Solarski: That’s something which never goes away.
It’s just a case of learning to, well, one to understand that every artist goes through this stage, and it doesn’t matter at which level they’re at,
and I always like to tell my students that
even Michelangelo, who we consider one of the greatest artists of all time,
he would burn his sketches so no one knew that he had bad days just like everybody else,
and Monet would have dreams of his cathedrals falling down, he was terrified, in most cases,
and what I recommend is always to have some way to document your progress,
and that’s how I manage to cope, by having online gallery where I would upload my work on a daily basis,
and so what you find is that you are always striving to this goal
that you have in your mind, this sort of perfect drawing or painting,
and if you, usually if you’re drawing or painting on a weekly basis, you achieve these high points maybe once a month,
but as soon as you reach them, everything that you’ve done before starts to look really awful,
and instantly, you start to think, “But
I’ve done this now, I want to be better,”
and so after this high peak, where you think this is the best drawing I’ve ever done, you have this dip, and you feel really bad,
and you think “I really can’t, I’m not an artist, I’m not set out,” but it’s,
to understand that these dips are part of an arc,
sort of an uphill trajectory that
this constant progress, even when you don’t feel it, and having this online gallery lets you
look back to your work much, a year ago, and two years earlier,
and you’ll see that you, even when you don’t feel like you’re progressing, you are actually.
Audience member: And the other question I had was,
with colors as well as shapes, they can define the setting,
like with you said with the triangles in a circular setting, you get very threatening presence.
I remember looking at a painting done by Picasso,
when he was in his blue stage, I got this very...
Colors don’t always affect people the same way,
like blue can make you feel happy, and my teacher said, “now don’t you feel sad?” and I’m like “Sad? This doesn’t make me feel sad.
How is this supposed to make me feel sad?”
And I was wondering if you would elaborate on that, how they would make you feel.
Well, sort of the lines and shapes and volumes, I think, much easier to predict. I even brought these
very simple volumes to demonstrate this, because they’re, I mentioned the touch senses that,
and as we’re growing up, a way that we learn to understand our environment is how it, as babies we’re touching
surfaces, we know whether something’s solid or something’s soft,
and how we react to these shapes, if I imagine, if you could imagine throwing them into the audience, you
instinctively you’d be much more confident in catching something like this than something like this.
What we’re doing is, when these are actually turned into images as a photograph or as a drawing,
you know, Sauron is constructed with lots of these arranged in different ways.
Then, what we’re, what the artist is doing is communicating this,
this sense of touch that is missing in virtual space. These shapes don’t actually exist,
just like the game “Morph,” that I developed, that people say “ouch” when they touch,
when their characters touch one of these things, and it’s based on their own experiences in the real-world,
but color
is more personal, and I would say that it’s much more difficult to,
it’s much more difficult to be confident that everyone will experience color in the same way,
but there are still very much, there are,
there are techniques and theories about color, which are very important to understand like the color wheel, complementary colors, how they work,
but it’s also important to be more aware of cultural
responses to color, sort of how color works for specific groups of people,
so I would say you have to be more careful
and, with color as opposed to lines, shapes and volumes.
Okay, thank you, thank you very much. Thank you very much for your questions. 
[Applause]
And I think I’ll be, I think the table has been set up outside, so I’d be happy to be able to answer some more questions if you have any.
Thank you very much.
