Picture House - Final Evaluation

For the Picture House project, we were asked to select a painting that inspires us in order to create a piece of our own work in our own specialist area. This piece of work should be made in such a way that it could be used during the development of some form of moving image production, such as film or animation for example.

The painting that I selected is ‘The Great War’, a piece painted by René Magritte in 1964.

René Magritte was a Belgian Surrealist painter, well known for his habit of taking ordinary items and making them look odd and strange within the context he painted them in.

I was drawn to this piece at first by my curiosity at its colour palette. The mainly white and blue colours usually wouldn’t draw one’s eye, given that they almost seem to blend into one another - however, that splash of purple is what grabbed my attention.

This piece reminds me of people that I would sometimes see on trips to Brighton when I was younger during the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run - I saw a lot of photos being taken of people with period style outfits and a similar background. This piece filled me with a sense of nostalgia because of that.

After looking further into the background of this painting, at what inspired the original artist, I found myself with a dilemma. I liked the painting, but not what it represented at all. The title of the piece does hint to its theme, but the theme of the World Wars was a little too strong for my liking. I myself may be a wargamer, but the reason that I can find that enjoyable is because it truly is just a game.

A quote from a website I used for research that sums up what this painting stands for quite well is ‘War is an unattainable woman. She seduces us with her very inaccessibility. Her face, so we believe, should be as beautiful as her garment.’

The dilemma I found myself facing was how I should turn my own work into something that does not represent the World Wars like the painting.

I started down the line of recreating the painting, but have it be the complete opposite as to not link to war. What would be important for me to keep in mind if I were to do this?

As I kept writing, my idea for my piece became slowly clearer. Instead of simply creating the inverse of the original painting, I gradually realised that I could turn the project into a character concept design project. Since I came to UCA I have been wanting to move onto a Game Art/Concept Art route, so this was the perfect time to show everyone, especially myself, what I could achieve with such a broad prompt.

I decided that to keep in line with the project's criteria, I should create the environment that my character would reside in. Video Games are a form of moving image, therefore if I were to come up with a game's story and concept to go with my character, then my final piece would work perfectly.

The method that was suggested to my group to help us focus in on the core of our ideas was to create an elevator pitch. We all pretended with this pitch that we had met some sort of big producer in our chosen field in a lift, and we only had about 30 seconds to sell our idea to them before they get to their floor. This is my pitch.

I am making an open world, exploration game based on ‘The Great War’ by René Magritte, called The Great Peace.

The main quest is triggered by a fight between the Stone Guardians of the Sun and Moon shrines- their petty squabble becomes far more serious when the Moon Guardians knock the core of the Sun, the Hana Orb, off its pedestal and it goes missing, causing an endless night.

The Sun Guardians, unable to handle it themselves, find a girl named Solis, to return the orb and restore daytime.

The game follows Solis on her journey to bring back peace to the world.

With everything planned out, it was time for me to start my rough sketch for Solis.

I did lots of research into clothing for Solis, using influences from other character designers, video games and even gaming miniatures. The main things my research told me to keep in mind while designing were things like layers and the types of garments.

For my game menu screen, I already had a vague idea in mind.

I knew that I wanted a landscape without much detail in the middle in order for me to put the menu options there later, rolling hills that would make my animation look a little more visually interesting, Solis in the foreground and the shrine in the background.

Using a game screenshot, some pictures I took on a walk and a few images I sourced from the internet, I tested my piece's composition.

I printed the pictures off and cut them up so that I could rearrange them in my sketchbook, in the hopes that one of the arrangements would look right.

Animating my main piece after finishing the drawing certainly proved to be a challenge for several reasons.

My initial idea for animating it was more of a side to side, parallax style animation, to show off the depth of the drawing.

I drew the piece in Procreate and did the animation in After Effects.

While drawing, I tried to use layer groups in order to keep the different areas of the piece separate, however I did not do everything I needed to at first to make the import into After Effects smooth. I learnt a lot of hard lessons during this stage.

While I was drawing, I didn't quite manage to get it into my head that I needed to prepare for animation, so areas that would usually not be visible, would be by the end. The main area where this caused a problem was the texturing for the ground.

Another thing that I would've done differently is the canvas size. I knew that I wanted the final piece to be 720p, so when choosing a size for my canvas, I made it that size. I now know that I should have made it much wider, to allow for the side-to-side animation I had in mind. Instead of redoing it, I decided to adapt the way I would animate it. Rather than the side to side, I chose to make each layer move upwards into frame at different speeds, so that it would still demonstrate depth like I had wanted. In the end, I much preferred this, so I'm calling it a happy accident.

On top of everything else, the way I coloured the ground and the way I made it nighttime were overlays, which I couldn't properly import into After Effects. This was a relatively easy thing to fix, but it was annoying nonetheless.

In the end, I was very happy with my final piece.

I was pleased with the way I made the selection arrow move around the screen- I would say that it looked rather sleek.

If I could do anything differently with the animation itself, maybe I would add a little more motion to it, something small like the orb floating in place, or a flock of birds in the sky. I also might have added a little bit of shadow behind the game title to integrate it into the scene a little better. These are things I should learn how to do for the future.

With my final piece finished, I started on marketing for my game idea.

I decided that the best way to advertise my game would be through social media in order to reach the correct target audience, so I started by creating a base poster to adapt later.

I really liked the piece I created - I am super proud of the way I did the lighting. I love the way it hits her chestplate and face. I learned from the game menu, and I added in that little shadow behind the game title. It may be subtle, but it looked odd without it.

I do think that I should do more in depth studies of the ocean in future though, as I feel it may be the weakest part of the poster.

I decided that the best platforms to advertise my game on would be Instagram and YouTube. I did a couple of mock-ups for these sites, reshuffling the poster to look better with the different size requirements.

Overall, I am very proud of my project’s final outcome. I feel like I learnt a lot during this stage of the course, from learning about other artists, to what kinds of tiny details can change a whole illustration’s tone. I feel that this project helped me decide which direction I would like to go in with specialism – I would like to move into Games Arts.