GAR204 Art Research Practice

How does game art, and environment art specifically, build a relationship between the player and the narrative to help craft a strong and compelling story in a video game?

Rae Kellam. (15 January 2024). Statement of intent 1 and Statement of intent 2. Wix: Rae Kellam.

Integrating my team project into my query about environment art’s role in a narrative

The narrative and story of a video game are as cross-disciplinary as any other element of video game creation; although narrative designers and game writers may originally generate the ideas and content for story beats, narrative structure, dialogue, and other things, these can only be implemented and expanded upon when other members of a team are there to help and offer expertise from their respective departments.

The art of a video game is one such department of game creation that can have a huge impact on whether a game’s narrative resonates with the player or not; it can convey emotion, mood, tone, and genre without a word of dialogue or exposition, and in the case of environment art, can provide multiple forms of context (e.g. geographical, spatial, societal) for the story being told while establishing the player character’s place in that story. For a player to be fully immersed and invested in the narrative being told, all elements of the game must fit and line up with the narrative, otherwise you risk disengaging them through ludonarrative dissonance, and I think this is especially the case when the environment art - your character’s whole world but also your player’s whole world while they are playing – does not line up with the narrative.

While researching and developing the environment art for my GAM202 module and my team’s game, Quixotic, I decided to integrate my interest in storytelling and narrative and delve deeper into the specific role of environment art in narrative creation and how it is an important pillar in building a relationship between the player and the narrative, something that I believe is crucial to any game that wishes to tell a story. Thus, I developed the question, “How does game art, and environment art specifically, build a relationship between the player and the narrative to help craft a strong and compelling story in a video game?”.

The specifics of this question can be broken down further for clearer clarification. With environment art being a visual bridge between the narrative and the player, its role is not only in providing a backdrop for the characters; it is the space that they inhabit and interact with, and as stated previously, it therefore can provide a lot of contexts to the narrative being told. The relationship between the narrative and the player as explored through this lens of environment art will be regarded as positive if the relationship is able to draw out some kind of emotional response or investment from the player as this shows that the player is connected to the narrative. By ‘strong and compelling’, I mean that I am going to be focusing on what makes a game’s narrative good and successful, what makes it stick with players, rather than on examples of weak narratives with poorly integrated environment art support as this feels more constructive and supportive of my own work.

When juxtaposition arises: exploring Quixotic’s environment art ideas

Fundamental aspects of Quixotic in terms of the environment art have been narrowed down enough for us to get an idea of the scope. The layout of the levels will be 2.5D third person perspective (so it will contain both 2D and 3D assets for the environment art) and we will be taking a stylised approach for the art direction. The exact stylisation we are going for has yet to be determined, although we agreed that it will need to be something that meshes well with the 2D story-book-style character sprites that we are going to be using.

The world itself is a bleak, apocalyptic setting that contains multiple levels, currently including The Wasteland, The Caves, The Subway and The World Before. As such, the combination of ruined and broken modern buildings and technology, older castle-style ruins, and flora overtaking specific areas may require a strong and cohesive art style in order to unify these elements into one believable setting.

With the asset combination creating juxtaposition in and of itself, without even having to consider the extra strain of making sure it remains cohesive with the 2D storybook style of the characters and interactables, I decided to investigate how other environment presentations handle the idea of juxtaposition and how it might affect the narrative and the audience.

One of the best examples I came across was Bioshock Infinite (2K Games, 2013)[1]. Even in the opening level of a lighthouse during a storm, juxtaposition exists within the environment through the lighting set up; the orange of a single hanging light and the blue of the moonlight. These complementary colours light up the space without intruding upon each other, drawing attention to different elements of the environment while also leading the eye through the scene to give the player a sense of what might have happened in this space without using any words. This theme of juxtaposed elements (and environmental storytelling, but more on that later) continues throughout the game in interesting ways. The floating city of Columbia is, after the lighthouse, presented with bold blue skies, warm orange light, and clean neoclassical and American colonial architecture[3], yet due to the opening sequence in the lighthouse involving a dead body (even though this scene is before entering Columbia), the player remains uneasy and on edge. And rightfully so; the further the player gets through the game, the more insidious it becomes as it is revealed that Columbia upholds slavery, racism and white supremacy[4], contrasting the bright and joyful environment with very dark underlying themes.

The design choice of juxtaposition was further explored in my work by examining real-life examples of juxtaposed architecture, in this case the Louvre Art Museum in Paris.

Rae Kellam. (15 January 2024). Juxtaposition. Wix: Rae Kellam.

Rae Kellam. (15 January 2024). Understanding Architecture. Wix: Rae Kellam.

The impact of stylisation on expectations and narrative: Quixotic’s 3D art direction

Art style is a huge factor to decide on when it comes to video games and what you are trying to convey to the player; it can influence everything from atmosphere to the perceived genre to emotion.

For example, the semi-realistic style of the first-person psychological horror game In Sound Mind (Modus Games, 2021)[5] lends itself well to the game’s narrative of a therapist exploring the minds of his patients while his entire hometown of Milton-Haven is affected by a psychoactive chemical. The art style bridges the gap between realism and hallucination, allowing for both the realistic elements of the environment to exist alongside the more monstrous enemies and unrealistic environment elements that might otherwise have felt out of place if the art direction had been purely realistic. As each location reflects a particular patient’s mind (e.g. Virginia’s level takes place outside and inside a supermarket, Allen’s takes place along a beach and dock with a lighthouse), the ever-changing environments create a sense of unease and apprehension as the player remains on edge, unsure of what might be next.

Another example would be Darkest Dungeon (Red Hook Studios, 2016)[6], which is a 2D gothic roguelike RPG. The art style reflects this genre and the theme of psychological stress through its sharp edges, thick lines, and dark shadows, evoking the idea of a dark and dangerous fairytale. Its art style also leans into colour palette themes, such as the main hub being a mix of yellows, oranges and reds, and the Cove being a mix of eerie greens and blues. As a whole, this all accurately conveys the type of game players should expect if they pick it up, which is fundamental to ensuring a good player experience.

For Quixotic’s 3D art, it was decided that we would experiment with a few styles in order to see what we liked best and what would work cohesively with the 2D Paper Mario style characters and interactables. The styles we decided on testing were free-hand painterly, toon lines, and a toon shader (akin to cell shading) in engine; separately and combined in order to see if any stuck out as a good choice for our art style. We needed something that would remain reminiscent of a storybook style, so our choices were all based upon techniques that are commonly seen in illustrated stories – hand painting, lined, and clear divides between light and shadow with cell shading.

Rae Kellam. (15 January 2024). Rocks and traffic light engine test. Wix: Rae Kellam.

Rae Kellam. (15 January 2024). Traditional and life drawing. Wix: Rae Kellam.

Moving down from architecture to props: prop placement and environmental storytelling in Quixotic

The placement of certain objects and items in a game world can be used by environment artists and level designers to aid in the telling of the game’s main narrative, or to enrich the game world by providing smaller, more contained stories to the player. This technique, known as environmental storytelling, can be an effective way to elevate player immersion by presenting them with vignettes and snapshots of life in the game world, allowing them to put the pieces together themselves based on prop placements and environment cues, inviting player engagement and some level of developer-player collaboration.

This is arguably one of the strongest ways that environment art can be used to build up a player-narrative relationship as immersion and engagement on the players’ part are two factors that will likely predict how invested they are in the game’s story and whether they feel the drive to complete it, which is ultimately what game developers usually want their players to do; experience and (ultimately) finish the game and ergo, finish the story.

An example from video game media that excellently incorporates environmental storytelling and prop placement would be What Remains of Edith Finch (Giant Sparrow, 2017)[7]. The first bedroom in the house you explore belongs to that of Molly Finch, who died aged 10. The room is mostly pink and white which, although stereotypical, immediately prompts players to picture a young girl. Most of the décor is fitting of the 1930-1940 period of time when Molly was alive, and this is shown through the quilted bedsheets, the frilly undersheet on the bed, and the floral accents along the ceiling. Her young age is emphasized by the rocking horse, the plush toys, and the painted mural on the wall next to her bed of a princess castle. Through all of these elements of environmental storytelling, the player is immediately introduced to the kind of girl Molly was before they even start exploring the space and learning her story; a dreamer who enjoyed fairytales and liked animals. This creates ludonarrative harmony, where both the environment and the narrative of the game are working in tandem to keep the player immersed and engaged in the fictional world they are navigating.

To use my GAM202 game, Quixotic, as an example, environmental storytelling can be utilised to convey the potential past of the world through showing rather than telling. Quixotic is set in a post-apocalyptic, desert-like world in an undisclosed future time period from ours. The event that led to this apocalyptic fallout is never directly told to the player, but the environment and the way NPCs navigate and interact with the world provide hints, clues, and suggestions as to what may have occurred, allowing the player to form their own conclusions about what they think might have happened.

Plants and foliage in the underground environments might have odd colours, strange and uncanny shape language, or appear ‘mutated’ in some way, which could suggest to the player that perhaps a nuclear event caused the apocalyptic disaster. The potential placement of an old, broken down skyscraper acting as protagonist Don Quixote’s main way to traverse between the levels, with the top end of it being present in the overworld and the bottom further underground can easily imply that the original surface of the earth was covered with layers of rock and sand, burying the world as it collapsed from the apocalypse.

All of these potentials for environmental storytelling would help to engage the player’s active participation in the world, giving them space to think as they play.

Rae Kellam. (15 January 2024). Shifting to props. Wix: Rae Kellam.

The impact of colour: the important role of colour palettes in an environment

Colour theory is a widely important aspect of every type of art and game art is no different – the colours, their tones, how they complement (or contrast) each other, the lighting decisions and how they subsequently interact with the colours, all impact the atmosphere of a game’s world, especially the environment.

Genre usually has a say in what types of colour palettes are utilised by artists in a game and audiences may even expect certain games to fit into certain genres based on the colour choices they are exposed to in promotional art and videos before they buy the game.

For example, farming simulators seem to lean towards brighter, more saturated colour choices overall, whereas titles in the horror genre tend to lean towards darker, less saturated colour choices. Of course, this isn’t always the case and sometimes games may subvert expectations by employing different colour palettes (or different styles than expected), which can be just as engaging for players as well (a good example of this is the game Omori (OMOCAT LLC, 2020)[8], which overall employs a cute, hand-drawn art style with a pastel colour palette for a strong portion of the promotional material and the game despite its psychological horror genre).

For Quixotic, we decided that each distinct area would have its own colour palette for both artistic and practical reasons; to convey different tones and feelings to the player and also to create clear distinctions between each of the levels without having them be entirely separate levels in-engine that require loading screens or a sudden shift between each one when the player traverses between them.

The Wasteland is mostly flat, barren of plant life, dusty, and overall presented as uninhabitable. Because of this, the colour palette is based on warm to neutral undertones of brown, orange and yellow to invoke the imagery of a desert or canyon. It is unfit to sustain life, so colours associated with well-known dry areas will help to create that connection within players’ minds.

The Caves are darker and described in our world bible as ‘claustrophobic’ and ‘horror-filled’. They were created quickly, shortly after the apocalyptic event that ruined the world, and as such are unstable and falling apart. With only dim lighting, a way to make this area distinct from The Wasteland could be to shift into darker red and violet-red tones to convey that while this level is still mostly uninhabitable like the world above, it is more threatening as it moves deeper underground through hastily constructed tunnels. This natural shift through analogous hues helps keep the world environment cohesive while also providing enough variation to convey to the player that they have entered a new area.

Rae Kellam. (15 January 2024). All about colour. Wix: Rae Kellam.

Finishing touches in the way of graphic design elements and their contribution to the narrative

Graphic design elements in video games include assets such as posters, signs, banners, in-game brand logos and other advertisements, and even graffiti. As Kaitlin Tremblay puts it in her book Collaborative Worldbuilding for Video Games, ‘[graphic design… elements] all indicate the sociological response to different systems in the world’ [9]. A world, and therefore a world’s environment, is not standalone; it is changed and interacted with and in some ways molded by the people who live within it. Graphic design elements could therefore be considered an important way to add flavour and believability to an environment that can enhance a player’s engagement with the world and the narrative as these graphic design elements can also provide interesting and unique cues on the story (or stories) that the wider environment and world contain.

A game with excellent examples of utilising graphic design elements to enhance the environment and narrative is BioShock (2007, 2K Games)[10]. The underwater city of Rapture follows an Art Deco style of architecture that was popular in the 1920s, but the environment design goes even further than simply that; all of the posters and advertisements found around the city echo this 1920-30 atmosphere, even the font on the banners (such as the one proclaiming “No gods or kings. Only man”[11]) is sharp and angled, reminiscent of the font styles that were used during that period. Layered on top of this is the propaganda; the head of Rapture, Andrew Ryan, has propaganda promoting himself and Rapture spread all through the city in the form of posters, banners, a looming sculpture of his head, and in radio announcements (which is also a prime example of how sound design can be used to connect a player more deeply to the narrative as well as the surrounding world). All of this collates in the player not just hearing about Ryan’s authoritarian rule of Rapture but feeling it in the fabric of the environment as well thanks to the integration of the environment art and design.

Rae Kellam. (15 January 2024). The uses of graphic design in env art. Wix: Rae Kellam.

Crafting potential game ready assets for GAM202’s Quixotic using what I’ve learned

Utilising all of the research I have gathered thus far, I decided to experiment with creating a mini vignette made up of 3 assets that would fit the theme of my team’s GAM202 game Quixotic.

Rae Kellam. (15 January 2024). Vignette plan. Wix: Rae Kellam.

After planning my vignette, I modelled the ground, oil lantern and radiation sign in Maya and the horse skull in ZBrush, before importing the skull into the scene in Maya to set it up. Taking the model into Substance Painter, I set the template to Unity HD Render Pipeline since Quixotic is using the Unity engine and got to work with my texturing.

First, I assign flat colour to all of my assets, including setting up an opacity channel for the glass in the oil lantern and prepping the colour for the light inside.

Rae Kellam. (18 January 2024). SP_BaseColours. Wix: Rae Kellam.

To aide in the painterly style I'm going for, I then add another fill layer and set the base colour to the corresponding ambient occlusion map, then ensure that under 'Materials' it is only set to the colour channel. Then I add a filter to this layer called 'MatFx Oil Paint' and set the parameter preset to 'Stylized low details'; through this filter, I'm already achieving that painterly look before starting the actual painting process, which speeds up the time it takes me to texture assets. This quicker workflow is going to be highly beneficial in the team project and will allow me to finish more assets overall to a high standard.

The fill layer is then set to multiply in order to apply the effect on top of the base colour (although for the core of the lantern, I made sure the base colour for that section was above it so that the emissive effect later would be applied properly). This painting technique set up is outlined in Stylized Station's YouTube video 'Using Substance Painter to Texture Stylized Models REALLY Fast'[12] and forms the fundamental basis for how I decided to approach stylized texturing for my GAM202 team's game Quixotic (and therefore my approach for this vignette).

Rae Kellam. (18 January 2024). SP_PaintStrokesEffect. Wix: Rae Kellam.

Next, I decided to set up the lantern light emissive so I could better judge where to paint most of the light and shadows on the models. Following Z Instructors' video 'Substance Painter Emissive Tutorial'[13], in Texture Set settings I added an Emissive channel and then in the lantern light fill layer I switched off all materials except emissive and assigned a bright yellow to it.

In Display settings > Activate post effects, we can then turn on the Glare feature, which then allows us to set the emissive intensity in Shader settings > Shader parameters. Viola! Now the lantern has a light!

Rae Kellam. (18 January 2024). SP_EmissiveSetUp. Wix: Rae Kellam.

Now the painting begins! On a new paint layer underneath the Paint Strokes layer and using the artistic heavy sponge brush, I start with the shadows using a darker shade, following where the MatFx Oil Paint filter has placed the darkest brushstrokes. Then on new layers, I do the midtones and the highlights, keeping them all separate to begin with and adding blur filters to any layers with too-strong, unblended paint.

Focusing on one object at a time, I worked my way through them all until the whole vignette was painted.

Rae Kellam. (18 January 2024). SP_FinalPiece. Wix: Rae Kellam.

For the final renders, I decided that I wanted to revisit Marmoset Toolbag 4 and refresh my knowledge of the application since I have not touched it since 1st year.

To set up the glass in the lantern, I changed the Reflectivity set up from Metalness to Refractive Index since glass does not require the Metalness channel and then I set the Transmission option to Refraction.

Since a major feature of Quixotic's 3D art is the Post Processing Outline Shader I made for the game in Unity, I decided to try my best to recreate this within Marmoset and followed a tutorial by 3D Flick on Youtube[14] in order to help guide me through the most efficient way to do this, which included duplicating the objects in maya, turning the weight off for an ai standard surface material, and then extruding, deleting and reversing faces before importing this version of the model into Marmoset Toolbag 4 as well.

After that, all I had left to do was set up the lighting; I went for a point light with a very pale orange tone to light up the front and then a low directional light in the back set to a muted red colour to add to the dangerous wasteland aesthetic.

Rae Kellam. (18 January 2024). MT4_Lighting Set Up. Wix: Rae Kellam.

Rae Kellam. (18 January 2024). Render 3. Wix: Rae Kellam.

Rae Kellam. (18 January 2024). Vignette Turntable mp4. Wix: Rae Kellam.

Rae Kellam. (18 January 2024). Rae_Kellam_Poster_PNG. Wix: Rae Kellam.

REFERENCES:

[1] Bioshock Infinite. (2013). PC [Game]. Novato, CA: 2K Games.

[2] Maciak, L. (2013) Bioshock infinite: Part 1 – art direction and visual storytelling, Terminally Incoherent. Available at: http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2013/04/10/bioshock-infinite-part-1-art-direction-and-visual-storytelling/ [Accessed: 23 October 2023].

[3] Contributors to Bioshock Wiki. (2013) Columbia, BioShock Wiki. Available at: https://bioshock.fandom.com/wiki/Columbia [Accessed: 23 October 2023].

[4] Lacry (2020). BioShock Infinite Full Walkthrough Gameplay - No Commentary (PC Longplay). [Online video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-WH-i2Piy4 [Accessed 23 October 2023].

Looked at but not referenced in text:

- Tarnowetzki, L 2015, ‘Environmental Storytelling and BioShock Infinite: Moving From Game Design to Game Studies’, Masters thesis, Concordia University, Montreal. Available at: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/211518168.pdf

- Sarver, Eric. The Impact of Art Style on Video Games (2021). Honors Undergraduate Theses. 875. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses/875. [Accessed: 23 October 2023].

[5] In Sound Mind. (2021). PC [Game]. Walnut Creek, CA: Modus Games.

[6] Darkest Dungeon. (2016). PC [Game]. Vancouver, BC: Red Hook Studios.

[7] What Remains of Edith Finch. (2017). PC [Game]. Los Angeles, CA: Giant Sparrow.

【XCV//】(2017). What Remains of Edith Finch FULL MOVIE | PC 60fps (Complete Walkthrough). [Online video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9B15cptgq0 [Accessed: 27 November 2023]

[8] Omori. (2020). PC [Game]. Los Angeles, CA: OMOCAT LLC.

[9] TREMBLAY, K. (2023) ‘ART: Envrionment Art’, in Collaborative worldbuilding for video games. 1st Edition. Abingdon-on-Thames, Oxfordshire: ROUTLEDGE, pp. 64–64. Available at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.1201/9781003345619/collaborative-worldbuilding-video-games-kaitlin-tremblay [Accessed: 27 November 2023].

[10] BioShock. (2007). PC [Game]. Novato, CA: 2K Games.

[11] Monty Zander (2022). Bioshock Critique | After the Shrug. [Online video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0w87LVe0wU [Accessed: 27 November 2023]

[12] Stylized Station (2020). Using Substance Painter to Texture Stylized Models REALLY Fast. [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc2gcNVQmDw&t=1637s [Accessed: 18 January 2024].

[13] Z Instructors (2021). Substance Painter Emissive Tutorial. [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyGFwHUkaDM [Accessed: 18 January 2024].

[14] 3D Flick (2023). Create ToonShader like Outline in marmoset in just 3min ! (for maya users). [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOhucf6KMCQ [Accessed: 18 January 2024].