Alan Cross: A look at art and music created in times of pandemic - Global News

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Alan Cross: A look at art and music created in times of pandemic – Global News

Published

4 years ago

March 29, 2020

The spectre of disease, pandemic, and death have been with us since life emerged on this rock. And once we got around to discovering music, homo sapiens (and perhaps Neanderthals, whose numbers were probably drastically culled by disease), began reacting to these periods of widespread sickness with stories, art, and song.

The first recorded pandemic hit the people of Athens between 429 and 426 BC. No one knew why, other than the gods must have been displeased with mankind.

We still don’t know what caused the death of up to 100,000 — Typhus? Typhoid Fever? Some sort of viral hemorrhagic disease? — but it left an unusual mark on the city. Those were the peak years of Greek tragedy, a form of theatre that had tremendous influence on both ancient Rome in a few centuries and the Renaissance more than a thousand years in the future. From disease came great art.

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Speaking of the Renaissance, scholars point to the city of Florence as its birthplace around 1350. The Black Death killed much of the population in 1348 (and maybe as much as 60 per cent of all of Europe between 1331 and 1353) yet Florence rallied, becoming a flashpoint of intellectual and artistic evolution that was felt for centuries.

Meanwhile, the hot musical genre was “pestilential music,” a series of compositions inspired by rampant illness. Some believed that music could be medicine while others were sure that it was a moral poison that made it easier for disease to take hold. God apparently didn’t like popular songs, so anyone singing such ditties could expect to be struck down.

But not everyone felt this way. In the 1500s, an Italian physician named Niccolo Massa prescribed music therapy to prevent getting sick: “It is especially advantageous to listen to songs and lovely instrumental music, and to play now and then, and to sing with a quiet voice.” In other words, stay positive by chilling out with some music.

London, England, was plagued with, er, plagues through much of the 16th century (Henry VIII was forced to self-isolate during the Sweating Sickness of 1529, much in the way we are today) and saw a spike in fatalities in the early 1600s. But as England slowly recovered, Shakespeare was somehow inspired to write King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra, all in 1606. At exactly the same time, composers began to experiment with new musical modalities, resulting in the rise of Baroque music and stars just as Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel.

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Fast-forward to the late 1800s to New Orleans, a city that not only served the riverboat traffic from the Mississippi, but also ships coming in from the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and beyond. It was a thriving port, but also one of the most unhealthy. Thanks to the heat, humidity, the swamp, poor hygiene, and the constant turnover of the population, it was a terrible place to live if you were an African-American. On average, a Black man could hope to live to 36 before he was taken by cholera, yellow fever, typhus or influenza. Yet in spite of this, New Orleans was the birthplace of ragtime, which later evolved into jazz, the most important music genre of the first half of the 20th century.

Not all pandemics left behind such magnificent albeit unintended artistic consequences. Some were more subtle.

For example, who doesn’t know the playground song Ring Around the Rosie? Some folklore scholars trace its origins to the Great Plague of 1665 describing a rosy red rash (a plague symptom) and a necklace of herbs designed to ward off disease. But that didn’t help because in the end “we all fall down” and died. (Quick point of clarification: Other historians dispute this interpretation, saying it only appeared after WWII.)

Another rhyme with deadly origins appeared during a worldwide influenza pandemic in 1889-1890. Certain the disease could be stopped by sealing up the home from the poisoned air outside, this safety tip emerged in schools:

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There was a little girl, and she had a little bird

And she called it by the pretty name of Enza;

But one day it flew away, but it didn’t go to stay

For when she raised the window, in-flu-Enza

Not exactly Shakespearean, but that little poem endured for decades, especially after the 1918 H1N1 pandemic that killed as many as 100 million people around the world over just 24 months.

When tuberculosis once again became a major problem in the 1920s and 1930s, sickness songs spread like, well, a contagion throughout blues and country performers. Same when polio hit in the late 1940s and early ’50s. And after the Hong Kong flu epidemic of 1968-69 (death toll: one million), certain things became ingrained in our psyche. We certainly otherwise wouldn’t have had a cartoon character like this.

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And let’s consider HIV/AIDS for a moment. No other disease of the last several centuries inspired more art, from music and musicals (e.g. Rent) and plays (e.g. Angels in America) to books (The Band Played On) and movies (Philadelphia).

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And here we are again facing the worst pandemic since the end of the Great War. We’re all shut-ins as we try to flatten the curve of infections. That includes plenty of musicians who do what musicians do best: explain to the rest of us how we’re feeling.

The last time I checked, there were nearly 500 coronavirus-related songs on Spotify (call it “pandemic pop,”) all of which have been written in the last couple of months. One might become the anthem of our times. Or maybe we’ll have to wait for this enforced isolation to give us a new storyteller.

We will get through this. And who knows what great art COVID-19 will leave behind?

Meanwhile, enjoy this playlist as you give humanity a wide birth.

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—

Alan Cross is a broadcaster with Q107 and 102.1 the Edge and a commentator for Global News.

Subscribe to Alan’s Ongoing History of New Music Podcast now on Apple Podcast or Google Play

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Art in Bloom returns – CTV News Winnipeg

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9 hours ago

April 18, 2024

Harry Miller

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Art in Bloom returns CTV News Winnipeg

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Crafting the Painterly Art Style in Eternal Strands – IGN First – IGN

Published

11 hours ago

April 18, 2024

Harry Miller

Next up in our IGN First coverage of Eternal Strands, we’re diving into the unique and colorful art in the land of the Enclave. We sat down with art director Sebastien Primeau and lead character artist Stephanie Chafe to ask them all about it.

IGN: Let’s talk about Eternal Strands’ distinctive art style. What were some of the guiding principles behind the art direction?

Primeau: I think what was guiding the art direction at the beginning of the project was to find the scale of the game, because we knew that we were having those gigantic 25-meter tall creatures and monsters. So we really wanted to have the architectural elements of the game – the vegetation, the trees – to reflect that kind of size.

So one of my inspirations was coming from an architect called Hugh Ferriss, and I was very impressed by his work, and it was very inspiring for me too. So just the scale of his work. So he was a real influence for Metropolis, Gotham, so I was really inspired by his work.

Chafe: I think one of the things that, just as artists and as creators, we were interested in as well was going for a color palette that can be very bright. And something that can really challenge us too as artists, and going into a bit more of at-hand painterly work, and getting our hands really into it, into the clay, so to speak, and trying to go for something bright and colorful.

Eternal Strands Slideshow – IGN First

IGN: That’s not the first time I’ve heard your team describe the art style as “painterly.” What does that mean?

Primeau: Painterly is just a word that can give so much room to different types of interpretation. I think where we started was Impressionist painters. So I really enjoy looking at many painters, and they have different types of styles. But we wanted to have something that was fresh, colorful, and unique.

And also, I remember when we were starting the project there was that word. “It’s going to be stylized,” but stylized is just a word that gives so much room to different kinds of style. And since we were a small team, we had to figure out a way to create those rough brushstrokes. If it was painted very quickly by an artist, like Bob Ross would say, “Accident is normal.” So I think we wanted to embrace that. And because we’re all artists, it’s hard too, at some point, to disconnect from what you’re doing. It’s like, “Oh, I can maybe add some more details over there.” But I was always the- “Guys, oh, Steph, that’s enough. Let’s stop it right there. I think it looks cool.”

IGN: So, when you create an asset for Eternal Strands, is somebody actually painting something?

Chafe: I can speak more on the character side. For us, we do a lot of that hand painting, a lot of those strokes by hand. And we try to embrace, not the mistakes, but the non-realistic part of it having an extra splotch here and there.

We’ve got brushes that we made that can help us as artists to get the texture we’re looking for. It really is a texture that gives to it. But a lot of the time it’s not just something generated in a substance painter, or getting these things that will layer these things for you, making it quick and procedural. Sometimes we have those as helpers, but more often than not we just go in and paint.

IGN: Eternal Strands is a fair bit more colorful than lots of games today. Why was it important to the team to have lots of bright colors?

Primeau: You need to be careful, actually, with colors. Because with too many colors you can create that kind of pizza of color.

We wanted to balance the color per level, because we’re not making an open-world game. I really wanted each level to have their own color palette identity. So we’re playing a lot with the lighting. The lighting for me is key. It’s very important. You can have gorgeous textures, props, characters, but if your lighting is not that great, it’s like… So lighting is key. And especially with Unreal Five, we have now, access to Lumen. It brought so much richness to the color, how the color is balancing with the entirety of the level. It definitely changed the way we were looking at the game.

We’re using the technology, but in a way to create something that feels like if you were looking at a painting. I think we have achieved that goal.

Chafe: I’m very happy with it.

IGN: What were your inspirations from other games or other media when developing the art style?

Primeau: I have many. I’ll start with graphic novels, European graphic novels. I really wanted to stay away from DC comics, Marvels comics, those kinds of classics.

Before I started Eternal Strand, I saw a video. It was one of the League of Legends short films for a competition. It’s “RISE.” I don’t know if you remember that one, but it was made by Fortiche Studio who did Arcane, and I’m a huge fan of Arcane. When I saw that short film, it was way before Arcane was announced, I was like, “oh gosh, this is freaking cool. This is so amazing. I wish I would be able to work on a game that has that kind of look.”

Chafe: For me, when we started the project, one of the things that I wanted to challenge myself a lot was in concept and drawing and stuff like that and doing more, learning more about color as well, which is something I find super fascinating and also kicks my butt all the time because of just color theory in general.

But with the [character] portraits specifically, I think, I mean, growing up I played a lot of games, a lot of JRPGs too. I played just seeing basic portraits in something like Golden Sun or eventually also Persona and of course Hades, which is a fantastic game. I played way too much of that, early access included. But I really liked that part. Visual novels too, just that kind of thing. You can get an emotion from a 2D image as well when it’s well done, especially if you have voices on top of it.

IGN: Were there any really influential pieces of concept art that served as a guiding document the team would reference later on?

Chafe: I have one personal: It’s really Maxime Desmettre’s stuff because it was so saturated. Blue, blue, blue sky. Maxim Desmettre is our concept artist that we have who works from Korea. When I joined the project, seeing that was just like… and seeing that as a challenge too, like ‘how are we going to get there?’

The one that I’m thinking of that hopefully we could find after, just in general with the work that always speaks so much to me is this blue, blue sky and the saturation of the grass. But also when he gets into his architecture and stuff like that, there’s just a warmth to everything. The warmth to the stone that just makes it look inviting and mysterious at the same time. And I think that really speaks a lot to it.

IGN: How did you go about designing Eternal Strand’s protagonist: Brynn?

Primeau: I think that Mike also, when he pitched me the character, he was using Indiana Jones as an example. So courageous, adventurer guy, cool guy. Also, when you’re looking at Indiana Jones, he’s a cool guy. And we wanted to create that kind of coolness also out of our main protagonist. And I remember it took time. We did many iterations.

Chafe: It was a lot of iterations for sure. Well, I think I had done a bunch of sketches because it’s what’s going to be the face of the player, and also to have her own personality as well in the story, and her history as well. And the mantle was a really big one too. What gives her one of sets of her powers and stuff, figuring that out was actually one of the longest processes. It’s just a cape, but at the same time, it’s getting that to work with gameplay and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, all of Brynn’s personality and her vibe really comes from a lot of good work from the narrative team. So, mostly collaboration there.

IGN: What’s the deal with Brynn’s mentor: Oria? How did you settle on a giant bird?

Chafe: Populating the world of the enclave was, “it’s free real estate.” You get to just throw things on the wall and see what sticks. And, “Oh, that’s really cool. Oh, that’s nice.” At some point I’d done a big sketch of a big bird lady with a claymore, and Seb said, “That’s cool.” And then kind of ran with it.

IGN: What’s the toughest part about the art style you’ve chosen for Eternal Strands?

Primeau: The toughest part was…A lot of people in the team have experience making games, so it was to get outside of that mold that we’ve been to.

For me, working on games that were more realistic in terms of look, I think it was really tough just to think differently, to change our mindset, especially that we knew that we would be a small team, so we had to do the art differently, find recipes, especially when we were talking about textures, for example. So having a good mix.

Chafe: One of the things too is also as we’re all a bunch of artists, and every artist has their own style that they just suddenly have ingrained in them, and that’s what makes us all unique as artists as well. But when you’re on a project, you have to coalesce together. You can’t kind of have one look different from the other. When you’re doing something more realistic, you have your North Star, which is a giant load of references that are real. And you can say “it has to look like that, as close to that as possible.”

When you have a style in mind and you’re developing at the same time, you kind of look at it and you review it and you have a feeling more than anything else.

You’re training each other with your styles as you kind of merge together in the end. And that kind of is how the style happened through, like you mentioned, like finding easy recipes, through just actually creating assets and seeing what comes out and, “Oh, that’s really cool. Okay, we can now use that as kind of our North Star.”

For more on Eternal Strands, check out our preview of the Ark of the Forge boss fight, or read our interview with the founders of Yellow Brick Games on going from AAA studios to their own indie shop, and for everything else stick with IGN.

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