Tim Burton

To help me with this project, I decided to visit a Tim Burton exhibition in the Design Museum in London. As Tim Burton is a prolific horror artist, I thought that looking at what makes his artwork scary would benefit me in creating assets for our project. Games have been made based on Burton’s work, though he hasn’t worked on any games himself. While this means I can’t make any direct inspiration from video game environments, he has worked on many film environments, and has a unique stylistic approach to creating environments that complement his characters in his personal work as well.

Vincent (1982) is an example of a film that Tim Burton worked on where the character, environment and narrative work together seamlessly to create an intense experience, in a style that was unique. This work has been connected to German Expressionist scenography, known for its bold shapes and stark straight lines, with dark colour palettes and unsettling distortion. As an expressionist movement, the goal was to depict the emotions of the artist over reality. While our games style is more realistic, I think there are aspects of this style that I can take inspiration from in creating a horror environment, as many pieces in this movement focus on turmoil and conflict, which thematically connects with our game as we explore the inner emotional incongruence of our killer.

This highlights the importance of combining the narrative and the artwork, the theming of the world is irreconcilably attached to the narrative and the way that the player interacts with that narrative. The environments created by Burton exist outside of reality, reflecting the feeling of the narrative space in an abstracted way. I think this demonstrates the use of environments as a tool of the narrative while also creating something wholly unique and otherworldly.

Inspired by Tim Burton, I wanted to make sure that the game palette was mostly monochrome, being mostly shades of green, as I think that his use of lighting is what emphasises the isolated and uncanny feeling that his work tends to evoke. I think the pieces below illustrate this clearly, both using an incredibly minimal colour palette while effectively using contrast and atmospheric directional lighting to create an eerie focus on shadow and space.

I also took inspiration from his ideas, much of his artwork and stories taking from two opposed topics and combining them, subverting expectations in a tonally horrific way. This can be seen below where he has depicted Cupid, highlighting the atrocity in the metaphor of cupids bow and arrow by showing the arrow literally shooting two people together as they scream in horror. This subversion is also seen below in the piece where a snowman is depicted a a pumpkin, mashing together Christmas and Halloween. This is subversive because the horror Halloween aesthetic contrasts the wholesome perception of Christmas and its association with building snowmen. In this way, horror is similar to humour, as a lot of horror lies in subversion and taboo. In our project, I feel like we have attempted to create a more horrific narrative by exploring the subversion of the killer turning out to be Rose, Laura’s own daughter.