What “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” (2021) Does Differently… – A Ramble

Well, to my surprise and delight, I actually got a chance to watch the cyberpunk sci-fi TV series “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” (2021) early last November 🙂 Although I’m usually very cynical about “streaming services”, one of the few exceptions I make to this are free ones that are run by established TV channels.

Anyway, I was delighted to find that Channel 4 had the show on their “All 4” service last year (alas, no UK DVD release though 😦 ). And, whilst this article isn’t really a “proper” review of the show – I’ve written way too many reviews recently… – I felt like writing down my thoughts about it in comparison to the films.

This article may contain mild-moderate SPOILERS.

(On a side note: Whilst I’ll make some criticisms here, I still enjoyed “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” a lot. If you’re a fan of the films, and can keep an open mind, then you’ll probably enjoy this spin-off show. I certainly did, even if it took a few episodes before it really started to grow on me.)

“Blade Runner: Black Lotus” is a 13-episode anime series, set in a retro-futuristic version of the early-mid 21st century. The story takes place between the events of the live-action films “Blade Runner” (1982) and “Blade Runner 2049” (2017). It focuses on a mysterious woman called Elle who wakes up in the back of a self-driving lorry with no memories and a strange gadget. The lorry is heading towards the dystopian, neon-lit streets of Los Angeles, and Elle hopes to find some answers – and perhaps some justice – there…

Unusually for an anime, this series uses 3D CGI animation rather than 2D animation. Whilst it would be very easy to criticise the quality of the CGI, it grew on me a lot as the series progressed. Given the retro-futuristic setting, using late 1990s/early-mid 2000s-style CGI in a modern TV show fits in with the ethos of the series surprisingly well. If nothing else, it reminded me a lot of the cutscenes in the 1997 “Blade Runner” computer game. Plus, the series gets the small visual details and the overall aesthetic of the series perfectly right too. It might look like an early PS3 game sometimes, but the “world” of the series still actually feels like “Blade Runner” 🙂

What is most interesting about it though, and why I wrote this article, is that it is surprisingly different in terms of pacing, mood and genre to the two “Blade Runner” films. If you haven’t seen them, both are slow-paced cerebral sci-fi films which explore all sorts of complex themes (eg: humanity, authority, free will, morality, exploitation/greed, mortality etc...).

On the other hand, “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” is much more of an fast-paced action-thriller series. Yes, it explores some of the “world” and themes of the series, but it primarily tells a gripping, and surprisingly streamlined, fast-paced thriller story… with a lot of cool-looking and elaborate “action movie” fight scenes in it. This alone makes it very different to at least one of the films.

In the original “Blade Runner” (1982), violence was deliberately presented as ugly. The film’s relatively few fight scenes are always shown to be cruel or unfair in some way. The pain and brutality of what happens during them is also heavily emphasised too. It is a criticism of violence, a way of presenting it as inherently evil.

“Blade Runner” (1982) also shows the emotional effects that violence has on the characters too – whether it is Deckard’s cold personality, Rachel’s reaction to firing a gun, Leon becoming the type of bully he hates, Pris’ terrifying scowl of rage, Roy’s animal-like howling etc… In this film, violence is an evil that corrupts and distorts anyone who comes into contact with it. In contrast to the dystopian society of the film, it does not discriminate between humans and replicants. Both are shown to be equally damaged by either inflicting and/or suffering violence.

The film’s “ugly” violence was also perhaps a hat-tip to the old “film noir” movies and hardboiled detective novels which were an influence on the film too. These were stories and movies that tried to present crime in a more realistic way – and, as such, the “ugliness” was literally the whole point. Violent crime is, by its very nature, an ugly thing.

The slower pacing in the two “Blade Runner” films is also there for several good reasons too. First of all, it gives the audience a chance to absorb the atmosphere and and to actually think about everything in the films too. Again, these are films with a lot of complex themes and subtle details which aren’t always immediately noticeable. You can watch the original “Blade Runner” film five times and still notice new stuff in it.

Secondly, in both films, the slow pacing also sets the mood too. These are melancholy downbeat films and the relative lack of whizz-bang action, especially in the first film, reflects this mood. Not only that, one of the major themes of the two films is that they try to tell “realistic” stories set in a futuristic world. Real life is rarely as fast-paced or thrilling as an action movie. So, yes, the films had some good reasons for their slow pacing.

As such, including lots of thrilling highly-stylised “action movie” fight scenes and fast-paced thriller stuff in “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” (2021) was an… interesting.. departure from this tradition. I’m really in two minds about this element of the series.

On the one hand, the fight sequences are surprisingly well-choreographed and animated, not to mention that they are sometimes used for subtle characterisation in various ways too. More importantly, they also reflect the fact that the main mood of the TV show’s story is one of anger – it’s a revenge story, as much as it is a detective story. The more aggressive pacing does represent the main character’s emotions surprisingly well.

On the other hand, the TV series tries to “have it both ways”. There is some angst-ridden brooding about moral ambiguity, some discussion of free will, some melancholy moments, some scenes where the characters are exhausted or injured etc… Yet, they often just recover from this and carry on regardless. There’s even a dialogue line about it in one episode. Likewise, although the main characters are morally-ambiguous, they are also contrasted with cartoonishly evil villains… who make them almost seem like traditional “good guys” in comparison. Seen in comparison to the two films, it seems like “Blade Runner lite”.

However, on it’s own merits, all of this stuff works surprisingly well. And this is perhaps the most important thing about “Blade Runner: Black Lotus”. It should be seen on its own merits. Yes, there are a lot of references to the films – and knowledge of them helps a lot whilst watching it – but it is clearly meant to be something different from them.

This is perhaps also shown by the fact that the series takes a slightly different perspective to the films. Yes, it still fits into the detective genre to an extent – but the “official” detectives are side-characters here. The main character is on a search for answers and for revenge, and the series’ style reflects this different perspective. It isn’t a melancholy police procedural set in a futuristic world, but an angry thriller story set in that world. It’s a subtle change, but it explains a lot about the different creative choices made in the show.

So, yes, it’s very different to the films that it is based on, but it is still a really interesting show on its own merits. Again, it grew on me a lot after a few episodes. If you are a fan of the films and you can keep an open mind about it, then it is definitely worth watching.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

How “Resident Evil 3” (1999) Handles Its Military Themes

Well, for this article in my series about horror videogames, I thought that I’d look at the military themes in the original 1999 version of “Resident Evil 3” (SPOILERS). This was something I ended up thinking about after making some last-minute additions to this article about costume design before it was posted in mid-August.

If you haven’t read that article, one of the interesting things about “Resident Evil 3” (1999) is that the main character – Jill Valentine – has a drastically different costume design to the one she has in “Resident Evil” (1996).

In the first game, she was a member of an elite police special forces unit called S.T.A.R.S and her military-style costume design reflects this. Although she is canonically ex-military, the only references to her military career in the very first “Resident Evil” game are that she uses the same type of pistol as the US Army used at the time and that she also wears a military-style beret too (albeit in police blue, rather than military green).

Yet, although it is spelled out more clearly in S.D.Perry’s novelisation, it is heavily implied that she has been suspended or fired from S.T.A.R.S shortly before the events of “Resident Evil 3”. Not only is her ID card kept in a locker at the police station, but her costume design is also about as far from “military style” as you can get. In contrast to her practical military fatigues from the first game, her costume design in the third game is more well-suited to a nightclub than a battlefield.

Here’s a comparison of Jill’s military-style costume design in “Resident Evil” (1996) and her more civilian-style costume in “Resident Evil 3” (1999).

And this brings me on to one of the most interesting elements of “Resident Evil 3” (1999), literally all of the game’s main characters are somewhere in between “military” and “civilian”. After all, both the main supporting character (Carlos Olivera) and the main villain (Nikolai Zinoviev) are members of a corporate-owned mercenary squad rather than any official armed forces. Yes, they might wear military-style uniforms and brandish assault rifles, but their loyalty is to a corporation rather than a country.

Going back to costume designs again, Carlos’ outfit is very telling here because – although it looks military at first glance – the lack of traditional military elements like a helmet, rank insignia or even basic arm protection clearly shows that he isn’t really an “official” soldier.

This is a screenshot of Carlos from “Resident Evil 3” (1999). Note how his costume design looks military, but includes little in the way of the protective gear that actual soldiers would probably wear.

Yet, he sees himself as a fearless warrior and wants others to see him as such – leading to several moments where he tries to be “heroic” and ends up either collapsing with exhaustion or being knocked unconscious. One reason for this was probably to add vulnerability to his character – since this is a horror game, rather than a thrilling action game. However, his one genuinely heroic action – finding a vaccine for Jill – doesn’t really result in him being seriously incapacitated afterwards (he sits down for a few seconds after dodging an explosion, but that’s about it), perhaps as a subtle way of differentiating between genuine heroism and showing off.

Its also difficult not to see Carlos as a mirror image of Jill too. Whilst Jill is ex-military, she looks non-military at first glance and doesn’t boast about her past – yet she actually gets to do some seriously heroic and tough things throughout the game, culminating in her delivering an action movie-style one liner before blasting the final boss into smithereens. So, the designs of both characters counterpoint each other in some really interesting ways.

The game’s theme of “semi-military” characters in a US setting was also a surprisingly “ahead of its time” piece of political satire too. Not only do the corporate mercenaries come across as an eerily prescient criticism of the controversial “private military companies” that worked with US forces in Iraq during the 2000s/2010s, but the S.T.A.R.S unit can also be seen as a reference to the increasing militarisation of US police forces since the 1990s – mostly due to the controversial “1033 program” which involves the US government giving police forces military surplus weapons and equipment.

And, talking of political satire, literally the only appearance of the “official” US armed forces in the game is during the ending movie when the US military nukes the zombie-infested city. Aside from a few brief glimpses of a missile, the game places almost all of the visual emphasis on grim scenes of apocalyptic destruction and a scary mushroom cloud. A voice-over also states that the weapon was targeted at civilians. Not only that, the main characters are shown to almost be victims of this terrifying military weapon and the overall emotional tone of the ending is noticeably more sombre than a typical videogame ending of the time too.

This game was made in Japan which, as anyone with even a vague knowledge of 20th century history will know, probably also explains the strong criticisms of militarism and ultra-destructive weapons. This context also offers another possible reason for why the game’s good characters aren’t members of any “official” military either, given that most people in Japan wouldn’t see military membership in the way that audiences in places like the US or UK might do.

So, not only is “Resident Evil 3” (1999) a game about characters who exist in the twilight zone between “military” and “civilian”, but it also contains a lot of really well-handled satire of militarism too.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

The Theme Of Memory In “Silent Hill 2” (2001) & “Silent Hill 3” (2003)

Well, for this article in my series about horror videogames, I thought that I’d take another look at the second and third “Silent Hill” games. In particular, how both of them handle the theme of memory in some interestingly creepy and incredibly clever ways.

Needless to say, this article will contain MAJOR SPOILERS for both games (plus, “Silent Hill” (1999) – and both the 2018 and 1977 versions of “Suspiria” too) and, since these are psychological horror games, DISTURBING CONTENT too.

Let’s start with “Silent Hill 2” (2001), which begins with one of the best introductory sequences you will ever see in a horror videogame. After a moody scene showing a weary-looking man – James – staring at himself in a dirty mirror in a dilapidated roadside bathroom, he walks outside and looks out over a grey, fog-shrouded forest at a mysterious town in the distance.

Then, in a voice-over, we hear his wife Mary talking fondly about her memories of going on holiday to the resort town of Silent Hill with him. She says that she is waiting for him in their “special place”. Then James takes over the voice-over to explain that was remembering a letter that he got from Mary recently. However, Mary died three years earlier from an unspecified disease. Yet, even though he’s sure that the letter can’t be real, he still has to visit the town in case she is somehow there.

This screenshot really doesn’t do this moment justice, but – thanks to Guy Cihi’s voice acting and some brilliantly bittersweet guitar music – it’s one of the most eerily atmospheric opening sequences you’ll ever see in a horror game. This scene was apparently ruined slightly in the 2012 “HD Collection” remaster though, due to things like re-recorded voice-acting and visual glitches.

One of the most interesting parts of this introduction is the excellent use of visual contrast to show the passing of time and the difference between memory and reality. When James remembers Mary’s letter, the emotional tone is a lot warmer and more nostalgic – yet the first thing that the player sees of this rose-tinted resort town is a cold, bleak and harsh landscape.

This is further emphasised when the peacefully bittersweet guitar music suddenly gives way to eerie, echoing ambient noise as soon as the voice-over ends. The game is set in the same place that both James and Mary remember, but the passage of time has changed it from something warm and joyous to something cold and empty. If you’ve ever revisited somewhere that you felt nostalgic about, only to find that it is different to what you remember – then you’ll probably understand how expertly the game captures THIS feeling.

This theme is further emphasised when James meets another character called Maria. She is similar to his late wife, Mary, but she is also different in both visual and character terms. Whilst Mary dressed conservatively, Maria wears more of a “party” outfit. Whilst Mary had slightly faded light brown hair, Maria has bleached blonde hair. Their personalities are also subtly different too – with Maria being more care-free, expressive and seductive. There’s a very strong implication that Maria is the kind of person James wanted Mary to be. As well as being a brilliant example of Freud’s concept of “The Uncanny“, Maria is a literal manifestation of James’ rose-tinted memories… whilst the manifestation of his real memories of Mary literally turn into a vengeful monster at the end of the game. Why “vengeful”? Well, read on…

Of course, the theme of memory in this game goes a lot deeper than this. As fans of the game will already know, Mary was ill but didn’t die of a disease. She was murdered…by James. However, James has repressed his guilty memories so much that he genuinely believes that she has succumbed to the disease until – in a shocking plot twist, foreshadowed in all sorts of clever subtle ways – he finally remembers everything. It is a game about extreme guilt and self-loathing, about the gulf between rose-tinted memory and bleak reality. And this is probably one of the main reasons why it’s such a deeply unsettling and memorable horror game.

“Silent Hill 3” (2003) is also very much a game about memories too, but it handles them in a slightly different – and arguably more clever – way. The main character, Heather Mason, is an ordinary teenager who begins the game by having a nightmare about a rusty, dilapidated monster-filled fairground before waking up at a café table in an ordinary shopping centre. She calls her father and is about to return home, when a creepy private detective tries to talk to her. She hides in a bathroom – but notices a strange occult symbol painted on the mirror that seems oddly familiar to her. She makes a comment about how much she hates mirrors. Then, after climbing out of the window, the world around her slowly begins to turn into a distorted nightmare-world, not unlike the one in her dream….

Although the plot of this game only fully makes sense if you’ve played “Silent Hill” (1999) first – the general point of it is that Heather is a reincarnation of a character from that game. A young girl called Alyssa who was raised by a mysterious cult and who slowly died in agony after suffering horrendous injuries in a fire. Heather has completely repressed her memories of being in a cult or her painful death, yet – as the game progresses – more and more of these memories begin to emerge. At one point, she looks in a mirror and sees a bloodstained/burned Alyssa-like reflection of herself surrounded by tendrils of blood… before the blood gradually begins to appear on the other side of the mirror, symbolising her repressed past seeping into her present. Later, she actually has to fight that reflection in a challenging boss battle.

This is a screenshot from “Silent Hill 3” (2003), showing Heather pointing a shotgun at her past self. Hardly the most subtle of metaphors, but introspection can sometimes be an intense thing…

This game is one of the best expressions of introspection and how bad memories can linger. Heather is also literally infected with her past – eg: a creepy parasite that has taken up residence inside her body – and the scene where she gets rid of it is kind of a metaphor for dealing with bad memories. She also suddenly has “strange” reactions (eg: when using save points, looking at mirrors etc…) that she cannot initially explain and has to learn about via a journey of self-discovery.

Because of the game’s focus on introspection and on processing and conquering bad memories, it is a very scary – yet also weirdly “feel-good”- kind of horror game at the same time. One of the only other things I’ve found that uses this exact style of horror is Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 art-horror masterpiece “Suspiria“.

Guadagnino’s remake makes some major changes to the plot of Argento’s original and one of the best ones is that a powerful ancient witch – Mater Suspiriorum – isn’t just a random horror villain that the main character fights shortly before the end credits, but is instead… the main character herself. Like Heather Mason, the main character in this film (Susie Bannion, played by Dakota Johnson) comes from a stifling cult-like religious background and has repressed the fact that she is a reincarnation of this character.

Seriously, in a weird way, the 2018 “Suspiria” remake is perhaps the very best adaptation of “Silent Hill 3” that I’ve ever seen. It even stars Tilda Swinton, who was the main inspiration for the original voice-acting/visual design of one of the villains (Claudia) in “Silent Hill 3” too – and she plays a vaguely similar type of character in “Suspiria” (2018). Yes, the film is different in a lot of ways – but, thematically speaking, it is a much better adaptation than “Silent Hill: Revelation” (2012) was. But, I’m getting side-tracked….

Anyway, “Silent Hill 2” (2001) and “Silent Hill 3” (2003) are perhaps the absolute highlights of the series because of the really intelligent, nuanced and complex way that they use the theme of memory as both a central source of horror and drama. They are extremely well-written games.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

The Thematic Core Of A Horror Game

Well, for this article in my series about horror videogames, I thought that I’d take a look at how themes can be an integral part of many horror games. Although it is possible to make a scary horror game without an underlying theme, quite a few classic and modern horror games will often be built around a clearly-defined theme.

And, yes, the “built around” part is important because – in many horror games – numerous small details within the game or even the way that the game has been designed will help to emphasise or reinforce the theme of the game. Usually, this theme will either be something inherently disturbing or it will be a more general theme that adds depth to the game itself. The best horror games will often keep these themes “hiding in plain sight” – easily visible to observant players, but also a subliminal part of the overall experience that some players may not even consciously notice.

A great example of a game that uses it’s themes to add to the horror is “Silent Hill 2” (2001) (SPOILERS ahead!). Throughout the game, there is a prominent theme of guilt and judgement – the main character meets several morally-ambiguous characters, the main boss monster of the game looks like an executioner, part of the game is set in a prison, ominous hell-themed graffiti can be found on several walls, there’s an item puzzle involving a set of gallows etc…

All of these subtle thematic elements are not only there to foreshadow a major plot twist about the main character’s  morally-dubious past, but they are also inherently disturbing in their own right too – and they really help to add to the game’s uniquely creepy and ultra-bleak atmosphere too. There’s a real feeling of hopeless damnation and doom throughout this game. And it works so well because these thematic elements are a core part of the game, rather than something that has just been bolted on afterwards. They influence a lot of subtle design decisions throughout the game.

“Amnesia: The Dark Descent” (2010) (SPOILERS again) is another game that uses disturbing themes to brilliantly chilling effect too. As hinted in the game’s title, this is very much a game about one character’s slow descent into villainy. We get to see how this character uses “morality” to justify doing horrible things to other people and how he slowly goes from being reluctant to act in a cruel way to relishing it with sadistic glee. It is a game about the nature of evil.

In addition to this, the prominent theme of torture in the mid-late parts of “Amnesia” is not only inherently disturbing in it’s own right but, like the extreme horror movies of the 2000s (such as the “Saw” films), can also be seen as a criticism of the US military’s use of “enhanced interrogation” during the height of the War On Terror too. By presenting torture as evil and disturbing, rather than “necessary” (in the way it was portrayed in some thriller genre TV shows during the 2000s), this game makes a moral and political point.

Themes can also be completely based on things like gameplay mechanics too. For example, “Dead Space” (2008)  makes a point of making all of the game’s HUD elements completely diegetic and avoiding non-interactive moments as often as possible because the designers believed this would make the game more immersive.

The classic “Resident Evil” games have a strong mechanical emphasis on resource management and creating suspense through placing limits on the player. Combat in these games also places heavy emphasis on keeping a good distance from monsters whilst fighting too. The horror in these games is always based in science, rather than the paranormal, too.

In contrast, one mechanical and visual theme in the earlier “Silent Hill” games is suspense and ugliness. Not only is the player always alerted to the presence of monsters before they become visible, but many of the game’s locations look deliberately run-down, decaying and/or dilapidated. Even the combat system in these games plays into these themes too – with fights often being brutal and ugly close-range things involving a main character who is inexperienced with weapons (reflected by clumsy combat mechanics, sound/animation design and vague weapon descriptions). Another theme is mystery – with the stories of the older “Silent Hill” games often being delivered in slightly fragmentary ways, with the player left to “fill in the gaps”, and the game world itself often being shrouded in a thick layer of obscuring fog too.

Sometimes, themes are less about creating horror and more about adding depth to the story of a game. A great example of this is probably “Resident Evil: Code Veronica X” (2001) – although the main story of the game sits somewhere between “preposterous”, “melodramatic”, “stylised” and “ridiculous”, the game’s amusingly corny sci-fi horror thriller plot is lent a bit more depth thanks to it’s themes of siblings and mirroring.

The two villains in the game, Alfred and Alexia Ashford are both siblings whose names begin with the same letter. The two main “good” characters – Claire and Chris Redfield – are also siblings whose names begin with the same letter. Both pairs of characters are almost complete mirror images of each other. The Ashfords are presented as aristocratic, cold and ruthless. The Redfields are presented as ordinary, friendly and capable of empathy. Yes, the game includes some very dated elements – such as the contrast between Alfred Ashford’s cartoonishly ultra-feminine personality and Chris Redfield’s rugged masculine personality – but the theme of mirroring and siblings really helps to add a bit of extra depth to the game’s story.

In fact, and I’ve mentioned this before, one fascinating theme throughout pretty much all of the older Resident Evil games (1996-2004) is a criticism of wealth and power. In all of these games, the villains are presented as being involved with a wealthy corporation founded by eccentric aristocrats. This is even reflected in the location designs in these games, which will often deliberately include opulent-looking areas filled with horrifying monsters. Likewise, these games often show how teamwork between ordinary people can overcome the plans of aristocrats or wealthy CEOs. For a series of older videogames, this is surprisingly left-wing and it really adds an extra satirical dimension to these older games.

And, yes, themes can also be used in horror games to add satirical elements too. Another good example of this is probably “The Coma Recut” (2017) which seems to be a criticism of the intensity of the education system in South Korea. The game focuses on an exhausted student who falls asleep in an exam and is not only chased through the corridors of the school by an evil version of his teacher, but can also find things like vending machines that sell cans of coffee too. In the 2019 sequel to this game the main segment of the game begins after the main character finishes a school day… late enough in the evening for the moon to be visible!

The main theme – fittingly – in all of the games that I’ve mentioned so far is that they have all been designed around their themes. These themes are a subtle background element during gameplay, rather than something that has been shoehorned into the game after it has been completed. Often, these themes will be subtle enough for some players to not even notice them unless they are actively paying attention to and thinking about the game. And this is when themes in horror games are often at their very best, when they are something that subliminally shapes the experience and/or are an “Easter egg” for observant players – rather than the game lecturing the player about a particular topic. And, again, a strong thematic core isn’t essential to a scary horror game – but it certainly shows up in a lot of good horror games.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

One Crucial Thematic Difference Between “Resident Evil” And “Silent Hill”

Well, continuing my series of articles about horror videogames, I thought that I’d do yet another comparison between “Resident Evil” and “Silent Hill”.

This time, I’ll be looking at one crucial thematic difference between the two venerable franchises and how it has a major effect on the style and tone of each franchise. But, first, see if you can spot it?

Here are screenshots from the very first game in each series. Can you spot the thematic difference?

If you answered “One is sci-fi horror and the other is paranormal horror“, then you would be correct. And this is perhaps the most important difference between the two series – in “Resident Evil”, all of the horrors are the product of evil scientific experiments by a faceless corporation. In “Silent Hill”, all of the horrors are the work of mysterious paranormal forces and/or their fanatical worshippers.

When seen together, it’s a fascinating distorted reflection of the two most common types of worldviews – religious and scientific. Although the end result of both of these drastically different thematic backgrounds is “scary places filled with monsters“, the thematic difference still has a surprisingly large effect on the style and atmosphere of each series. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll try to focus more on the very first game in each series.

I’ll start with “Resident Evil”. This game’s scientific themes have a subtle but noticeable effect on the gameplay – since it often feels a bit more “logical” and “rule-based”. Your character has a strictly limited inventory, saving is tightly controlled, the camera angles are strictly fixed, puzzles often involve logical reasoning and the combat system relies on the player keeping their distance from the monsters and precisely aiming realistic modern weapons at them.

The older games in this series get their suspenseful gameplay from these precise limitations and restrictions. Often playing the game is almost a science in its own right, as you will find yourself frequently making logical decisions about what to carry in your inventory or whether you should risk wasting your resources on fighting a particular monster. It is a very cerebral slow-paced game with a lot of “rules” that are used to build suspense.

Likewise, since science is about the discovery of knowledge, the stories of these games are often surprisingly well-explained. Yes, it is often a story about people overstepping the limits of scientific ethics or a stylised criticism of bio-weapons, but there is relatively little mystery in a “Resident Evil” game. As you go through the game you, like a scientist investigating something, uncover more details until you have solved the mystery. This, again, links in perfectly with the game’s sci-fi elements and objective rule-based gameplay.

Now, let’s look at “Silent Hill”. In this game, the horror comes from occult and paranormal forces and this also has a surprising effect on the gameplay – since it feels a bit more mysterious or dream-like in some ways. Your character has an unlimited inventory, you can save as often as you want, the camera can swerve around in a disorientating fashion, puzzles sometimes require imagination/literary comprehension, the combat system changes slightly depending on the weapon (eg: you can move whilst some weapons are raised, but not others) with the game encouraging brutal close-range combat with more generic weapons.

There is a slight element of “haziness” and mystery to the gameplay, with the exact “rules” not feeling as strict or fixed as you might expect. For example, the game includes “hidden” checkpoints before some boss battles – a forgiving feature not really found in the “strict” rule system of older “Resident Evil” games. The first “Silent Hill” game is slightly more about the overall experience and atmosphere than about making the player think logically within a set of rules. Whilst this reduces the suspenseful “survival” elements slightly, it instead builds a subtler, deeper and more unpredictable feeling of dread.

And this is reflected in the game’s story too. Not only is reality itself presented as a malleable thing – with the game world sometimes suddenly changing into a rusty and nightmarish “otherworld” version of itself – but the game’s underlying story is kept at least slightly fragmentary, mysterious and cryptic too. Not knowing literally everything is the entire point. This mystery and lack of solid “rules” creates the feeling of powerful otherworldly forces beyond the limits on human comprehension, in a similar manner to the classic horror fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. Seriously, this game wouldn’t “work” if it fully explained literally all of its story…

So, yes, one thematic difference can have a huge effect on so many subtle elements of how both games are designed. THIS is good game design! Almost everything in an older “Resident Evil” or “Silent Hill” game is consistent with the type of horror that it is using – and serves to emphasise either scientific or paranormal themes. Whilst the two series may have some elements in common, they feel so different to play because the designers have actually paid attention to the themes of their series and found clever ways to subtly work them into the minute-to-minute gameplay.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

One Basic Way To Deal With Artist’s Block

Well, although I’ve probably mentioned this before, I thought that I’d talk about one of the most basic ways to get inspired if you can’t find an idea for your next drawing or painting. This is one of the most common types of inspiration out there and is something that you’ve probably already experienced before, even if you might not have noticed.

I am, of course, talking about finding a theme and then making some art based on it.

This works best if it is a theme that you are actually interested in right now – which is why random prompts (eg: “nature”, “old buildings” etc…) might not always work. If the theme interests you, then not only do you have a pre-made idea to start from but – most importantly- you will also have motivation and interest too, which are one of the most important parts of making an “inspired” piece of art.

But, of course, how do you actually find this interesting theme in the first place?

Well, there are lots of ways, but the basic idea is to either look at lots of things or daydream randomly until something grabs your interest. This could involve watching a film you like, reading a novel, listening to music from a particular genre, randomly surfing the internet or even playing a computer game that you are good enough at that you can just zone out and play “on autopilot” whilst you are daydreaming. The trick is to look at things and to daydream until an interesting theme appears in your mind.

And don’t worry if your art sometimes ends up going in a very different direction to the theme you intended to follow. This is a good thing. It can mean that you have more inspirations than you noticed, that you’ve found a more interesting theme than the one you thought you’d found or it could just be a sign that you’re developing your own art style (and, yes, themes can be a part of an art style). Whatever it is, if your final painting or drawing looks different to your original theme, then this is a good thing. Enjoy it.

To give you an example of this, the night before I wrote this article, I felt a little uninspired. Luckily – thanks to watching a few random 1980s-era music videos and technology TV show clips on Youtube and also seeing a photo-realistic tech demo of a then-upcoming games console, I had two themes ready for my painting – “photo-realism” and “the 1980s”. When I first found these themes, I had the idea of painting a gloomy office filled with old CRT televisions and detailed 1980s-style characters (and I might possibly still make this painting, since the idea still seems very atmospheric).

But, although I was going to make the painting at the start of the night, I was more in the mood for watching a film and got distracted by “Alien Covenant”. Finally, slightly tired and unenthusiastic, I remembered that I hadn’t made a painting and reluctantly started making one – really glad that I had a pre-made idea. But, of course, the digitally-edited painting I made ended up looking completely different from this. Here’s a “zoomed in” detail from it:

This is a “zoomed in” detail from a small digitally-edited painting that should appear here on the 31st May 2021.

Although the sci-fi influence was probably partially from “Alien Covenant”, I was surprised to see how many of my usual themes (eg: cyberpunk sci-fi, horror movies, rain, obsolete technology etc…) suddenly appeared in the painting whilst I was making it. Likewise, since I realised that I didn’t really have enough enthusiasm for the whole “photo-realism” thing, I abandoned it – but it affected the composition of the painting slightly, since the characters in it are standing slightly closer to the foreground than usual.

The point of all of this is to remember that finding an interesting theme is usually only a good way to actually start making a painting or drawing when you are feeling uninspired. The goal here is to actually make some art. It doesn’t matter if your finished artwork looks completely different (especially if it is a better piece of art than the one you’d planned to make), the important thing is that whatever theme you find gives you the motivation to actually start making it in the first place.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂

Three Tips For Basing Lots Of Stories Around A Single Theme

As regular readers of this site know, I’m going through a bit of a Clive Cussler phase at the moment. If you’ve never heard of him before, he writes thriller novels that almost always seem to revolve around the sea, sailing and/or diving in some way or another. Or, to put it another way, the Clive Cussler novel I’m reading at the time of writing is literally called “Sahara” – and it still includes lots of nautical stuff. In a story about a desert!

So, this made me think about writing stories based around a theme. Although I don’t have nearly as much experience with themed storytelling as Cussler does, I’ve had some experience. For example, the short story collections I’ve written for this blog will have a theme – like last year’s “Retro Sci-Fi” Halloween stories – and I also somehow manage to make most of these blog articles about the subject of creating things, even when talking about seemingly unrelated subjects.

So, how can you come up with lots of different stories that still involve a single theme?

1) Know your theme: Simply put, you need to have a fairly good knowledge of the theme in question before using it in multiple stories. In other words, you need both research and (if possible) experience. So, choose a theme that you know a lot about. And, more importantly, one that interests you in some way or another.

And, this isn’t as difficult as you might think. After all, you almost certainly have interests and/or experiences you can draw upon. Even if your life has been fairly “ordinary”, there’s probably something interesting in there if you look hard enough. Whether it’s your encyclopedic knowledge of a particular type of music, or a hobby that you have, or some life experience that is “ordinary” to you but would be interesting to someone else etc…

And this doesn’t even have to be something ultra-dramatic in order to be interesting. If the author is really interested in the theme and can communicate that interest to the reader, then you can write interesting stories about any theme.

For example, when I was a teenager, I read about half of Jeffrey Archer’s “Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less” – which is a novel about the stock market. The stock market. And it was somehow still interesting enough to make my teenage self read half of it (and interesting enough that, for a very short while, I actually thought that stockbrokers were “cool”).

So, yes, knowing your theme really well and being genuinely interested in it is pretty much a requirement.

2) Challenge and compatibility: If you’re writing lots of stories about a single theme, then you need to keep it interesting. And you can do this by trying to make your “compatible” with seemingly unrelated things. Not only does this intrigue the reader, but it also provides an interesting “can I do this?” challenge to you too.

At the beginning of this article, I mentioned Clive Cussler’s “Sahara” – which I’m reading at the time of writing. This is a nautical thriller novel that revolves around the Sahara Desert. But, how does Clive Cussler do this seemingly “impossible” thing?

Well, part of the story is set on a large river that leads to the Sahara. Likewise, the main premise of the story revolves around stopping a dangerous source of water-borne contamination that has the potential to spread to the sea. Likewise, scenes where characters are stranded in the desert read a bit like descriptions of people adrift at sea etc…

So, yes, it’s possible to write a nautical novel about a desert. And I’d bet that Clive Cussler had a lot of fun when working out how to tell this seemingly “impossible” type of story.

So, trying to make your theme compatible with seemingly unrelated things can be both an interesting creative challenge and a way to make your story more interesting to your readers. At the very least, even if you mess it up, your story will still be a brilliant source of unintentional comedy.

3) The characters: Simply put, if your characters are interested in and/or experts about a particular subject, then you can include a theme in your stories reasonably easily – even in stories that seem to be totally unrelated to that theme.

The detective genre is the perfect example of this. If a character is a detective, then pretty much any story that they appear in will usually be a detective story of some kind of another. After all, they see the world from the perspective of a detective, so they’ll still be interested in solving mysteries or working out why things have happened – even if the story doesn’t involve them solving any crimes.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂

Looking At Genres On A Thematic Level – A Ramble

Although this is an article about making art, making comics and/or writing fiction, I’m going to have to start by spending a while talking about my experiences with listening to punk music. As usual, there’s a good reason for this that I hope becomes obvious later.

At the time of writing, I still seem to be going through a bit of a “1990s American punk music” phase. As I’ve probably mentioned before, this was the first “cool” genre of music I ever discovered and – although I’m more of a heavy metal fan these days – I still find myself returning to it every now and then.

This time round, I found myself discovering a new band or two, buying a few extra punk albums and listening to bands that I vaguely knew about in slightly more depth. This had some surprisingly mixed results (eg: I learnt that Green Day’s “Warning” is actually a good album [and so is “Insomniac” too], I discovered a band called “No Use For A Name” who I should have discovered years ago etc..). But, this slightly deeper look at one of my favourite genres of music completely changed my opinion of it.

Since the very first punk band I ever discovered (sometime in the late 1990s) was The Offspring, I’d always thought that 90s American punk music was all about fun and rebellion. After gradually discovering a few other bands over the years, I still sort of thought the same sort of things about the genre – but I realised that it could also include things like lyrical complexity, gothic elements, shock value, political rebellion etc…

But, after listening repeatedly to several of Green Day’s classic albums and No Use For A Name’s amazing “Making Friends” album. I realised something about the genre that I’d never really thought about too much before. For all of it’s energy and passion, it’s often a genre about failure and misery. For a genre that I thought was all about cheerful nostalgia, intelligent thought and the kind of rebellious attitude that the world really needs these days, it’s actually surprisingly depressing if you actually read the lyrics.

This, of course, made me take another look at some of my favourite punk songs and albums and – yes- this theme also seems to be present there, albeit in more subtle ways. Although the genre still sounds amazing and fills me with nostalgia, it’s become a bit less of a “feel good” genre than it used to be because I now know more about the genre than I thought I did.

So, why have I spent several paragraphs rambling about the punk genre?

Well, it’s because it’s about the importance of looking at genres on a thematic level. This is something that you can often only do if you research a genre as much as you can. Since, the more things (by different people) you see within the same genre, the easier it is to spot common themes.

This might sound pretentious or overly academic but there are some good practical reasons to look at genres thematically if you’re an artist, writer etc…

If you understand the common themes in a genre, then you’ll find it easier to make things in that genre. You’ll find it easier to come up with ideas for stories, comics, paintings etc… since you can ask yourself “if I made something about [this theme], what would it look like?” This is especially true if it’s a genre that you really love, but don’t know how to make things in it.

In addition to this, if you know what the common themes of a genre are, then it’s also a lot easier to include elements from other genres. After all, if you make something that looks like it belongs to another genre, but contains the themes from one of your favourite genres, then you’ll probably come up with something a lot more original that will still be recognisable as part of your chosen genre.

Likewise, studying the themes in other creative works can show you how to include “difficult” themes in subtle ways. For example, if you watch the music video for “Soulmate” by No Use For A Name, it seems like an “ordinary” song about a failed relationship. But, if you actually listen to the lyrics, it isn’t a song about romantic relationships at all. It’s an incredibly depressing song about a life of paranoia, worry, despair etc.. since the “soulmate” in the title is shown to be those emotions rather than a romantic partner.

Finally, looking at the themes of your favourite genres can help you to think about the types of themes that you want to include in your own creative works. Yes, you’ll probably end up doing this without realising it anyway. But, thinking about it more consciously will probably allow you to make your creative works have more emotional impact, depth, complexity etc…

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂

Three Basic Tips For Finding Your Own Visual Language

Before I begin, I should probably explain what a “visual language” is. Although your visual language is a part of your art style, you shouldn’t confuse the two things.

Your art style is the unique way that you draw or paint things, whereas your “visual language” refers to the kinds of things that appear regularly in your art in order to symbolise various things.

For example, when I’m making art that is set in the 1990s, I’ll often include one or two specific 1990s-style fashions (eg: dark floral dresses, layered outfits etc..) as a quick way to show that the picture is set in the 1990s. Likewise, when making cyberpunk art, I’ll often include wall tiles with concentric squares/circles/scribbles on them in the background. Both of these parts of my visual language can (just about) be seen in this old painting from last year:

“All Kinds Of Awesome” By C. A. Brown

So, how do you find your own visual language? Here are a few tips:

1) Geekiness: Your visual language tends to be strongest when it comes to things that fascinate you. After all, you’ll probably be making a lot more art in genres that you really love than in genres that you don’t.

So, look at the things that really fascinate you and see if there are any elements from them that stand out as particularly cool. Whilst you shouldn’t copy specific details (because copyright), see if you can break down the things that you think are cool-looking into their most generic elements and then try to create something new using those elements.

For example, my “cyberpunk” wall tiles are inspired by the Aztec/Maya style wall tiles from Deckard’s apartment in the movie “Blade Runner“. These tiles have a rather intricate geometric design involving several interlocking squares. So, for both practical (and copyright) reasons, I broke this down to it’s most generic elements (eg: “wall tiles with geometric and/or intricate designs”) and then came up with a simpler, and different, design to use in my own art:

Like this.

Because it was relatively quick to draw (due to it’s simplified design) and because it looked so cool, it’s ended up becoming part of my visual language. So, find something cool from the things that you really geek out about, break it down into it’s generic elements and then create something new from those elements.

2) Ignore realism, go for stylisation instead: Since art is something that is created using imagination, you can afford to be a little bit unrealistic when it comes to shaping your own visual language.

In other words, don’t be afraid to use slightly unusual or uncommon things regularly in your visual language if you think that they look distinctive or cool.

Going back to my example about 1990s fashions – many of the fashions that I use to symbolise that a picture is set in the 1990s probably weren’t that common in the 1990s. In fact, many of the things that people wore everyday in the 1990s weren’t that different to what people wear these days (eg: T-shirts, jeans etc…). Yet, they were fashions that were more popular in the 1990s than they are now. So, they instantly say “1990s!” when they appear in a painting.

So, don’t be afraid to make your art slightly stylised or to regularly use unusual things in your visual language, if you think that they either look cool or are a quick visual symbol of some kind or another.

3) Just let it happen: Even if you don’t consciously try to create a visual language, it’s probably going to happen anyway.

If you practice regularly, then your visual language may just start developing without you even realising or noticing. In fact, many of the best and/or earlier parts of my visual language just kind of appeared this way.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂

Should Your Webcomic Have A Theme?

Well, for today, I thought that I’d talk about one of the most basic questions that you’ll have to ask yourself when you start a webcomic. That question is, of course, “should I make a webcomic about a single subject?”

The classic example of this type of webcomic is probably the whole sub-genre of webcomics about computer and video games (eg: classic examples include “Penny Arcade“, “Ctrl Alt Del” etc..). But there are plenty of other themed webcomics out there – from maths/ science-themed webcomics like “XKCD” and “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal“, to history-themed webcomics like “Hark! A Vagrant“.

However, whenever I’ve made traditional-style webcomics (like this mini series, this one and this one too), I’ve generally tried to avoid making all of my comic updates about a single theme. I’ve made comic updates about games, politics, music, subcultures, movies, old buildings, the 1990s etc…

I couldn’t really settle on a single theme, since I had a wide variety of ideas that I wanted to make comics about. However, not having a single theme for your webcomic is something of a double-edged sword since, although it means that you can be inspired by a wide variety of things and tell a wide variety of jokes, it also means that finding something interesting enough to make a webcomic update about can be slightly more challenging sometimes.

On the plus side, it also means that your comic is easier for new readers to become interested in.

In addition to this, another advantage of not making a themed webcomic is that there’s more emphasis on the characters. Because your webcomic doesn’t revolve around a single theme, you can include a lot of extra character development by showing how your characters react to a wide variety of different events and subjects.

But, if you’re going to make a themed webcomic then, it goes without saying, but your webcomic should be about a subject that you’re absolutely obsessed with. Since most webcomics don’t have a fixed length, it has to be a subject that you’ll still feel totally happy writing about several years after your webcomic starts.

It’s obviously also useful for it to be a subject with a lot of history and/or a subject that constantly generates lots of new news (eg: video games, politics, science etc…). In other words, if people can’t geek out about a particular subject, then don’t make a webcomic about it.

One thing about themed webcomics (that is both an advantage and a disadvantage) is that they are aimed at a very specific audience. This gives them a lot of added appeal to people who are interested in the same subject, but at the cost of being less interesting to people who aren’t. In other words, if your webcomic becomes popular – then you’ll have a smaller, but more dedicated, fanbase.

So, unless you have a real passion for an extremely obscure subject and know how to make it interesting to other people, then it’s usually a good idea to make your themed webcomic about a subject that other people are actually interested in.

On the other hand, just because your webcomic is primarily about a single subject doesn’t mean that you can’t sneakily include other subjects in it too. As long as you find some way to link them to your main subject, then you can still make comics about pretty much anything.

A good example of this would probably be “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal”. Although it’s a comic about maths and science, it also includes jokes about all sorts of other subjects including philosophy, relationships, psychology, parenting, history etc… So, choosing a single theme doesn’t mean that you can’t include other subjects too.

In the end, there aren’t really any “right” or “wrong” answers to the question of whether your webcomic should have a theme or not. Just go with whatever feels right for you.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂