The Search for Art and Sound

In this post, I will talk about gathering historical images and music to use in the game's design. Above is a selection of the images I have downloaded as inspiration for the game art. You can scroll through them quickly using the navigation bar, or you can click on one image and cycle through them using the arrows.

THE ART

This week I began looking for art to use as the game's character sprites, props, and backgrounds. 

I already completed the game art for my secondary project on 1877 Russia. If you have not already seen that project, you can view it here. Just like in this Renaissance Italy game, my Russia game uses entirely authentic and period-appropriate paintings to construct the game's art. I am very happy with the way that project's art turned out, so I am employing the same technique for this project as well. 

My goal for the Renaissance game art is to download a wide variety of late 14th (and maybe some early 15th) century art from central Italy to use in the game. I can use Photoshop to select certain figures or objects from each painting and turn them into their own files. I can use these "Cut Outs," as I'm calling them, as individual game objects that can be placed in a scene, rearranged, animated, etc. to suit my game's needs. For example, in the image below, I could cut out some of the figures in the foreground to use as character sprites in the game. 

I have a detailed tutorial of how I did this for the Russia project, and I plan on using the same method here. To summarize, I will cut out the figure in Photoshop using various selection tools, put it on its own layer, reconstruct small areas that are missing detail (such as the bottom of a skirt or a cropped out elbow), and save the Cut Out as its own .png file with a transparent background. I did not need to animate any of the figures for my Russia game, but I plan on animating many of the Renaissance figures using Adobe Character Animate.

I tried to select as historically relevant paintings for the cut outs as I could. I knew I wanted the bulk of the art to come from artists that Lorenzo de' Medici patronized in his court. This list includes Michelangelo, da Vinci, Botticelli, Verocchio, Ghirlandaio, and the Pollaiuolo brothers. However, these artists lived beyond 1478 and produced some of their most famous works after this date. Further, most of them did not produce art directly for Lorenzo, but rather found work with other wealthy elites due to his patronage. This means I cannot exclusively use art that was made for the Medici before 1478 because that list is too narrow. I can, however, use artists that were associated with Lorenzo during his lifetime, which is good enough for me. 

I also searched for art by Vasari and Raffaello, two other very famous names associated with Florence and Rome at this time. I will continue expanding my search until I have all of the art I need, but I'd like to stay as close to famous Florentine art from 1450-1550 as I can, and I'd like to stick to the Early and High Renaissance periods and avoid mannerism beyond Michelangelo. Art evolves quickly in this period (by quickly, I mean over the course of a century), so I don't want to use art that is too far removed from 1478 Florence. The Mannerist and the Baroque movements are out. Michelangelo leans heavily towards mannerism by the time he is painting the Sistine Chapel, but he is my one exception to this rule because of his direct relationship with Lorenzo. 

I don't have a set date for when I want the game art to be totally done, as I did for Russia, because this project has a much larger scope. For now, I am content collecting art slowly as I begin to outline my five game levels. Once I have a better idea of which characters and locations I'll be using in each scene, I can make more concrete goals about art deadlines.

THE SOUND

I also began looking for background sound for the game this week. The goal of my search was to find .mp3, .mp4, or .wav audio files that I could upload directly into my game project.

This has been a much greater challenge than the art for several reasons. Firstly, I'm simply not as knowledgeable about music from the Italian Renaissance as I am art and architecture. I don't really know where to look. That I don't play an instrument or read sheet music is my second hurdle. There is some authentic sheet music from this time period available online, but I am not able to use it. If I could read sheet music or play an instrument, I might record my own background music, but for now I have to rely on audio files already published under Creative Commons or Public Domain, which is severely limiting. It is nearly impossible to find authentic 15th century audio for free, but it'd still be hard even if I was willing to pay for a license. 

In my game project on 1877 Russia, I was able to find modern recordings of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's work, available to download and use for free on Wikimedia Commons. Because Tchaikovsky is a very famous 19th and 20th century musician, it is much easier to find recordings of his music online than his Renaissance counterparts. However, the small success I found with him has given me a better sense of how I might search for Renaissance music. I plan to research specific artists and songs then look for those recordings. I can use the sheet music as a starting point. This might yield better results than a broad search for all Renaissance period music, which I've found is often confused with the fantasy medieval music that is more typical of video games.