These days I am reading the book Hieronymus Bosch Garden of Earthly Delights by Hans Belting, to necessarily understand the work better, and hopefully, to find answers to my own unsureness about my project.
The theme being “a digital garden of earthly delights”, it should be a must that there are elements from the original painting which are of great quantity and variety. However, as I am doing the modelling for the weeks, I now get really stuck in a confusion of what I am doing and what it is going to be. I thought it would be fabulous because the painting needs to be animated, explained and digitalised and it has tremendous space to be imagined and developed, while by time I found I am, and will be spending days and nights doing nothing but making models exactly as what has been set in graphics, even so slowly and cannot achieve the quality of the original. There will be really lack of the “design” and I cannot see where my value is other than a poor labourer.
I am now reconsidering what makes my project special. But the first thing I need to be sure about is that I am not making only a restoration, but thinking about what I can possibly add on and change, making it a project “based on” this triptych, considering the time I have. I need to make choices about the priority that what can remain in my project and where I am going – it seems that I have really been evasive about this.
Narratives & Interactions
From all the materials I have been looking at, there are actually few things scholars have reached consensus, even on the very basic things like whether it really conveys specific messages or it is just a personal artistic imagination; and there are only all kinds of interpretations, or people think it is overlooked in interpretations. In fact, even the title is not named by the painter himself: he really left no notion at all, calling for the viewers to undertake their own imagination.
And Belting explains the viewing as a consciously non-linear narrative as well:
We are given a view of them that was old-fashioned even then. It is a view that precludes a fixed viewing point which had become already the norm in painterly perspective. Instead, it creates a view from above, redolent of early illuminated manuscripts, that offers a survey of a broader narrative space. Indeed, as in a medieval simultaneous stage, spatial perception actually functions as a means of narrative rather than from a new spatio-temporal viewpoint… He registers the world as it is without subjecting what goes on in the world to any linear narrative.
This provides the opportunity for me to offer a free-exploration with an interactive “map”/ intelligent guide in this project. As my initial intention, it is not a storytelling or as many places of interests where you have to follow their audio guide, but you will be able to discover what appeals to you most. And at those certain points, the interactions are triggered.
So there are ways I am thinking or inspired for the interactions:
Firstly as a “treasure map”.
I saw the GIF of a game called Isoland, being a relation of a game scene from a certain perspective and a drawing of that. This reminded me of the drawings related to the Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch himself. And this could be how the viewers look for the places according to what they have been given, which could also be a special impression deepening for those important points, or a kind of collection.
A Chinese indie game Isoland.
The Tree Man, Drawing, Bosch
And the online documents also show the possibility of doing this: the Wikimedia Commons page, and also the interactive documentary of this painting I mentioned in another post of related projects before.
The page on Wikimedia Commons. It has annotations and the interactive frames for details where important.
Secondly, as kind of digital annotations.
This HUD styled visual effect is getting popular but not only related to futurism. At first I was worried if this could be disruptive in style, but now that I decided to “design”, I would like to integrate all the possibilities to create my own things. Not necessary to be so much futurism though.
Works by N3 Design. I saved this kind of motion graphics long ago and once thought about making my final project in this field.
Style and Aesthetics
I did not think much about how the environment would look like at first, just regarding it as a 3D version of the original painting, trying to have a quite good quality and not using the texture directly from the painting (like Bosch VR).
However, as I spent more time on modelling, I found it really painstaking and kill a lot of time to perfect my models. It would be impossible for me to make the realistic models as well as everything at the same time myself. Then I started to think about low-poly again: will I really lose details that I want to show if I use low-poly style?
In Game Design Studio course last semester I used low-poly and it turned out quite nice, but I did not make a lot of stuff there, just to simplify the environment and express the ideas in Calvino’s book Invisible Cities. Except that I did not have time to learn the software to create beautiful models, a main reason was that I thought it would destroy the imaginary space if I visualised that extremely abstract content in a very detailed and specific way.
When I was making models for the final project this time, I have been thinking that I am visualising something not abstract in its appearance, into a non-abstract look. I now realise this is probably why I am confused: if the triptych needs a serious 3D restoration, it would not be a task for me who is not a professional 3D modeller; if I am doing a design project, it cannot be that I just re-make it in Blender and Unity. And would it really damage something if the subdivision of a eccentric monster is 4 or 8 faces, or the shading is flat or smooth? What is the idea that Bosch wants to show, what the humankind is doing and the atmosphere or a realistic-looking world?
The answer is obvious if I do not stress the realistic restoration any more. But I may still draw from the academic analysis on this issue.
Belting describes this painting as “unfettered venture into the realms of the imagination“, and he also refers to the words of an American writer Peter S. Beagle, that it is “as a place filled with the intoxicating air of perfect liberty.“
Yes it actually can be seen as a compromise to the pressure, but also I do feel that it is a right choice since the work could seem better integrated if I am not able to make the realistic look (after all, the results of realistic style by some professional team of games in the market is not so satisfactory).
There is also the description “an erotic derangement that turns us all into voyeurs” by Beagle, which is the point I consider to define how the viewers/players exist in this project. So after everything is set at the position according to the painting, I will make a place at a higher position at the very front of the scenes for the player to start with, from where the view is just similar to what can be seen from the picture as possible; and then he or she can move down and into the scene as like.
So I would draw on some nice game aesthetics to illustrate the kind of style I am heading for.
1. Firewatch. I really love the layered colours and the lightings in this game. It is said that they wrote the scripts to make things in distance of different colour and lower poly to create this kind of look, because the fog function in game engines has only single colour and the high poly would look pixelated.
I also found a tutorial about making a 2D picture of Firewatch into 3D when I searched for images. The result is stunning and it might be useful for me later when I set my scenes. https://blog.sketchfab.com/art-spotlight-firewatch-fan-art/
2. The Witness. The world seems not very big when looked down but it is actually great space to explore. The non-specular shading, the decorative flora and the details are kind of what I am looking for. And there are also humans as sculptures – it could be a case how low-poly human will be like, and I think mine are going to move around though.
3. Ori and the Blind Forest. This one is not flat styled and it is also kind of magical. But I love the layering (not able to move in 3D though), and the style here has the possibility to import the introducing elements I mentioned above.
4. Inside. Almost exactly what I imagined for the hell panel!
5. HK Project. This is about a cat’s adventure in a cyberpunk styled space and is still in process. I love the way that the cat is going through the world as a unnoticeable and non-affecting spectator, which is quite similar to the role of the player in my project. I thought about making it third person controlled to make a broader, more fixed and higher point of view, but it would bring new problems of how the player should be like. It is still a unsettled problem.
The Virtual Garden of Earthly Delights 