Arcane: why limitations are OP in art
🎨 How problems become aesthetics + what games to get on steam
Everything is about nostalgia. Limitation is a blessing for art. The autumn sale on steam ends in a day.
These three statements have a lot in common. Let me explain in short and long.
Something that you can’t control restricts your pristine idea. It’s like the lack of money, tools, or whatever stops you from becoming. Frustrating, isn’t it? I feel you.
But believe me, it is the best thing that can happen to your art. In fact, it is the best thing that can happen to our culture right now.
Limitations. Not any kind, though…
You read this because of them. For an indie project, any cheap way to reach its audience becomes the best way.
But it’s more than just utility. What if this limitation creates the very outcome that we’ve never thought of? Maybe a book will be written here, on Substack. Perhaps our community driven world-building takes off in the comments.
The style of cartoons from your childhood are the result of tight budgets in the TV industry. Toy Story’s concept was picked due to hardware limitations. Doom’s POV, or Silent Hill’s fog? Those long stills in 80s anime? Yep, you guessed it…
Many of the styles we love started out as limitations.
I find these situations intriguing. Problems that become features. And it’s all over art history as far as our present. For example, Arcane’s style was influenced by their budget compared to the quality they set out to achieve, and many games in our previous article’s list used pixel art to streamline development.
(Un)fortunately we don’t have the means to dive decades deep into the topic. So we’ll figure out a way to cut corners, and still get similar results.
This is an ode to ingenuity, provided by limitations.
The WHY: limits of ideas
Okay, but why care so much? Is there something to learn from this?
Remakes, remakes, remakes…
The last 5 or so years of the movie industry showed me one thing clearly. Heaps of money does not achieve artistic value. It seems like budget limitations birth better results.
But I cannot wrap my head around why taking a huge risk leads to artistic masterpieces on one end (tight budget), and snot on the other end (huge budget).
I heard that big productions are making movies based on data. And I encourage them to continue this trend. I also encourage you to not buy their junk. Or a better option. Only spend half of your entertainment budget on their… stuff and the other half on indie, or small production stuff.
Have a look at our lists. (at the end of this post) You will find several artists who’d love to engage you with new worlds, fresh ideas, and ignite feelings unknown to you before. They scoop from the same well as the giants, anyway: the heart-warming aesthetics of our childhood.
The difference is, that they’re not trying to get you as a number in their reports, but make art out of love and admiration for their craft. They want to share something meaningful as fellow humans.
Vitality of art
I recently read a fascinating discussion under a note about AI art, and in the comments
distilled a key job of art in astounding clarity:"Yes, I agree that good art contains the essence of the artist, even if others can’t necessarily see it, and I don’t think that will be obsolete any time soon. [...]
And I think art has another job, too: To explore ideas that don’t necessarily have immediate practical (economic, scientific) utility, nurture them, and bring those ideas to humanity."
Art must be about discovery, curiosity. It’s exploration. Yes, it is a must, otherwise, it becomes another remake. And don’t get me wrong, I love nostalgia. But as the main theme? As a cheap hit of dopamine for its own sake?
No, I won’t give money to the franchises and companies that have repeatedly let me down. I won’t go to the cinema or click on the next show on streaming services for the 100th watered-down Marvel or Star Wars story. Maybe 5% of these movies had a decent plot. And 1% an okay execution.
I want fresh experiences. Creativity.
A controversial example
You know what is a fresh, revolutionary happening in art? AI-generated images.
Not the way too perfect current version of it. But hands with 6-8-100 fingers, weird artefacts, and non-existing animal species type of thing. Illusions that required decades of practice to compute for the human brain.
Now, to make it clear: I hate that humans may end up as mere managers of these models. And, I hope, we’ll find a way to support and compensate artists in other ways. However, the whole copyright issue behind the tech has presented a cardinal question:
What do we, the makers of culture, want from art?
I strongly believe, that AI-generated images can only become an artform, if the artist manages to use it as a tool for expressing their emotions, their unique perspective of their human experience. So “looks good” does not qualify for me as art. “Great idea”, on the other hand, does.
Great idea + looks good (outstanding execution) + human experience ~ ART
The HOW: limits of execution
Thank you for explaining why this is important. (To you at least, Adrián.) But how did we get here, and how will we get out?
Good limitations
I think it’s best to explain with examples.
Toy Story is about toys, because the hardware of computers wasn’t there yet to deal with textures.
Batman: The Animated Series achieved the film-noir aesthetic on a limited budget by drawing backgrounds on black paper.
The hard lines and simple characters of Dexter’s Laboratory streamlined the animation process for Cartoon Network.
Wait, there’s more.
80s anime used the iconic long still frames, animating by hand is quite labour-intensive. They needed a way to fit into their tight budgets.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time ****opted for a simple style for the protagonist to solve Nintendo 64's limited storage capacity.
Arcane’s team is more efficient than Disney’s productions because of the style they created with their tools outside industry standards.
I can continue for ages, I love this stuff. But you get the point. These backstories have a crucial thing in common.
The focus of restrains are not core ideas.
This is key. The limitations of the budget and tech drove creative choices to the interesting territories of unknown opportunities.
Bad limitations
Basically everything regarding the artistic vision.
In other words: do not touch core story, narrative, tone, etc.
This does not mean, that a project is less worthwhile if it uses workarounds that affect the story’s details. On the contrary, budget or tech limitations can serve the story. Maybe they don’t need a part they would have added for nostalgia’s sake…
There are plenty of examples of this in the Star Wars and Marvel franchises.
Protect your precious
Modern sequels feel like intellectual robbery, because they are products of the wrong motivation: numbers.
Create because you love an idea. Don’t create an idea to make money. Cringe enough? Has to be, because we’re at that basic level in pop culture.
Think about it. What made the last piece of art you experienced stick in your mind? Was it that character — maybe played by a dead actor — that came back for 2 minutes? Was it a reference, that caused you to nose-exhale with buddies?
I bet you 10 000 Forints — look it up, it’s a lot — that none of those helped you remember the thing.
Good limitations can redirect attention from unimportant details and expansions back to the core artistic vision. They have the power to elevate projects to the level of our beloved childhood favourites.
Could we use them, please?
Are you here for the List?
Don’t worry, we will send it to you this week. Artists, games, animations, and maybe some random jewels…
Why later? We have been collecting more and more lesser and lesser known art projects. 12 is our new target number for quality picks. As you see, we are upping our game quite a bit, and we need a little time for that.
We are a tiny team of artists (3+2×0.5 to be exact), and we do this out of love. So if you agree with the message of this newsletter, let us know by answering this poll:
If you chose “something else”, we’d highly appreciate your thoughts in a message.
We are keen to support upcoming art projects to revive the playful, creative side of humanity, and I know you have some ideas how. 😉
Now, it’s time to escape to your world of creativity and build!
Adrián
Scribe of the Omniscient
👁🗨
p.s.: Inside Out 2 was good, though.
p.s. 2.: Read on for some fun stuff…
A fun quote
“The haze of nostalgia covers their days among their sisters, making those days into something different than they were. That’s the way today changes history. All contemporaries do not inhabit the same time. The past is always changing, but few realize it.”
Frank Herbert — God Emperor of Dune
Recommendations & Resources
More on a theme prevalent in retro anime:
More about nostalgia, how it works, and what is the hottest art that uses it heavily:
If you are as much of an animation nerd as I am, I highly recommend this Substack:
This playlist is a must if you want to entertain yourself with details of animation production:
Corridor Crew creates loads of great videos about filmmaking, VFX, 3D and blender related stuff, too.
Check out this video if you want to buy games worth your money during the Steam Autumn sales. This is where it leads when you concentrate on getting your message through:
A fun prompt
There are vague ideas in my head. Maybe the limitations of early AI image and text generators will birth a Neo-neo-avantgarde style. Or touchscreen phones and their wacky use of voice control will invite today’s kids to reimagine their telepathic devices in a more tactile way in their 30s. Or perhaps the limitations of web3 will spark new ways of crowdfunding.
What do you think the limitations are now that will become something of an aesthetic in the future?
This newsletter is crafted with 💜 by humans. We use AI for online research and English language accuracy.