Posted December 19, 2024 by Evan Connolly
In researching for this project, I looked at a number of video-games that incorporate creativity and/or drawing into their design.
An online painting game where players' artworks are put in a virtual gallery for other other artists to come along and paint over them.
Players have the choice to tackle a blank canvas and create a piece of art from scratch, with the knowledge that someone will eventually come and paint over it, or find someone else's unfinished canvas and add onto it.
Different Strokes was made to answer the question: How do you delay the inevitability of people drawing inappropriate things on your online drawing platform? The answer? You cover it up with a nicer drawing! This premise invites players to come up with creative answers to crappy art.
"People will say like whenever I have art block, I just go into the game and find someone else's painting to kind of inspire me. So I think that's either that or just the game itself being less intimidating. You know, there's fewer tools, all that. Like, I think the main goal of the game is to just be super low barrier to entry. Like when you're just like not feeling it, you know, you open up a blank page in Photoshop and you're just like, I can't do this.
The hope is that you can go into the Different Strokes and either, you know, start a fresh painting because it's really simple or get inspired by someone else's work."
Not a game about drawing, but still involves creativity.
Every level in Mosa Lina is randomly generated (semi-random platform placement + 3 random tools given to the player).
This means that because Stuffed Wombat has not designed a specific solution for a given level, beating them is reliant on the player's creative problem solving using the tools provided.
I think the random generation is a great way of putting the player's agency first and not designing a static, specific outcome.
You play as an art student where a virtual professor gives you art assignments. You can wander the virtual world unlocking new art materials and finding new environments to inspire your work.
The funky tools you can use to make art with and the pastel colour palette gives the game and the art produced within a harmonious look no matter whose art it is.
Such as Lars Von Trier's "The Five Obstructions" where Von Trier assigns his mentor and friend Jorgen Leth to recreate the film five times, with each attempt obstructed by a different set of rules and stipulations.
Von Trier's obstructions are quite cruel and unfun, but the concept is still interesting.
There was also the Youtube channels Nounish, and Drawfee, where illustrators and creatives are challenged to create pictures using weird prompts and or materials.