German Expressionism

WHAT IS GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM?

German Expressionism is an art style most popular in the 1910's, due to foreign films being banned in Germany at the time. It is easily identifiable due to it being usually monochromatic, having sharp, unusual angles and painted lighting. American film directors and producers eventually discovered German Expressionism and brought it back with them. The people loved it and it eventually sparked the creation of Film Noir.

Our project was to create a scene using the German Expressionist art-style.

TIMELINE OF GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM

1913: First German Expressionist films being made.

1914: 24 films had been made.

1916: Foreign films banned in Germany.

1918: Demand for films and theatre rose. The number of films produced increased from 24 to 130 in four years.

1922: German expressionist films were being appreciated by an international audience.

This is a character I created following the style and themes of German Expressionism. The main reasons it follows this style is due to the fact that the image is mono-chromatic and has strong contrast between light and dark.

German Expressionism

German expressionism is a style of art and film making which emphasises harsh, obscure angles and a lack of props. Instead of props, details like light and other decorations were painted onto the background.

It started in the 1910’s when Germany had isolated itself from the rest of the world and a few years later, banned foreign films. This caused a large demand for Germany to produce its own movies and films. Due to World War 1 breaking out, harsh budgets had to be imposed on these movies, causing the lack of props, painted lighting and the harsh angles used to show false perspective.

For example, there are likely no stairs, windows or lanterns in this scene. It’s all apinted onto the back board.

International audiences eventually encountered the style and they embraced it to the point where it sparked a new genre of films called ‘Film Noir’. Eventually, however, the directors and film makers in Germany had to flee abroad when Hitler came into power, as he disliked they way that many of the films potrayed Germany’s ‘backstage’ so to speak. What it was really like that was being hidden.

Influenced by German expressionism:

FILMS

-) Nightmare Before Christmas

-) Edward Scissorhands

-) Sweeny Todd

ART

-) Otto Dix

-) Kathe Kollwitz

-) Karl Shmidt-Rottluff

GAMES

-) Inside

-) Limbo

-) Little Nightmares

Artists Interpretation

For the artists interpretation, I decided to use the style Ari Gibson used when creating the art for the game 'Hollow Knight'. The actual in-game sprites have little to no shading, allowing for a lot of potential with lighting manipulation

These are the starts of the sketch-overs.
Yellow shows the focal point, blue shows the Sub-dominant form and red shows the dominant form .

The aim of the screen glitch animation was to make it seem it was being recorded by something like a CCTV camera.

One likely sub-conscious influence I had while creating this piece was H.P Lovecraft, as seen in the design of the creature and the way his creature, Cthulhu, is described.

Evaluation:

For this project, there were several experiments and variations used before settling on the one i used for the final piece of work. One of them was a massive space station, while another was for a pit of a harmful chemical with bones floating at the top. I decided to use the idea of a man looking at a monster through a tube because I felt there was a lot of potential with it.

The experiments helped me develop my ideas as inspirations and thoughts I used on one could give inspiration to another idea.

I used the rule of thirds grid when planning out the environment. Since the plans were quite vertical and linear, it may have been difficult to use the Golden Spiral and apply it effectively.

I learned how to animate in Photoshop from this task, along with some other interesting techniques.

The blog was kept up-to-date fairly consistently and helped me keep track of work and development by essentially being a timeline of work for this project, keeping the ideas grouped together so I knew where I was and possible ways to progress.

Overall I am satisfied with the 2D work, although I feel the lighting could be a bit better in some areas. Similar to the work, I am also proud of the animation, while I do feel I could have been a bit more ambitious with it, like the lighting being affected and some other aspects moving.