BA3a Creative Practice - Week 1 Summary

My Week 1

- Pitch Presentation

- What my Creative Practice Project Is

- Story Synopsis

- The Premise for a Game

Pitch Presentation

Finally back at university again and super excited to start the new year! We were told in the lecture that on the 6th/7th October we would need to pitch our ideas to the tutors with what we would be doing for our long Creative Practice project as well as our Research Report (Dissertation).

1 – Creative Practice

Images, text, initial designs, Schedule, Plausibility, R&D Strategy, PDF, please.

2 – Research Report

Subject, topic, area of interest Initial research Style - RR Guidelines

I have since changed my ideas for the dissertation so I don't feel it's very relevant to post here anymore but this is what I pitched for my creative practice project!

Going Forward with my Creative Practice Project and What I'll be Doing

My creative practice project will be based on and inspired by the Slavic folktale ‘Koschei the Deathless’, which will include focusing on the visual development and 2D concept art as if it were being made into a game. I will be designing the main characters, environment concepts and promotional art. In addition to this, I aim to create more historically influenced designs, which is why I will be studying the locations, clothing and people of 9th – 13th century Russia; where the tale originated.

The outcomes of this project and what I will be displaying in the final exhibition will include fully rendered character illustrations, environments and promotional art pieces. I have chosen Slavic mythology as my overriding theme because I believe it’s a topic that hasn’t been touched upon very much from video games, unlike areas such as Nordic, Greek, Victorian and Asian which are recurring and mostly prominent. Because of this, I believe that I can create something slightly different to what you would normally see in most portfolios because of this influence.

For a bit of context, I originally found out about this story from a book I bought called 'Myths and Legends' by Philip Wilkinson (2009). Koschei has many tales about him yet this one is the most popular.

For BA3a I will be submitting most if not all of my contemporary and historical research (which will also aid me with creating art in BA3b), as well as 1 completed character design and 3 with extensive development. In BA3b I will start with finishing the other 3 final character designs. Soon after this I will move on to the 3 environment concepts including progressive development, which will be the same for an additional 2 pieces of promotional art. Lastly I will be taking the character concepts I completed in BA3a and drawing their weapons with them, as well as making any extended revisions since I will have improved after the next few months of constant drawing and study making.

My Own Synopsis of Koschei the Deathless

The story of Koschei begins with a prince named Ivan Tsarevitch who had three sisters called Marya, Olga and Anna. His sisters were then married to different wizards, which Ivan then sets out on a journey to see, giving them gifts of a spoon, fork and tobacco box. While doing so he meets warrior princess Marya Morevna, who had just slain an army with her soldiers which Ivan noticed after he passed through a field of corpses. They spend some time together and then eventually get married.

One day, Marya is told she must go to war to help her people and leaves Ivan in charge of their housekeeping while she's away. She gives him only one instruction/rule which is to not set foot in or open a certain closet. Curiosity however, got the better of him and when he opened the closet there revealed to be a man hung there with twelve chains. Although he did not know it, this man was Koschei the Deathless. Koschei asked Ivan for a simple drink of water, and after he gave it to him; Koschei regained his strength and broke all of the chains. Koschei then followed Marya as she was leaving to war, brought her back to the house and told Ivan he would take her. Ivan then sets out of a journey to find her, firstly visiting his sisters to see if they had heard any news about it.

After many days of searching he finally comes across her along with Koschei, who says that he will forgive him this one time because he gave him the water he needed. However when Ivan finds Marya and tries to escape with her, this angers Koschei who then slaughters Ivan, cutting him into pieces and throwing him into a barrel in the sea. However, because Ivans sisters were married to wizards, they were able to locate him and bring him back to life by turning into an Eagle that would carry the barrel back to land, a Falcon which would give him the Water of Life and a Raven which gave him the Water of Death. They knew that Ivan was in danger because the gifts he gave them turned black.

He then set out to find Marya again, finding out from her before that one of the only ways to reach Koschei's dominion is to find the witch Baba Yaga who possesses a Magic Horse. The only way to get to Baba Yaga is crossing a fiery river, which a person can access if they wave a handkerchief three times before it - which will create a crystal bridge. After crossing the bridge, Ivan became very hungry and saw an outlandish bird with its young chickens, a queen bee and its honeycomb, as well as a lioness with her cub. He almost decided to eat the young chicken, honeycomb and cub however their parents told him that they would do him a good favour if he didn't. So he decided not to and continued to Baba Yaga's house.

At Baba Yaga house, she told him that if he looked after her mares for three days then she would give him the magic horse. On the first day, the mares all disappeared and just as Ivan was about to sleep when the sun began to set, the outlandish bird appeared to him and said that the mares were back home. A similar thing happened the next day where the mares dispersed and it was the lioness who woke Ivan to tell him they had returned. The same happened on the last day, where the queen bee came to him; however also said that he needed to steal the horse and ride away from the house at night. When Ivan ran away on the horse, Baba Yaga followed. However she did not realise the bridge would disappear after he had crossed it, and fell directly into the fire until the flames consumed her.

He was then able to ride to where Marya resided and killed Koschei with the help of his magic horse, sword and Marya's intellect. Then he burnt him on a pyre and scattered his ashes in the wind. Now that Koschei was dead he was able to meet with his sisters, their husbands and celebrated.

Sources of Information:

1. http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=lang&book=red&story=death

2. https://russian-crafts.com/tales/maria_morevna.html

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Koschei_the_Deathless

Koschei Himself

Although the folktale claims that Koschei was killed by Ivan in his true form, there are sources which say that....

"Koschei maintained his life and immortality through the removal of his soul. Taking it from his body, it was said he hid it in a needle, inside an egg, in a duck, in a rabbit, then locked it in an iron or crystal chest, and buried it under a green oak on an island."

Sources of Information: 1. http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-europe/slavic-legend-immortality-koschei-deathless-002717, 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural_beings_in_Slavic_folklore

The Premise for a Game

I believe that the story of Koschei would become a great premise for a game as the player would control Ivan and Marya, exploring lands and fighting their way through various enemies to find the soul of Koschei in order to kill him. The game itself would be an action roleplay adventure where you would be able to recruit a few companions to help fight with you; similar to Dragon Age.

Although the story interests me greatly, I'm not too fond of the 'save the princess' cliche that a lot of games seemingly fall into; and would change that so Marya would become more of a playable character as well as Ivan, that could also kill enemies, find items to use and interact with the world in the same way; especially as she is a warrior princess in the original story.

Ivan is very much the hero of the story, however I have been thinking about how he would look and am very drawn to the idea of him being half undead since he was resurrected, which adds more unique features to him than being this dashing prince 'here to save the day'.

Because this project will only have me focusing on the visual development/concept art and not the game design/writing itself I won't go into too much depth about this but I still think it's good to keep in mind.

#koschei #week1 #creativepractice