How the Art Style of Arcane Tells A Secret Story

arcane the hit animation series by riot games has taken the world by storm the collaboration between riot fatigue and netflix is everybody raving about the animation the story and its characters but what about the world today we're gonna take a look at the cities of zhan and piltover the architecture the art styles their respective influences and how that tells its own little story because between some hard times and a tale of two cities i love myself a good dickens the story of zaun and piltover is a story of contrasts the rich versus the poor the rigid versus the fluid the light versus the dark and to do that the designers of arcane chose two different art styles to represent their cities art deco for the city of piltover and art nouveau for the city of zhong art deco is a style from the 20s one you've certainly seen from this poster of the great gatsby or if you live in any major city in the world you're bound to have walked past an art deco building that's that's that's the empire state building that's that's art deco now art nouveau came a little earlier sometime in the early 1890s again super popular some notable works include the sagrada familia in barcelona or any painting by gustav klimp or alphonse mucha the choice of these two art styles or art movements are very clever i think because while they do have their obvious differences there are similarities between the two we'll get to that in a second but first just at a glance the visual differences between the two art styles are apparent and there are a couple of benefits to that on a practical side it makes for an instant read it's immediately clear where we're at so that means they're able to jump back and forth between the two places seamlessly without the audience being confused as to whether they're in tilt over or zone the second of course is thematically the way it reinforces the story now art deco is very geometric straight rigid lines sharp angles streamlined clean but still decorative there's a lot of gold silver and ivory and like the great gatsby it just feels rich the strong rigid but luxurious style is a reflection of the society of piltover with their councils and academies and dogmatic but comfortable lifestyle contrast that with art nouveau which is very soft and fluid it's long swooping curves and if focused on the organic forms gives a very humonous touch it's delicate vibrant and playful inspired by japanese wood block print medieval folklore and the pre-raphaelites it's honestly a little bit of a hodgepodge and much like the city of zohan in which its society is a little bit more shall we say flexible its focus on materials like glass and ceramics also gives it a more fragile impression as opposed to the strong steel and brass structures of art deco what's really cool is that people think that zone and piltover are polar opposites of each other when in fact they're not really they're two sides of the same coin if zon is so diametrically opposed to piltover why not use brutalism instead why not choose an art style that does away with decoration and luxury all the things that peeled over value so much that's noxus we'll talk about noxus next time why choose art nouveau because ultimately they both want the same thing peace and prosperity for their city two sides of the same coin and those parallels are really clear when you look at the philosophies behind art deco and art nouveau see they're both movements born out of industry and innovation both of them the results of post-war optimism alright nouveau fresh off the back of the napoleonic wars and art deco after the first world war it was peace time and people were ready to spend that money that's why there aren't too many art nouveau or art deco art pieces per se they were too busy making things that people could buy prints book covers ads furniture household decorations jewelry they were champions of industry and capitalism they were also results of technological innovations which allowed them to do things they never could in the 1890s the development of new printing technology allowed artists to mass print multicolored posters all of a sudden you didn't have to be rich to own a lotrek or a mukha you could just buy a poster they were challenging the values of french neoclassicism the art style that came before with art nouveau these new technologies were a way for them to disrupt the status quo art deco on the other hand was not so accessible nothing art deco was cheap furniture was made with gold silver and ivory and boy those things don't come cheap the 20s and 30s had their fair share of technological innovations too but with art deco they focus more on science and progress that that was like their thing it was about making the fastest cars and building the tallest buildings it was more about shaping these new materials to fit their will and with new steel forging and construction techniques they could build taller bigger better skyscrapers a monument to man's conquering spirit considering how influential both these styles are they weren't around for that long you'd think that they would have had long and story tenures but it's quite the opposite they were flashes in the pan art nouveau effectively was only around for about 15 years art deco the same about 20 to 30 years compared it to the renaissance which lasted for 300 years it's the same story with both art nouveau and art deco they existed in a very small window of peace and optimism and in that brief period of respite things were looking up art and technology flourished only to be cut short by all-out war the production design of arcane is a triumph and a testament to what can be done when artists are given the bandwidth to be artists the thing about working on a large-scale project like this whether it's animation live action or video games is this everyone working on it is an artist and everyone wants to make it good from character designers to animators to writers to layout artists to storyboarders to riggers to technical artists and yes the programmers everyone has a little bit of creativity inside them how you get something as rich and nuanced as arcane is when every single person working on the project buys into the vision and is allowed to add a little bit of themselves into it a little bit of love a little throwaway line from a writer a little flourish from an animator a little extra color here and a little extra detail there you put all that together and you get something as good as arcane also time more time producers please i need more time

Channel: Chroma Moma

Views: 67,962

Keywords: arcane, arcane netflix, netflix arcane, arcane trailer, jinx, video essay, arcane video essay, art style of arcane, art nouveau, art deco, art history, league of legends, art nouveau design, art deco architecture, art deco style, riot games arcane, arcane animation, piltover and zaun, arcane lore, arcane review, arcane act 3, arcane act 2, arcane act 1, caitlyn, vi, viktor, arcane theory, arcane analysis, arcane scenes, imagine dragons, arcane opening, league anime

Id: LllcthTB7Qg

Length: 8min 6sec (486 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 04 2021