I’m not a damn artist. The only thing I know how to draw is Spider-Man. Yeah, he’s showing up again. What I can do, however, is appreciate great art — especially art direction. I’ve been enjoying a good mix of media lately that deserves to be absolutely gushed over in terms of art direction. What do I mean by this? When I say art direction, I mean how the project at hand looks from a visual perspective. When a creative team makes their work’s art direction unique and vibrant, it creates a story that is more compelling and enjoyable than if it weren’t.

There’s a game series called “Persona,” and it’s pretty much a social demon slayer simulator. Half the time you’re making friends and exploring a high school setting, and the other half you’re in a demon realm killing nasty monsters. Cool dichotomy, real fun. What makes the game so interesting is how it’s a real hybrid of art styles. During gameplay, there’s a cel-shaded art style that looks kind of like a comic book. During certain scenes, they have full-on 2D animations, which gives the series a real dynamic feel.

What I wanna get to is the menuing. In video games, especially role-playing games that require strategy and leveling, the player will be in menus for a good chunk of the runtime. Some games have really dull and boring menus. From a visual perspective, they can be all gray, or dull colors. Menuing and user interfaces are the crux of many games, so when it’s poorly done, it can be a shame. “Persona” is a great example of video game menuing done right.

The menus in the modern “Persona” games are beautiful. It’s hard to describe, but they look like moving comic books. The transitions are so clean and stylish, and they’re just addicting to use. That’s the best way to describe it. They also use colors to their advantage. Every game has its own distinct color. “Persona 3” uses different shades of blue, and “Persona 5” uses red and black. The different colors, along with the style and transitions just make the menus unbelievably good. My friend walked in on me playing the game, and he said “man this game is pretty,” and he couldn’t have been more right.

This super cool menu motivates me to play the game because it excites me to use the menus. When I’m bored, I’ll turn through the user interface and it’s like a dopamine overload in the best possible way. It’s really neat that a game can do this, but this isn’t the only example of this style I’ve seen. Many recent animated films use a similarly unique and eye-catching animation style. Let’s look at the “Spider-Man: Spider-Verse” movies by Sony.

These two films are notable due to their animation style. Before the first film came out in 2018, there had never really been a movie like it. There’s a really cool interview (HYPERLINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-wUKu_V2Lk ) with the animators of this film by the folks at Wired that you should look at. First off, look at some clips of this movie. It is unlike any other piece of animation I have ever seen. What’s so captivating about the animation is how it oozes style. The creators were huge fans of old comics from the 60s and 70s, which use heavy artistic strategies like crosshatching and dark, crackling effects.

They perfectly emulated this style in their animation. This wasn’t easy though. It took them the better half of a decade to nail this animation style. What’s the secret sauce here to these beautiful graphics? The head animators mentioned how in trying to achieve that old school comic aesthetic, they had a ton of strategies. They did away with motion blur, but also added in little imperfections into the world. Colors shift in and out, and even certain elements are exaggerated and off, like the buildings being way taller than they should be and at weird angles, to give the scenes proper scale and weight.

What does all of this do? It makes the movie a damn masterpiece. These movies are so visually indescribable. What makes it all even better is how great these movies are from a filmmaking and storytelling standpoint. They’re beautifully shot, and the stories are so energetic and heartfelt. If the Spider-Verse movies looked like any normal animated flicks, they would still be awesome, but the visual dynamics at play here are what separate them from the rest. And that’s what great and unique art direction does. It makes your story even more memorable and unforgettable.

Nicolas Scagnelli is a senior majoring in English.

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