Aesthetics & Glossary
Aesthetics
Gas Mask War has different types of aesthetics that was changing with the pass of the time. These aesthetics are important because the player will see it represented in the different factions and places.
Regarding the game aesthetic, it will be 3D realistic. I base this featured in Ubisoft games like Far Cry 5 or Ghost Recon Wildlands.
Art
1960
Art is a mix between the Art Nouveau, the Art Deco, the Futurism and the CyberPunk.
I take from the Art Nouveau the intention to create a new, young and free art. Its inspiration from nature but incorporating the advances of the industrial revolution. The idea of that even the smallest everyday objects should have aesthetic value, but be accessible to the entire population, so, the beauty is not a luxury is a necessity. I take its rounded lines, which intertwine with each other’s, and the asymmetry of the movement. Also its sensuality and its eroticism.
From Art Deco, I take his aerodynamic, geometric and clean lines taken from cubism, its influence in Egypt and the fauvist use of the color. I like it because it is based on the city, the urban, the progress and the machines. It is functional as well as elegant.
Therefore, Art is a utopia in which beauty is available to all to be a necessity so basic as eat or drink. In this utopia, there is no great difference between classes and everyone can opt for the same luxury and waste. It is an unbridled, fast, beauty and fun aesthetic. In which everything is valid.
The materials that it uses are not only the typical from the Art Nouveau and the Art Deco, like glass or metal, also uses “futuristic” materials such as the optical fiber or the electronic complements. The use of these materials highlights the highly technological era in which they live. So, although there is a great reference to nature in Art, there is also a great reference to technology, petroleum, the urban and the electricity.
The colors are vivid in the ornamentation and luxurious in the clothing. However, the color that stands out is the gasoline color with its iridescence.
The clothing is androgynous and comfortable. The women use suits as short dresses, with big buttons without bra and always with a waist belt. These belts are electronic and can change its color using an app on the Diaries (the Diary is something like a smartphone). Under the suit, the women can use silk shirts with open back complemented with long electronic back necklaces. In the night, the women use long dresses with open back or short dresses with optical fiber fringes.
These are some examples, but the general idea is that the Art is an elegant aesthetic, that uses the movement and the sensuality of nature in every single detail of every single object. But, also, it uses technology and electricity in everything as well.
Abstract Art
1960
The Abstract Art is the mix between the Art Deco, Futurism, Minimalism, Cubism and Rayonism.
It is based on Cubism and Rayonism. They use very bright colors and very clean and geometric lines. The use of asymmetric figures in the architecture and in the clothing.
I based my design of the colors and the idea of Clean Future in this picture that I found while I was doing my research.
Dirty Art Part 1
1973
The first Dirty Art is closer to the Art that the later Dirty Art. It had the same bases as the Art but changing the luxurious materials to other recycled ones.
During the spring of 1973, three years before the beginning of the Energetic Crisis, several groups of young people seeking asylum from the injustices committed by the government in the sleeping subway network. There, they built an underground city with their own electricity, using the wagons of the subways as shared apartments and tents as places of leisure. They got their own basic supplies from the outside through secondary tunnels that came to the surface. It is here, under these circumstances, that where the new artistic movement is formed. The Dirty Art tries to emulate the style of Art, but using recycled materials, taking things from here and there to create something beautiful that resembles the Art. This Dirty Art uses more the Art Deco as a base than the Art Nouveau. The reason is that Art Deco is much more exaggerated in its lines and in its colors, regarding the society’s desire to flee from the economic depression and the ghost of war. In addition, this new movement tends to eliminate that erotic and sensual part that the Art Nouveau had, but staying with the elegant and practical part and with that mentality that every detail must-have beauty.
Later, during the Hard War, the Dirty Art became in the most used style, except in the Trade Cities that kept intact the luxurious Art style. The houses of the Ruined Cities were the only ones with light and resources. Many of the houses lacked a roof or some of the walls. They were very precarious times. Despite this, the survivors did not want to give up that some beauty surrounded them, even if it was only in their homes. So, those who could not work or in every free time that the survivors had, they tried to find pieces of “beauty” in the rubble of Ruin Cities, in the Dark Areas, in the abandoned cities or, the most fortunate ones, in some of the abandoned Trade Cities. These memories of a better life could be from doors or windows to pieces of crockery or cutlery, with which they then built all kinds of everyday furniture and objects such as tables, cots, chairs, plates or cutlery. This Dirty Art adds touches from the Dieselpunk aesthetic. Here the “dirty” part is not only for the materials but also is a reference to the circumstances: the dirty sky, the air, the soil … The colors are grays, blacks, browns with some touches of dark reds or dark greens. Only that “beauty pieces” that they used in the construction of new things conserved some of the bright and “happy” colors from the Beautiful Days.
Dirty Art Part 2
1995
The final Dirty Art (the main aesthetic of the game) lost the Dieselpunk part and came back to the first Dirty Art, closer to the real Art, but mixed with Abstract Art. So, this is a really funny aesthetic, saturated with bright colors, clean lines, very practical and beautiful in any detail. Which generates a somewhat cleaner and refined aesthetic, but it is still a hodgepodge of the different aesthetics.
This Dirty Art uses the plastics material from the Abstract Art, the metal materials from the first Dirty Art and also the recycled materials from the Hard War Dirty Art. This creates really amazing villages, built it with all the materials and objects that the survivors could find mixed with new, clean and colorful materials and always from an artistic and beautiful point of view. So for example, in my novel is mentioned an Outskirt called “Redes” that they are completely made with rests from ships and boats, buoys, diving suits, fishing nets… Others were built with planes, cars or debris from other cities, but, again, they always place full of beauty.
AbstractPunk
1999
The Abstract Punk conserves the essence from the Abstract Art, but mixed with the funny Dirty Art. Are like the normal Abstract Art, but with the influence of the Dirty Art in the use of the colors and structures.