Basic Art Principals

 Title: Ravens Landing

Creator: Naochika Morishita

Made in Japanese Branch Fromsoftware around 2020

The piece is from the art book produced in tandem with the game Armoured Core VI Fires for Rubicon made by: Naochika Morishita. This piece is a painting of the world at large and a person who has played the game can recognize multiply in game point from this one digital painting. I enjoy the piece as it expands upon the world that the game is set in and shows the player just how desolated the world is. Even though they tread upon that same landscape within the game the moment that is captured within the piece brings multiple mission locations together and showing how much more of the world is left untouched stuns those who have played the game. That they tread upon that same landscape as many mind boggling structures that hold reign above the player have all been left empty and desolate. The body of a mech at the bottom center of the digital painting can be barely seen as it moves across the landscape. This gives a scaling to the world around as the amount of space left before the form of the mech feels vast from how high up the observer is. It is also how the piece is not centered upon the actions of the Mech but at the world at large as there is a sense of new life coming from the desolated world below the factory. The artist Morishita conveys the new life approach excellency through his use of lighting and space work. It is for both my personal connection to the piece and the story it can tell to those without excessive knowledge of the setting that it holds such a high placement in my mind when it comes to art.

Space- The large amount of emptiness between the main body of the planet and the industrial zone grants room for the lighting of the piece to tell its own story throughout the whole of the area. Without all of the room to play around with lighting elements the piece would feel too compact and dreary unlike the new dawn that is trying to shine through in the factory. In those spaces one can see the moving ash clouds that are being swept up into the air and it  is the movement that those dust particles remain that allow the light to fill the empty terrain.Where that space is taken up it is held by these monstrously large elements like the support column or the smoke stacks as if they are trying to enforce their weakening grasp upon the world below them. The scaling element is done wonderfully in the piece by the tiny little Armoured Core moving across the bottom of the piece. This little robot is the only element other than lighting that shows movement and lets the observer place themselves in that comparatively small mech's shoes as the empty world before it just goes on forever. Where spac3e is taken away by the factory above there is still a feeling of emptiness though that can be attributed to more by the lack of movement is the factory. Yet if the factory was so large the lighting elements that are so important to the piece would be unable to reach through.

contrast/lighting- Many of the brighter elements of the piece are highlights done to show how the industrial landscape is blocking out great amounts of light on the world leading massive shadows stretching across the piece. The light source feels to be reaching through the empty industrial areas and finally touching the world again after being blocked out for so long. And the way the light shimmers off of the sand and smoke coming off of the surface gives it a much gentler touch as if it is establishing that while the sun is returning to the world it is still weak in its touch. The parts upon which lighting has yet to grace gives a feeling of retreat as if the darkness can no longer hold onto those sections and is trying to maintain its form to the best of its abilities. The factory also has few parts that are totally black and instead are browns and reds being a much gentler fade into the yellow/white lighting stretching through. That gentler contrast allows for the factory elements to feel all that much weaker than the planet below  becoming more of an afterthought the longer one finds hidden detail upon the surface below.

Shapes- The world that is shown in the painting has been stripped away of all form and all that is left is what man has brought upon the world. As the only shapes one can easily observe on the surface are that of tube systems for running fuel across the empty plains. Yet up above in the sky is an industrial complex pulling at what most people would think of when they think of a factory. Sat abruptly  front and center are tons of cylinders that are to act as smokestacks in the observer's mind from not only their cylindrical shape but also the formations at which they are set in. Yet with the smokestacks pointing towards the surface it shows how the industries are foisting off their waste onto the planet below and enforcing upon the planet a blank slate covering. One of the strongest shapes in the image is the massive rectangle(or support leg) resting upon the surface being one of the few strong connections the station above has to the planet. With that single strong connection holding the station above to the planet it feels almost out of place compared to the empty land below with it being such a prominent shape. The factory itself hits almost every element though when it comes to how one might think about a factory. Pulling upon the classical smokestacks yet incorporating the rings around them brings a much more futuristic appearance. Those little details of keeping the standard factory look in mind while pushing for a more futuristic look are not so abrupt as to dissuade a viewer, but seem to make perfect sense for what the Morishita wishes to display.

“Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon.” Bandai Namco Europe, en.bandainamcoent.eu/armored-core/armored-core-vi-fires-of-rubicon. Accessed 16 Jan. 2025.

Https://X.Com/?Mx=2, x.com/?mx=2. Accessed 16 Jan. 2025.