Character Archetypes- Is the Hero's myth really a way of contemplating death?

Character Archetypes - Is the Myth of the Hero Really a Way of Contemplating Death?

The protagonist of most games and stories for that matter can be described as the hero, as long as they are moral and a force for good. The hero is the person who solves problems or a person who performs heroic deeds through a difficult struggle. This concept or trope has a long history dating back even before the earliest hero myth we know of: The Epic of Gilgamesh in 2800BC. This concept seems so integral to a story that it is impossible to write a story without at least a protagonist and an opposing force, even in the intro of a story we expect a hero.

Since this trope appears all over the world in different cultures and even in isolated areas this could be an archetype, something part of the human subconscious (Jung. C). Indeed even before The Epic of Gilgamesh there were many hero myths passed around. The Epic of Gilgamesh is about conquering death. Initially through heroic deeds, then physically by attaining eternal youth which Gilgamesh loses when his elixir of youth is stolen by a snake,

“Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man.” - The Epic of Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh has the realisation that he cannot escape his fate and that he can only live to the fullest. The only immortality he can hope for is by how his name will likely be remembered for centuries to come. This human aspect in fiction recurs constantly as the fear of death and the desire for life is innate in everyone even the modern Harry Potter explores the subject intensely. I believe the Hero Myth is a way for people to contemplate death of distracting oneself from death or to overcome death, in the many senses that you can attempt to master it.

 In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Campbell presents the concept of the Monomyth which contends that every hero story has the same pattern of a “hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” I think that the concept of a Monomyth is flawed due to the fact that too few stories actually fit in that pattern which Campbell describes and how the stages are vague like how the statements a fortune-teller might ask are vague so that as many people as possible would agree to them for example your fingerprints are like no other, you have an arm on either side.  

However I think there is something significant in the ordeal stage how the character experiences death. In all of the hero myth stories, the tale has their hero risk their life and overcome a challenge thereby overcoming death temporarily. Many stories explore this further in: Lord of the Rings, Gandalf dies and comes back stronger and even as far back as Norse mythology Odin impales himself on Yggdrasil only to come back with magic. Campbell described the last stage of the Monomyth as “freedom from death”, having overcome the ordeal the hero no longer fears death and is thus free from death. If the hero character is an archetype, this would be a part of the human psyche that the hero character and Monomyth evokes.

Feeding this back into games, since almost every game with a story includes the Myth of the hero, logic would follow that many games are really about escaping death. Typically this is correct as at the ending of most games your character survives, you having guided them through the story therefore overcoming death, an ending that wasn't game over. If this wasn't the purpose we would stop playing on our first defeat screen, but we want to see an end where our character survives. Even in a game where the controllable character is an avatar for the player, we simulate overcoming death. I think there is something in human nature that wants to do this for survival purposes as small children often imagine play fighting and pretend to die like swordsmen practicing sparring.

This makes it interesting when you have games with respawns which make a mockery of death. Games in which deaths happen so frequently and with so few consequences cause death to have less meaning as a concept. There are many games which joke with this concept.

 ‘Thanks for using this Hyperion New-U station! Please die again!’ –Borderlands 2

Eventually players with enough practice and experimenting with fictional death can attain mastery over it in the game and therefore be able to go through the games challenges unharmed. Contrasting this, some games have perma-death where your character dies forever. In Fire Emblem if party member dies, they don’t come back therefore the team can diminish in size if the player is not careful.

Many games experiment with death by using multiple endings, such as games like The Stanley Parable and Zero Escape. Death is as integral to most video games as the characters are. Perhaps we’re just playing them to escape it. 

References

Campbell, J. (1972). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Gilgamesh., and Sandars, N. (1972). The epic of Gilgamesh. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.

Hull, J. (2015). Not Everything Is A Hero’s Journey - Narrative First. [online] Narrativefirst.com. Available at: http://narrativefirst.com/articles/not-everything-is-a-heros-journey [Accessed 19 Nov. 2015].

Jung, C. (1970). The collected works of C. G. Jung. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Tropes, T. (2015). The Hero - TV Tropes. [online] Tvtropes.org. Available at: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheHero [Accessed 19 Nov. 2015].

BA1a Contextual Studies Seven Stories

Seven Basic Plots: why we tell stories by Christopher Booker

Booker asserts that there are 7 basic plots,I've matched 7 games to the plots.


Overcoming evil/the monster - Diablo 3 fits easily into the catagory of the monster  the game after its first boss the game is about defeating Diablo the games namesake. A demon from the depth of hell.

Rags to riches - Patrician III: Rise of the Hanse, the game is a trading simulator your character starts as a lowly shopkeeper who can rise in the ranks to become a patrician or even a powerful alderman ruling the hanseatic league.

The Quest - Skyrim The story is a about the player seeking to defeat Alduin the dragon that will destroy the world, the player complete numerous quests in order to complete the ultimate quest of defeat alduin

Voyage and return - Pokemon The Player sets out on a journey to become Pokemon Champion by defeating 8 gym masters,the elite four and the champion

Comedy (the jester) - Worms is a stupid game about blowing worms with silly weapons like concrete donkeys

Tragedies - Asura's Wrath is a massive tragedy, his wife murdered,his daughter captured and his friends traitors Asura seeks revenge eventually leaving no characters alive apart from his daughter, who has to repair a ruined world alone.

Rebirth - Chrono Trigger halfway through the story Chrono dies and is later resurrected.

BA1a Contextual Studies Significant Characters

Here I will describe significant characters relating to how the industry has changed in from each decade of gaming


1980s - Link (The Legend of Zelda)
Introduced in 1986 Link is one of the most recognisable characters in video gaming, the character was kept silent and simple so that the player could fill his shoes and imagine themselves in his role, simple main characters are common in books and video games. Link could almost be considered one or the first role playing game characters. The character fits the hero archetype: the person who goes out and achieves great deed on behalf of the group, tribe or civilisation like most video game protagonists.

1990s - Big Boss (Metal Gear)
By this time games were big enough that incredibly deep and rich characters could be created, in contrast to Link, Big Boss has a long and emotionally driven story, many games started to make use of the larger file sizes available and made larger games exploring complex issues and immersing players, in the game Hideo Kojima wanted to players to experience 'tactical espionage action' and made of the change from 2D to 3D most of the industry experienced. I feel that some games truly became art at this time.

2000s - Chell (Portal 2)
At this time Video games became cheaper to make and more money was in the industry enabling creators take bigger risks with games enabling a much larger variety of games to be made, portal was one of these games, Chell the game's protagonist was designed silent like link. Some things never change.

2010s - The Narrator (The Stanley Parable)
At this time many games started to become more experimental and art-like, the successful games were the ones doing something new like Minecraft. A character that stands out for me is the Narrator in the Stanley parable who despite being a disembodied voice can be a complex and rich character. The Stanley parable like many games made use of branching storylines that each reveal more about the story, I imagine one day it will be possible to create a game with thousands of branches.

BA4a Contextual Studies Caillois Grid

Roger Caillois, a French sociologist studied play, he categorised games into four types:

-Agon - games of competition like boxing or racing

- Mimicry - games of imitation  like theatre 

-Alea - games of chance like roulette

-Ilinx - games about continuing a pattern or altering perceptions like Acrobatics or hallucinogens

I put a variety of games into a grid to see how they would relate to the four categories

BA1a Self Assessment

Self Assessment

Before beginning the course I had only painted a few times on photoshop, mostly just line drawings. Quickly my skills advanced I was able to produce more advanced pieces as the weeks went on. The method I use for painting my characters is to paint them tonally and then paint colour in later, ideally I would like to be able to paint straight to colour as it can be faster. And my technique can leave my paintings look washed out along with other problems to do with colour theory. I also want to improve my blending many of my paintings look very mucky and unfinished, hopefully these things will come with time, Naturally my painting speed will improve with practice.

The information about composition was particularly useful I've tried to think more about how the painting is constructed and techniques I can use to affect the viewer. As the projects went on my pieces are getting more and more ambitious I hope I can continue this even though my 'character' final painting didn't go as planned.

For the Timepiece task my design involved painting a landscape, I realised I have little experience at painting environments and backgrounds, It would be wise to work on this area in my personal studies in the future.

In the Character task I had trouble painting things with high contrast and low light levels it took much longer to paint the figure than usual because of the low light levels and high contrast I've been doing some personal studies to practice this issue before.

BA1a Concept Art Tinderbox

Tinderbox

I was tasked to design a character from the Tinderbox by Hans Christian Anderson the twist is that it to be set in Persian empire, I choose to design the witch from the story. I started by researching persia and gathered a visual library to use

In my silhouettes I wanted a character that would be visually interesting and distinctive, this is very important for female characters especially, characters that are interesting to cosplay, good characters are very recognisable a lot of them just from the their silhouette. choosing a particular design to bring forward was very difficult, in the end I had many very distinctive designs which all have a very different feel to them. I like the idea of characters that are different that how they initially appear so I choose this dancer design.

Starting with an innocent looking figure I added details that could allude to the character really being a witch, the hair piece and tattoos were based off a Persian witch design on a brass amulet.
I also designed a snake bracelet and shoes, I figured it could be enchanted to come alive, perhaps it could take the place of the dogs in the story.
I took a long time designing the dress clothes I consider them as important as the face as they can convey a large amount of information about the character

With the ideas from the iterations I made I painted up the character, I took some care in making the character's face look Persian 

My final painting was somewhat difficult I was running out of time when I drew it and I had difficulty handling the low light levels in the painting, and using a photo for a background, I had initially wanted more figures in the painting running from the snake, but they were infeasible with the skills and time I had. I felt this would be a good picture to show off the character's true nature.

Bibliography
Doostdar, A. (2013). Portrait of an Iranian Witch. The New Inquiry. [online] Available at: http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/portrait-of-an-iranian-witch/ [Accessed 13 Nov. 2015].

BA1a Concept Art Timepieces

Timepieces

I was given a very vague brief for this project, to design a timepiece that is both creative and visually impressive, so I considered ways of measuring time outside of conventional methods. In the silhouette sheet I have animals pushing machines and a map of the solar system to measure time.

I decided on bringing forward a sand timer that would sand filling a bucket, when the bucket is full it would be weighted to tip over and then return to its original position, I was going to have heads resembling Mt. Rushmore spewing sand, I decided on designing a king and his horse, the idea is that the timepiece is of a king that tamed his mad horse. I looked at the king of Denmark's uniform for a reference.

This is the model sheet showing different perspectives and details for the design to be modelled it may be difficult as the design is part of a hillside, I made sure that the mechanism looks like it would work.

For the final painting after considering various perspectives. I challenged my self with a difficult 4 point perspective, and creates quite a dynamic image. Although this particular perspective would be suited to a game with lots of vertical movement such as Just Cause or Gravity Daze.
But the the painting itself was more of a challenge with the limited palette of rock. Lighting the picture with the light source above and behind he the statue was a good move, I feel this looks visually impressive and this draws the eye to the top of the image where I can easily draw it down to follow the flow of water.