Module 4 - Point, Line + Shape

4.1 Introduction to Point, Line + Shape

In addition to color and texture, points, lines and shapes are three other essential "building blocks" of visual compositions, whether digital or physical, 2D or 3D. Just like color and texture, these three components can be utilized to define images through contrast and definition. Lines, especially, can also be used to define details, separations, and even motion or the passage of time {4D}, while shapes can imply volume and the sense of three-dimensions in 2D images and artwork.

This module will explore point, line, and shape from a few different perspectives. First, it will look at some basic visual properties of point, line, and shape, and how each has been used in art and design, mostly throughout the past 100 years and focusing on more contemporary examples.

At the end of each section, the module will examine some unique uses of point, line, and shape, in games and interactive artworks, from a primarily visual - and not mechanic - perspective.

This lecture content page is a bit longer than the others because it is essentially trying to summarize some of the most basic building blocks and image-making techniques of visual compositions and designs, and to show examples that works with these building blocks in interesting ways and/or ways that are relevant to games and playable media. For this reason, this module will focus a bit less on surveying a broad application and use of these components in games and playable media, as point, line, and shape are such basic components of visual media that they could be represented by actual hundreds of games.

4.2 Points, Dots + Circular Patterns - Physical Properties

Points + dots in both physical and digital images can be used in a variety of ways. They can imply lines, or even define shapes and/or shading, or they can be included in an image as more central components, such as a dot {big or small} or a series of dots in a pattern. Patterns are connected to - and often form - textures. These textures usually appear as more 2D and are not so much an implied texture, that attempts to produce the effect of 3D depth, and more like a pattern that can create contrast between shapes and/or areas of a composition.

Dots and points can also be used to signify, symbolize or correspond to something in an image or frame, and can be used to cover parts of a visual, which will be further discussed in the artworks below.

Size / Weight / diameter

Points can be infinitely small {in vector graphics programs, for example, points are often invisible and only form the construction of a line}, or large like circles. The spectrum of point to dot to circle is highly relative and contextual - in a 10 foot by 20 foot painting, a small 2 inch diameter circular shape would be considered a point or a dot, but in a 3x3 inch logo, it would be considered a circle.

Texture + shape

Points and dots can also have texture, and/or have rough or smooth edges, and/or be more or less circular or distorted. These types of non-uniform points or dots are especially prevalent in painting, where the effects of brush size, amount of paint / medium, canvas, etc, can vary a lot. When dots are used to shade or imply lines / shades, their textures / edges are usually more consistent and/or intentional.

Density

The amount of dots in a single area convey density - more dots in an area are higher density, less dots in an area are lower density. These principles are frequently used in shading / contrast, and are also used in some ink-based printing techniques and other visual output formats. Dot density {in pixel form} is how shading and gradients are achieved in traditional pixel-art, although more contemporary versions of pixel art sometimes combine smooth gradients with more obvious pixelated effects.

Overlap

Overlapping points or dots of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, and Red, Green and Blue, are used in printing output technology and digital display technology. This can be helpful to understand when viewing older artworks that focus on these - at the time - very new technologies in printing and digital visual media.

4.3 Points + Dots in Art + Design

The artists and artworks in this section use points and dots as primary component in their work to create visual images through a wide range of techniques, applications, styles and even movements. Some of these artists work with points as a concept or metaphor, in addition to using them to produce desired visual outcomes. In any artwork or design, the focus of one or two components produces a more specific aesthetic, where the structure of the image - or its building blocks - become part of the viewer's overall focus.

PointilLism

The examples below explore a few pointillist paintings, an impressionistic technique developed in the 1870s by French painters Georges-Pierre Seurat and Paul Signac. This technique applies patterns of small, distinct points of unmixed pure hues of pigment or paint to form an image. In the context of CMYK printing and RGB display technology,, I think it is very interesting to note that Seurat and Signac believed this method was the most scientific and precise way to record or capture color and light. 150ish years later, this is essentially how these technologies work - once you have enough distance, or the image format has enough resolution, the human eye blends the distinct dots or pixels together to form an image. Maybe this realization is actually what caused Cameron's existential crisis in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Points of Color in Visual Culture

Pointillists in Europe were not the first artists to combine points of saturated, unmixed color to create a sense of color. mixing and visual pattern or shape. There are also numerous visual cultural practices and expressive visual forms that employ points or dots of color to define line, patterns, and shape, many of which pre-date modern printing technology and Pointillism. I believe it is important to highlight that even though many of these cultural forms are shown in art museums, and are included in conversations about art and design, they were sometimes made in different cultural contexts and/or for different purposes.

Some examples of these cultural visual forms are beaded clothing items meant to symbolize specific community and/or cultural status, such as this beaded collar made in the 19th/20th century by either the Xhosa, Mfengu or Nguni Peoples of what is now South Africa, or this beaded apron made in the 19th/20th century by the Ndebele Peoples, also of what is now South Africa. The beaded pattern geometries in these textile and clothing works are similar to some of the patterns observed in the beaded child's cape below, made between 1890 - 1905 by the Stoney Nakoda Peoples of what is now Alberta, Canada. These similarities are interesting because these were created by communities within roughly the same timeframe, located thousands of miles apart and rooted in very distinct visual cultures.

"Deconstructed" Commercial Printing

Starting in the 1960's with the Pop Art Movement, artists began to critique consumer culture, and the commodification and/or commercialization of artwork and design by "deconstructing" the technologies used to mass produce visual images. Roy Lichtenstein's large scale paintings re-created and abstracted the high-volume, lower-quality color printing characteristics used for color newspapers and magazines at the times, where the “dots” of the printing process were enlarged into abstracted, graphic fields of shape, line, and color with highly graphic portraits completed in the same style.

Throughout his career, John Baldesarri also explored this scale shift and/or transformation of dots to shapes in many of his paintings and collages. He uses self-described “dots” in many of his works to cover or block out vital parts of the photographic image below. As much as these were “points” of focus or distraction, their physical shape and characteristics also formed the overall meaning of the final piece. The dots were the focus of the images, but also asked the viewer to fill in meaning or complete a narrative about what they were covering up. This too is a form of deconstruction and recombination.

Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama is a prolific contemporary artist who incorporates points, dots, and repeated circular patterns in most of her artworks since the 1960's. These artworks include photographic images, sculptures, and large scale, physical installations, which can be so immersed in dots that they begin to form a sense of atmosphere or even texture. Her more recent Infinity Mirrors series are installations that use mirrors and projected light within a blacked-out room to immerse the viewers in a space, field, or void of infinite points of light. This concept of points of light - which has no tangible dimensions - bring the earlier considerations about the scale-shift between points and dots full circle {hah}.

Dots in Games + Playable Media

Dots are important in game design as limited palettes and compositions of dots {pixels} were the only option for early game graphics, as well as one of the only output options for printing digital graphics. Now that these technological constraints are no longer an issue, many artists still utilize aspects of this very specific aesthetic in their artwork and games. It will be very interesting to see how older palettes and display constraints continue to be used by artists and designers in contemporary games and artworks.

Animator Pinot W. Ichwandardi

Pinot W. Ichwandardi creates animations that utilize combinations of old and new techniques, and old and new technology. In approaching animation and digital visuals from this aesthetic standpoint, I believe he is able to redefine expectations of a specific technique and technology - especially in his use of older digital tools and programs. Many of these artworks work within the limited 1-color, low resolution style of dots of black and white, but the visuals produced feel new and compelling.

4.4 Line - Physical Properties

In the most basic terms - and in vector graphics editors - connecting two or more points together forms lines. Lines are used in a variety of ways in art + design, many of which can be impossible to separate from the final visual compositions or image. Lines are like the building blocks of creative expression, and some of the first forms of image production technology. Lines can be drawn, painted or constructed, or can be implied based on the composition of other elements of the image. Lines can also imply physical movement, or record the motion of an artist across a canvas or mark-making surface, which also communicates a sense of time.

In visual compositions, lines can be used to define edges of shapes via outlines, can communicate smaller details, can create shading via cross hatching, can create physical texture, and also be used to create a sense of 3D space via horizon-lines, and perspective. More generally, they can organize a composition by directly or indirectly guiding a viewers focus, or connecting elements together. Lines - both visible and invisible - in interfaces, menus, grids, charts, etc, organize, guide, and connect visual information for the viewer or player in a similar way.

Weight

Line Weight is how thick or thin the line is, which can be a result of the drawing tool, the medium and media, and/or the pressure applied by the artist. In some drawing styles, lines can imply depth of field by altering their weight - heavier, or thicker lines, will move forward to the eye while lighter, or thinner lines, will recede.

fidelity or quality - Shape, Consistency + Texture

Lines can have a shape to them depending on the tool used to produce them, such as an angled line, or a line with a rounded edge. This shape can change in consistency, and be more texturized or rough, or be more uniform, and smooth. The texture and shape of lines can be hugely consequential in a game or artwork's overall visual aesthetic, since lines can compose so many aspects of a game {text, interfaces, in-game art}, if these line shapes and textures are inconsistent across the different components or are not intentionally designed and applied, they can form some opposing or dissonant aesthetic meanings for players or viewers.

Definition and OPACITY

Lines can be blurred or more solid and defined, and sometimes are not even physically drawn or constructed. In those cases, other parts of an image might "draw" a line via negative space, or, might rely on the viewers to "conceptually" form the line.

Etchings, Carvings and Inverse Prints

In some forms of printing like woodblock printing or etching, thin lines can be carved into a printing block or plate, that is then used to print multiple copies of the inverse of those lines. This usually results in large shapes of color defined by light lines, which were the areas that were etched or carved out and did not absorb the printing ink.

Application / Linework

Lines can be textured, can be used to create a visual sense of texture, and can also have different types of textures of their application or execution. Drawn lines can be more organic, with curves and flowing shapes, or more angular and geometric, using less curves and more angles and straight lines. This starts to get confusing when angular, geometric line work is roughly textured.

4.5 Lines in Art + Design

The most evident use of line in art and design that we will cover in this module is as the primary component in drawing, to define shapes, objects, spaces and figures. Since this is the most easily understood and prevalent use of line in art by far, I will show a few historical works that are pre-cursors to contemporary drawing and are still highly relevant and referenced. These examples will also demonstrate different types of line-drawings that are still used today, even in digital artworks.

Contour, organizational line, gestural, continuous line

All of the artists below work with line more directly, as either a focal point of their visuals, or as a key part of their process. In both cases, the lines in these examples do not just construct visuals that represent or symbolize things other than lines themselves.

Line + Abstract Expressionism

Many more contemporary uses of line as a focal point or line as a process are influenced by the Abstract Expressionists, and the early Minimalist movements, of the 1940s to 1960s. Abstract Expressionism was a movement that was interested in capturing the act or action of painting, the moments of creation and process. The resulting image was not intended to resemble a figure, landscape, or scene, and was instead a record of the artist's movement across the canvas via lines of brushstrokes, paint and paint splatters, ink, and sometimes even footprints or cigarette butts.

Abstract Expressionists from the US like Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning are the most widely known and recognized for establishing this kind of "Action Painting", but there were many Asian and Asian-American artists exploring very similar ideas in their paintings and sculptures at the same time, influencing and also forming the movement as a whole but without the recognition. These artists include Ruth Asawa, Toshiko Takaezu, and Morita Shirū. Many of these artists were in conversation with one another. The Abstract Expressionist movement was also heavily influenced overall by Asian visual cultural and artistic traditions such as Japanese calligraphy and brushwork, and the concept of Zen, which heavily influenced Chinese painting traditions and was discussed conceptually as a method for moving away from recognizable forms and embracing emptiness. These influences, inspirations, and intersections were completely obscured at the time, however, due to racism and xenophobia in the US.

Line + Minimalism

Minimalism is another movement that utilizes line {as well as shape, which will be discussed more in the next section}, as a meditative or contemplative image for both the artist and the viewer to explore. Just as the paintings made by Abstract Expressionists were not meant to "resemble" something, the line and shapes of Minimalist artworks were not meant to resemble anything but lines and shapes themselves.

This is another movement where US-based artists like Sol Lewitt and Agnes Martin are more well-known, but artists, visual practices, and artistic traditions from other countries and cultures both inspired and helped establish the movement overall. One of these artists was Nasreen Mohamedi, an artist from India who created abstracted, linear, and geometric forms in the 1960s and 1970s until her death in 1990. These drawings and paintings could be situated as an intersection between Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism. These forms also resemble so many contemporary, digitally created images and animations, and line-based effects, or the abstract line artwork used to represent a range of different meanings in digital games.

Line as a Trace of Motion / Movement

The creative processes used to physically produce these older works above have many similarities to the more contemporary drawings and paintings below. Drawings by Tony Orrico, Bernar Venet, Trisha Brown, Colleen Coleman and Matthew Barney provide indexical evidence of the path of an artist's hand, foot, or body, and how it travels across the drawing surface. The lines offer a record of an action or movement that also communicates information about time - consider also how the resulting recorded image is connected to where the drawing element is affixed, and the properties of the drawing surface. John Franzen works with line meditatively and abstractly, where the process of creating the image might be a chance for contemplative process, and/or where the viewer is meant to sit with the final image and consider different ways of experiencing it.

The video below is not covered in the Lecture Review Quiz

Lines in Games and Playable Media

While the lines of these artworks do not specifically describe how they were produced or made, the artist's action is captured in their final visual form. These lines offer some sort of evidence for the viewer to investigate and interpret, to potentially create a narrative from. This dialogue, or interactivity, is another reason why I am focusing on these types of line-based artworks in this module. There is something performative, playful/playable, interactive and/or game-like about many of these works. Additionally, many of the linear forms these movements produce heavily influence visual aesthetics in a subset of games and playable media, a few of which are exhibited by the games below.

Contemporary Games With Compelling Use of Line

4.6 Shape Properties

To conclude this set of compositional elements, lines connect to form shapes. Most visual compositions and images contain shapes, even if they are only implied by line or points, and shapes can be formed by the "negative space" - parts of an image with less visual information - outlined by the other visual components. Even an "empty" surface, canvas, or frame, completely devoid a drawn, painted or applied materials or medium, will usually form a shape of some kind.

Basic Definitions and Categories

In this course, we will focus on four categories of basic geometric shapes: circular, rectangular {4 sides, which can include squares}, triangular {3 sides} and polygonal {more than 4 sides}. This is mostly consistent with how vector editors work with shapes and shape building tools.

Other, more complicated curved shapes that do not fit into these categories are considered organic - like the currents of a river, fog, or branches in a tree. More complex organic shapes can be composed of many smaller geometric shapes, which is apparent in many forms of physical and digital artworks and design. This construction was also a critical component of early digital image making - both 2D and 3D. Now that these constructions are either no longer necessary or can be almost invisible because of advancements in graphics technology, intentionally working in a low-poly or pixel-art style, which reveals the more basic geometric shapes constructing characters and worlds, is an aesthetic choice.

Geometric shapes can have rounded edges and looser lines, like a rounded rectangle or a polygon made of jello. Organic shapes, like flower petals, can also convey geometric patterns or logic.

Implied Shapes + Literal/Actual Shapes

Implied shapes are geometric or organic shapes that can be observed within a composition, image, or design - such as a character design - but are not intended to represent or be identified as the actual shape itself.

Literal or actual shapes are shapes in a composition that are intended to be seen or recognized as the shape itself - these can include buttons in an interface, invincibility stars, or patterns or designs of shapes applied to surfaces, fabric, textures, etc.

Basic Shape Meanings + Interpretations

Implied shapes with harder edges and more extreme angles can communicate a sense of rigidity, sharpness, or structure, while shapes with more curved lines can be read as lighter, more flexible and less rigid or solid. The general meaning of basic shapes, however, or how an audience will interpret them, is also heavily informed by the interactions of lines, texture, color, and/or lighting and shading in the image. Shapes are also hugely subjective and contextual. A character that appears to have a harsh and angular silhouette in one game might be read as a soft and squishy in another game, depending on the other elements and designs.

4.7 Shapes in Art + Design

Since shapes are such a building block of visual compositions, they are widely used in artworks and designs across time, cultures and forms. The examples in the sections below explore more unique uses or approaches to shape, artistic movements that were defined by a specific use of shape, and/or uses of shape that are heavily referenced and/or influential in visual aspects of games and interactive artworks. These sections in no way cover ALL of the uses of shape in Art + Design.

Image, Shape + Abstraction

In the mid 1800's, European Impressionist painters like Claude Monet began to work differently with color and shape in their paintings - instead of trying to capture a sense of "realistic truth" or "beauty" by representing how the human eye perceived the world, their images explored color and light as compositional elements, and the brushstrokes themselves were allowed to convey a sense of shape and texture. By the late 1800’s and early 1900's, Impressionist artists like Paul Cezanne were focusing primarily on shapes in their paintings, where the represented subjects - like landscapes and still-life scenes - were becoming more and more geometric and abstract, and the brushstrokes were becoming broader and more angular. The final paintings shifted focus from "looking like something" to the expressive shapes the artist observed.

This transition and geometric abstraction was further explored by Cubist artists such as Pablo Picasso in the 1910s and 1920s. In many of Picasso’s paintings above, the forms of human figures, portraits and other complex forms were further flattened and abstracted into combinations of lines and shapes. Many attribute this shift towards shape and abstraction in Western European art movements as a result of - and response to - the invention and increased use of photographic technology at the time. Another huge influence, which is less discussed, was that many of these Western European artists had increased access to a wide range of visual cultural works made by Peoples in other countries. This increased access came via industrial travel, trade, colonization, stealing, and other appropriation. Direct connections can be drawn between Picasso's most famous and recognizable cubist paintings, and the masks, carvings, and other sculptural and visual works made by many African Cultures. Contemporary artists, like Yinka Shonibare, below, create artworks about this form of colonization in art and design.

This shift towards shape and abstraction - even in still recognizable or representative images - prevalent across many western art movements in the 1900’s, continues to impact and influence representational art, design, and media. Many contemporary painters, illustrators, animators, and designers work with abstraction and stylization rooted in this exploration of creative expression vs "realistic" depiction. There is a direct connection between the artworks below, and the styles applied to the characters, objects, and environments that compose a game's world or play-space.

Shapes, Geometric Patterns as Forms, and Minimalism

Cubism shared many aesthetic commonalities and conceptual approaches with several other important art and design movements emerging in Europe and Russia during the early to mid 1900’s. These movements, instead of being direct descendants of Cubism, reflected and responded to many aspects of Cubism, especially regarding the abstraction of recognizable forms and images towards shapes and patterns. Movements like Constructivism and Futurism, along with Bauhaus Art, continued this shift and also began to explore pure exploration of expressive shapes and patterns into highly recognizable visual aesthetics. These movements and their connections to games and interactive artworks will be explored more in the next module, which will cover Symbols, Iconography, + Text, and the final module covering motion and rhythm.

Another movement that grew out of Cubism, Constructivism, and Abstract Expressionism, was Minimalism, which was explored heavily in the US during the 1960s and 1970s. Minimalism included both 2D paintings and 3D sculptural forms, that focused only on the expressive nature of shapes, patterns, and forms, and was not concerned with any other literal or symbolic meaning.

I once again want to highlight the similarities between many of the artworks from these movements and the complex designs of color, shapes, and patterns that adorn visual cultural objects and works made by numerous visual Cultures outside of the U.S. and Europe, many of which pre-date these art movements by hundreds of years. While these cultural shapes and patterns were not all directly referenced by these art movements, I believe it is crucial to consider that these movements were not the first visual image-makers to explore shape and pattern in these formal, abstract, and/or conceptual ways.

The patterned textiles below, created by different cultures/Peoples across Africa, exhibit designs with distinct cultural roots, significance, and meanings. Most of these are more contemporary produced fabrics, but still relate back to a specific visual cultural practice in terms of patterns, shapes and color / dyes.

As Minimalism moved from line to shape, painters like Frank Stella, and sculptors like Dan Flavin and Donald Judd, created artworks that did not attempt to symbolize or represent anything other than their visual shapes and construction as visual forms. As the movement progressed, artists like Robert Smithson, Richard Serra, and Nancy Holt explored larger scale, sculptural works that were meant to immerse the viewer in their shape and form, creating a newly designed environment. Many of these paintings and sculptures could be references for many modern games’ environmental elements, objects / items, interfaces, and other features.

Minimalist forms in contemporary games

Minimalism + Early Computer Graphics

In addition to these similarities and references, the use of shape and pattern as THE image, vs a building block of an image, is also very relevant to games and digital visual artworks as an aesthetic concept. While early video display technology and computing technology severely limited the visuals in early video games and computer-based graphics and art, I believe that movements like Minimalism indirectly made space for these early computer graphics to be understood beyond representation or image fidelity or quality. The idea of "modern" or "abstract" art had at that point reached more mainstream media channels, like film, television, and print mediums, including advertising, which made them a bit more conceptual and prevalent in contemporary visual culture. Because of this introduction, these abstract and low-fidelity images could still be appreciated by and even compelling to a wider audience.

The images below are from very early computer graphic visuals and computer games in the 1970s and early 1980s. As someone who remembers when these images felt totally new and cutting edge - I was 5, so, I also might have just been really attracted to anything on a screen - I think it is wild now to see contemporary games working with similar aesthetics.

Now that digital images and graphics technology can achieve photorealistic, high-fidelity visuals, abstract and formal shapes and designs are still used in many aspects of games and playable media. These can include more symbolic elements or interface elements, which will be discussed more next module, as well as more abstracted environmental features or designs within the game world. Some games are still mostly or completely composed of these highly abstracted shapes and forms, including many visual puzzle games, rhythm games, and abstracted action games.

Shapes, Silhouette + Character Designs

Silhouettes are an expressive form of image making with a compelling visual aesthetic. This technique allows artists to create descriptive, impactful images without the need for a canvas, paint, drawing or painting tools or mediums, ink, etc. All that was needed in many cases was dark or light paper, a contrasting surface, and scissors or a cutting tool. This was a method used by many folks in the US in the 1800's and even earlier, who wanted to create visuals - especially portraits / profiles - but did not have access to drawing, painting or photographic technology or materials.

In the early 1900s in Europe, Fauvism grew out of Cubism, which included the use of cut-outs of painted shapes and patterns applied to paintings and drawings. Henri Matisse was one of the most well-known artists working with shape, silhouette and collage, and he was also directly inspired in this work by the visual cultural traditions of many African peoples, including Kuba cloth / textiles from central Africa. Additionally, Shadow Puppetry from Indonesia is an expressive, performative visual artform that has had a wide-ranging influence on silhouette artworks as well as some forms of early animation.

Contemporary ARTISTs + Silhouette

The contemporary artists below work with silhouette using many of the same techniques employed for hundreds of years. The visual properties of silhouettes allow them to be detailed in their edges, and therefore very expressive, but in many cases require the viewer to "fill in" the visual information within the silhouetted shape.

Kara Walker

Kara Walker uses silhouette in a way that also directly references and historically contextualizes their use in visual media and art in the 1850s. Through her visuals, she communicates the brutality and violence of slavery and violent racism in the U.S., and the use of visual stereotypes and racist characterizations across many forms of media to dehumanize Black Americans, especially the formerly enslaved. Her images are both impactful and detailed, but also have the potential to be obscured or hidden, and rely on at least the recognition of visual racial stereotypes that are a harmful part of U.S. visual culture. This type of visual media worked to perpetuate racist ideology and anti-black violence - Walker's work continues to confront these histories and reflect on the destructive and violent power some of these images still hold.

Content Guidance

The 6 images below depict graphic portrayals of racist violence, stereotypes and slavery - viewing or zooming these images is optional, and not required for the lecture review quiz. If not viewing the images, skip to the next section, entitled “Nikki McCLure”

Nikki McClure

Nikki McClure's prints and visuals look like digital paintings, but are, in fact, paper cut outs and layers of silhouettes that are then reproduced via screen printing in smaller series and digital offset printing {CMYK} in more mass produced series, books and printed materials. Her work, along with other screen-printing artists like Shepard Fairey {who I will discuss much more in the next module}, demonstrate an interesting method for producing artwork and visuals for games and other digitally based artworks - starting with some sort of physical production which is then implemented into a digital form. Another example of this production method is the recently released 2023 game The Master's Pupil - every frame of animation was hand painted, and the game took 7 years to produce.

The Master’s Pupil Trailer

Physical Production + Image Making Incorporated into digital media and digital games

Games + Shape / Silhouette

To finish out this module, I'd like to look at how silhouette and shape can be used in character design for games. This method is used in product design, fashion design, theater + performance design, and film and television cinematography, so, it makes sense that it also is important in animation and games.

After reviewing these videos, consider how shapes - along with lines and points - can be highly expressive and communicate meaning at an individual level, and how the vast range of artists and designers from this module use these elements to convey different information, meanings, and experiences for viewers or players. As we head into the second half of this class, we will start to explore how the intentional combination and framing of these elements, along with a few other visual aspects of games, can work towards an intentional and cohesive visual aesthetic.