Everything in this new video game by Sydney artist Pat Naoum is painted by hand – yep, you read that right. HAND PAINTED.
The Master’s Pupil is a unique puzzle adventure game set inside the eye of classic French artist Claude Monet.
What started as an obsession with the human eye has become an intricate and fascinating interactive world. The game sees you embark on a journey through the eyes of Monet.
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The idea was born over seven years ago, with Naoum unleashing all of his creativity into this masterpiece.
This week I sat down for a chat with Naoum, who can’t wait to share his art with the world.
I started by asking him how the idea came to be…
“The first idea came about when I saw this macro photography of human eyes. So like the iris, like really, really close up. And they were on a bit of an angle. And so you can see kind of like the divot and then the hole for the pupil – I was just obsessed with them.”
“I kept on looking through one photographer, and it looked like a little mini landscape. So it had this kind of like all these big vines and it just kind of looked like this, like valley kind of thing. And I just got obsessed with the idea of a game set in that area, you know, that landscape.”
“But then that was like ten years ago now (laughs). So, it took me a while to get it in action. And then about seven years ago, I started working on it and I started basically layering on these ideas of like starting from the edge of the iris, and moving across to the pupil and having that kind of as one life, someone’s whole lifetime.”
“I was looking for something that was kind of interesting, and I was looking into hand-painting it.
I did a Bachelor of Creative Arts, so I studied a whole bunch of painters and artists, and I remembered Monet. He had a fascinating life, but he also has a little bit of a – spoiler – he had cataracts in his old age, and so had kind of some of the first surgery.”
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“I thought that would be kind of quite interesting, as like an endgame, to kind of go through his whole life and then climb up into a bit of a cataract castle at the end.
So a bit unwieldy, but kind of, you know, something a bit unusual.”
And how did you get your start in painting? Because it seems like you’ve combined two hobbies here of video games and painting.
“I started painting as a kid, basically. You know, I was kind of always sitting around the dining room table, painting and drawing and always artmaking. And then I kind of, you know, I did art in high school and through into the HSC and that’s the way I was going to go.”
“I was on my way to becoming a director, you know, trying to do that. But I found with film, although it was fascinating and a lovely art form and one of my favorites, it’s a bit more difficult to do every day. You can’t make a film for an hour after work, but with a game, you can download a program, and then every day you can kind of chip away at this giant block and make something in your spare time.”
“I had to learn how to code and I had to learn how to design puzzles. So it was this long process, but it was really fun, you know, it was kind of really interesting.”
Walk me through how you combined them together to kind of get your very tangible paintings onto the digital space that is a video game.
“It is an interesting question and something that I didn’t think I needed to explain because so many people online have asked, how did you do that? How did you get this painting and put it in a game? And so, it’s simple. It’s a scanner. It’s not just a document scanner, I ended up buying a high res film negative scanner. So it could do like really, really high-resolution scans. But basically, the process is I built it in Unity Game Engine, a simple and free-to-use program – essentially about half the industry uses it.”
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“And then I kind of design these puzzles and these puzzle pieces, and then I took screenshots of those, took them to Photoshop and built like an A4 page basically, and then printed it out and then painted over the top of that printout and then re-scanned them back in and then cut them back out in Photoshop and put those images back into the game.”
“So it’s kind of an elaborate loop out into the real world and then coming back again. But it was, you know, it was great. You can’t really get that kind of texture with a digital painting. You can try, but it always has a bit of something missing. But getting it to digital was really fun and really interesting because there’s this kind of texture. There’s this like, especially early on before I really started cleaning the scanner bed really well, there were all these little dust particles stuck in the paint and whatnot. So it was kind of an interesting process to work with.”
When it comes to the score, how was that chosen? It seems to really keep up with the relaxed vibe that is Monets paintings. Was there a lot of planning behind that as well?
“Yeah, there was a lot of planning from very early on. One of my good friends, Steve Schouten, a.k.a. Misty Lanes, he’s the composer. And from very early on we were discussing, we would just always discuss our kind of creative projects. I asked him very early on if he was interested and he really was he wanted to get into composing and he wanted to kind of experience that.”
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“And so the two of us kind of talked about a lot in the coming years. And, you know, the game took seven years to make. So we were doing it for this kind of long time. It was always for me, the composing and the score, was always what I called like an emotional backbone for the game.”
“Because, you know, there’s no language in the game. It’s just kind of puzzles and experiencing Monet’s paintings and you experience his life through those and through this soundscape of all different kinds of environmental sounds coming into the game.”
“It really did come down to that and trying to instill a bit of emotion into a scene because you can play something out, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to feel anything but having some kind of, you know, just the right amount of violins kicking in at a right moment can make you really have a sense of emotion on something, especially when it’s matched with everything in-game.”
“And so it was a part of the process and it was kind of almost part of the writing of the game and the different levels about what kind of emotions would you aiming for? How are we going to start the level and how are we going to end it? And what does that music sound like alone at that level?”
How did it feel when you first played it through and it all worked?
“Um, it doesn’t really happen because you’re basically tweaking bugs right up until the end. And then even after release, you can still tweak bugs. And, you know, there’s some things we’ll find and you know, some things will come through. But I think because you’re constantly playing it while you’re making it as well, you know, you’re constantly testing stuff and you play it through every iteration. But I’m genuinely excited… I’m excited to actually get it on Switch and play it because I haven’t had a chance to play it on Switch.”
“I worked with a porting company called Noble State Games and they’re just fantastic and they’ve done a lot of the testing and a lot of the porting and I’ve been able to fiddle but nothing, you know, nothing intense. So I’m kind of excited to have a go and just play it as a little bit of a spectator, I think would be kind of a nice experience.”
What has the reception been like towards the release of the game so far?
“It’s been really, really lovely how much people have just jumped on and been really amazing and supportive. And there are so many people that say, I don’t know you, but I’m proud of you. And that’s just like, oh, sweetest thing ever, you know, softens me up.”
“So it’s just been this really wonderful, wonderful thing. It’s kind of much bigger than I ever anticipated. So thank you, I guess. Thank you very much, everybody.”
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The Master’s Pupil is out on July 28th for PC, Mac and Switch, but if you wanted to get a taste before you buy you can check out the demo, available now through Steam.
