Mr Oatley's Opus

Oatley Academy piece - This is where I stopped at before I started to get busy with freelance work. This was for the OA Audacious Accomplishment Assignment. The point of the assignment is to take an existing story or movie and make it your own and make it huge(or as huge as you can). I picked The Godfather. I studied the movie and found that at the heart of it was this sort of fear, or manipulation of fear. The character Michael Corleone based most of his decisions on the fear of losing, or displeasing his father. He wanted to make the decisions that would please his father, he was reluctant to get into his families business until the life of his father was at stake. His father (Vito) was dealing with a new kind of fear which was that heavy drug trade was starting to become a major source of revenue among his criminal colleagues. All the characters use fear to manipulate and force others to make decisions. The person bringing drugs into the country attacked Vito in an effort to manipulate his oldest son (Sonny) into giving money and protection necessary for him to bring drugs into the country. All these men use fear, when you don't do what they want you to do, they attack you in a way that scares you into doing what they wanted. Behind all the formal attire and class lies people who deal in fear.

I thought it would be interesting to set up some sort of story for game characters(card, video, or games) who were able to physically manifest, conjure and cast fear unto others. Since the concentration of the class more about making a piece that dealt with story rather than a piece that attended to mechanics of a specific format of gaming. It was less about designing a level, or card style illustration and more about finding a suitable arrangement of story ques that resinate a deeper meaning. I chose the part of The Godfather story where Michael was exiled to live in Cecily for a time. In my piece the character of Michael would be the horse rider who is forced to leave his home land. Behind him, his brothers, his nephew and men of his extended family.

There are parts of this painting I may tighten up in the future, but this is it as it stands right now. I may just pick a different scene from the movie to make my own, as this assignment was very fun and Chris Oatley has A LOT to offer in the way of instruction for reaching(and conveying) the deeper meaning of your work.