"Low Budget" Projects does not mean it's less ambitious and less of a Project
There is this narrative going on especially with personal project and student's project that they have to create art projects such as film or games to prove themselves that their work is worth it. This is a narrative especially quite apparent in my own country, in Southeast Asia.
I am not exactly talking about if you want to make a commercial film or games that sells as a business, then yes you might want to achieve that minimum requirement benchmark.
I'm talking about if you are doing it as a hobby, side thing after your day job, or a student project. There is this pressure that you have to achieve those visual benchmark that is seemingly "commercially successful" out there, and as an artist I do think that the visual benchmark quality is being raised "quite significantly".
You may notice why I'm only talking about visual benchmark, not film or games as a whole.
Because in my experience working with bigger project like games, a game is beautiful or "well-done" not because of individual assets or how much you can color one art asset beautifully. The whole game has to feel united, feels like they belong in the same universe. This also includes the narratives, sound, music, dialogues, game design.
This is what making games hard. With my years of experience, in digital drawing and concept art, I feel like making game assets that united as a whole when a narrative and sound is included, or even game design mechanic, is an entirely different beast. Constant evaluation is needed from the bigger picture of the project.
So it brings back to the idea of "Is low-budget art project like film and games" is necessarily less ambitious?
First of all, the term of "low-budget" and "high-budget" is very abstract. Making any film and games require a lot of budget: money and time. Many times we refer the "high-budget" as the Hollywood standard but it gets more complicated than that, in which I'm not going to touch in this blog in detail. Because there are more accesible and sometimes open-source software like Blender and Godot!
But I'd like to define the "low-budget" project more as a "project that is within our capability and resources". It will still require a lot of money especially if you're making them from your pocket money. This kind of project, allows you to work with what you have, what is around you and what to do with it. To work with limitations will result in an interesting solution. Sometimes, having too many freedom in a project can lead to being too narrowminded.
I thought of this when I started to watch the 1980s Mothra vs Godzilla movie. Does the film props looks like very miniature-like and plushie-like compared to the Godzilla and Mothra movies today? Of course. The 1980s movie feels very rough, but if you watch the whole film it still gets the story across.
While the visual benchmark difference is massive, the 1980s is still a good introduction to the story of Godzilla. If they wanted to make a better visuals and experiment with CG, they absolutely can! But I'd like to think the story still rooted from older movies and how they can reinvent and improve the visuals later. But they have to, make it exist first with what they had.
Maybe, the point of making project with the budget you already have within your capability, is to see the finished project as a whole first. Then if you'd like to reinvent and even make the second, third version and so on, you absolutely can.
But you cannot evaluate and revise from a blank piece of paper.
I think that's all for my more spontaneous blog post, hope you enjoy it and I'll see you on the next one!