Pro Artist Fixes the Awful God of War Reveal

What's up, guys? Welcome. Today, I want to talk about something that is very near and dear to my heart, which is Kratos. This beautiful, ashy old man. Kratos, for those who are not familiar, is from the God of War video games, and he has arguably one of the most iconic character designs of all time. The God of War game that came out in 2018, was amazing. It was fantastic. I actually did fan art of Kratos way back in the day, and a lot of us fans of the games were very excited when we heard that they're making a show about Kratos's story until we saw the reveal of the characters. I mean, Jesus Christ. What the hell is going on here, guys? At first glance, I'll be honest. I wasn't sure what I was looking at. I thought this was a fake. I thought it was a cosplay. I was like, "Ain't no way, bro. That's got to be a fan account." But no, this was actually the official reveal from the Prime Video X account. Father and Son, behold your first look at Kratos and Atraus in God of War series, now in production. This genuinely made me feel nauseous, and it seems like a lot of other people were also not big fans of this initial reveal. Here's a gift of Kratos throwing his computer into the trash. Here's an image of Khabib and Hzbollah. What is this poster? It looks like a photo shoot from Bring Your Dad to School Day. Look how they massacred my boy. And again, more Hazbollah. Honestly, I love this one. This That's exactly my reaction. Under the post by discussing film, a fellow artist that I actually follow, Pyro Daily, commented a cringe emoji. You know, it's real bad when you get senior art directors voicing their disapproval. WTF? Is this here's somebody saying, "Atreus looks good. We definitely need more footage cuz I low-key thought this was AI. We had high hopes, but this is just another live action, I guess, followed by the image absolute ass. Thought this was AI at first. Again, it seems like a lot of people are saying very similar things that this looks like AI, looks cheap. Why does it look like an SNL sketch? Again, referring to the fact that it doesn't really look like something that's supposed to be official. Bro should have bulked up more to play Kratos. Kratos canonically is a god amongst men. I think the bar for playing him should be more than not fat. Are you for real? Why my goat Kratos look like that? They messed this up so bad. Wait, what? and I thought it was AI. I've scrolled down so far and I genuinely cannot find a single positive comment. So, all of our responses to this initial image got me feeling real curious. It got me thinking again, which is not something that I normally do. So, here I am trying to figure out what the actual issue is with this image because clearly something is not right. Now, if you look at the character design of Kratos himself from the 2018 game, which this show is adapting, and if we just focus on his costume for now, you can see that the show actually did an incredible job replicating what he looked like in the game. We're talking details down to the three triangular nails on his shoulder pad, down to the angle of the weave of the leather. It looks very accurate. Look, they even got Bro's wrist wraps and the big leather loin cloth to cover up his pee pe. I think even Kratos's son Atraus' design looks good. His costume is exactly what I would have expected from a liveaction adaptation of the game. So, it's not the designs, it's not the costumes. Now, could this be because the faces of the characters look nothing like the characters in the game? Again, I don't think so. We've had examples in the past of Pedro Pascal playing Joel from The Last of Us, and quite frankly, they just do not have the same facial structure, but Pedro Pascal made it work. I think whenever you're adapting a fictional character to a liveaction format, people tend to be a little bit more forgiving about the fact that the actor doesn't look 100% like the character that they've known. So, this got me really confused because it's not the character design, and I don't think it's the casting. I think they've done a really good job with the casting here. My artist's brain is going crazy here because something is wrong with this image. Now, I'm not going to get into spoilers here, but this is a scene based on one of the very first opening sequences in the game. So, I went back and forth a little bit to compare what the game looked like versus what it looked like here. And sure enough, with a little bit of comparison, one thing in this promo image started to stand out at me a little bit, and that is the lighting. In the game sequence, you know, Kratos and Atraus are going through the forest. You see a lot of dappled light. Even in the cut scenes, you know, you're getting sunlight, you're getting some ambient light, there's shadows, there's shadows being cast by the trees, and you really feel like you're moving through an environment. Now, in this image, everything is flat. Flat. Take a look at how all the shadows on Kratos's body are soft. All the shadows on Atreaus's face are soft. It's like, there's a light source, yes, but there's a huge diffuser that's blocking the light. So, everything becomes soft and flat. Look at the tree on the far left of this image. Look, I get it. It's a big tree, okay? But there's no transition from the light side of the tree to the dark side of the tree. Normally, when you have a cylinder, you have a light side of the cylinder. you have a highlight and then you have a shadow side of that cylinder that's non-existent on this tree. Okay, look at the tree in the background. You barely see any transition from light to shadow. And same thing with all the other trees in the back. Frankly, same thing with the foliage. Everything looks kind of flat. And it is giving you a vibe that feels very cheap. It feels like someone just took this image with their camera, didn't do any post-processing, no editing. This is exactly how it came out of the camera, and this is exactly how they're presenting it. I think that is also one of the reasons why a lot of people are saying this looks like AI is because AI tends to spit out images that tend to not have a lot of character, not a lot of thought. It feels generic and generic is a great way to describe the lighting that's used in this scenario. So, I decided to take this image, okay, and I spent like maybe 30 minutes tops to see if we can just make something that looks a little bit more interesting. Now, here are the results. This is the original image versus my first exploration and conceptualization of a different lighting scenario inspired of course by the lighting in the first level in the game. Before, after. Before, after. And I'll explain some of these choices, some of these layers that I use a little bit more in depth. But here's another second exploration. Okay, this is the original image. And this is another alternative version of lighting that we could have used for this specific scene. Before. after. Before, after. I don't know. I feel like adding a punch of light like this just makes this scene look so much more interesting and it makes this promo image suddenly so much more impactful. Like, I'm genuinely confused because I think the people who did the casting for these characters, the artists who designed the costumes for our characters, all did a great job. But somehow someone decided to showcase these characters in the most boring, generic, sterile lighting possible that just completely fails to do them justice. Now, if you're an artist, okay, this is a perfect real life example of just how much of a difference good lighting can make. I'm not saying any of my solutions are perfect, but I think this is a little bit of a step up. Now, I want to take you guys through some of the choices that I made and explain why so that maybe you guys can also take some of these tips and tricks into your own art as well. But right off the bat, Kratos here does not look good. Even the original creator of the game came out and said that Kratos looks dumb and stupid. Apparently, the creator of Kratos actually hated the reveal, too. And I can't blame him. I think this is a terrible lighting scenario to showcase his character. I hate the pose here. And I hate how the light draws a lot of attention to his hands, which are placed very softly and gently on his thighs. Again, it's not giving Kratos. So, here I decided to add in a layer of multiply, which basically allows us to add in a layer of shadow, a layer of darkness. And you can see the shadow really goes over his hands a lot and darkens them so they don't draw as much attention. But the shadow also rounds out the dark side of the trees. Look at the dark side on all these trees. They're getting darker. There's more contrast. There's more depth to this forest. Now, because we are in a forest, there's going to be lighting coming from the sky, right? And there seems to be a bright patch of sky behind Kratos, which means there should be some ambient lighting coming from that section in the environment. So, I added another layer here to give Kratos a bit of a rim light on the back side of his head. As you can see right there, this pops him out of the background a little bit, but it also makes the lighting scenario in general feel more believable. That's my entire goal here. I think that good lighting is lighting that supports the characters, but also feels natural to the environment. I also added a layer of light on the bright side of the trees, again, to give the trees a little bit more contrast and depth. Now, here's some golden light, some god rays because I do want there to be dappled sunlight in this environment. Now, on top of this layer, we have a layer of sunlight here coming in from the right side. Most of it is going to be catching on Atraus. Now, this light is also a sort of rim light because you can see it's catching the side of Atraus' face a little bit. It's catching the bow and it's doing the same thing. It's popping the character, our focal point, out of the background. Now, on top of that, because there's going to be dappled sunlight shining through the foliage, the canopy of the forest, you're going to have some of that orange show up in the back on the trees as well, the lighting feels natural. It feels like there's more depth. It's not just flat, okay? There's nothing that I hate more than flat light. So, I added in a new layer on top of some random foliage. Again, just quick and simple brush strokes, right? And then I added in a blur to it so it looks like it's out of focus. This creates a natural sense of depth that makes you feel like the scene extends beyond just our two characters and you're standing in a position where there are bushes right in front of you. Now, for the final two layers, I added one layer of darker shadows on the dark side of our characters to give them more pop. And then for the final layer, just a little bit of details to kind of flesh them out. Now, is this the perfect solution? Definitely not. I'm sure someone else can come up with something a lot better. But this is just a quick conceptualization of what the lighting could have been had it been maybe a little bit more natural, a little bit more believable because this flat lighting is absolutely not doing these characters justice. Okay? And I feel like this promo really had to be done right because I want more people to experience their stories. I love these characters. Now, of course, that's not the only option. And that's the beauty of exploring a lot of concepts is you can have many options. And I love this one as well. This is more of a backlit scenario. Again, we're still using some of that rim light to pop the characters out of the background. And you can see just how much depth we're actually adding to not only the characters, but also the forest in the back. Right? There's a little bit of dappling of light on the bark of the trees. Again, I'm not like completely making this up because this is how I felt playing through that level in the game and I wanted to stay faithful to it. But here, the first step is I'm adding a multiply layer. So, I'm darkening everything that is in front of us. And then on top of that, we're adding a hard light layer that kind of punches out the background. It kind of blasts it out with light. On top of that, I'm adding in a rim light. So, this really solidifies the backlight on the characters. And again, you can see how the rim light not being there versus being there really pops the character out of the background. And here's a layer on top with a little bit of bounce light coming from the bottom because when sunlight hits something else in the environment, parts of it is going to reflect back up on the character. Now, here on top is a layer of a little bit of bloom effect to give you the feeling that, you know, the light is really coming off the characters and shining very brightly. And then, of course, some god rays. You got to have some god rays, the rays piercing through the canopy of the forest. And then on the very top, a little bit of dappling details to give you more depth in the background. And again, all of these smaller changes added up is what you get with the before and the after. Before, after before, after. So, this is my conclusion. Okay. I don't think the negative reception is due to the design of the characters. I don't think it's because of the casting choice either. We all look at the original image and we all have the response of, "Oh my god, what is that?" Right? But not all of us understand why we have that response. So my theory is it's the set. It's the lighting. It's absolutely not doing Kratos and Atraus justice. Now that's just what I think. Okay? Of course, I do not have all the answers, and of course, I don't have all the perfect solutions, but I do think these two alternate lighting scenarios give us something that's a little bit better than what was in the original image, and it gives us something that maybe feels a little bit more natural, a little bit more faithful to the game. And this video is not to hate on the show at all. I actually do think this show will do well based on Amazon's previous track record with uh Fallout. And I'm genuinely rooting for this show. Back in 2022 when I was at Lightbox Expo, I was actually on the same panel as the art director of God of Wars, you know, so this is very near and dear to my heart. So hopefully seeing the differences here, seeing the before and after, again, these are not perfect solutions. These were put together very quickly. I'm sure someone else out there can do a lot better than I can, but my hope is that uh especially if you're an artist and you're seeing this, let this be an example of the power of lighting. I think this is the perfect example of not much thought being put into a lighting scenario and everybody realizes it, everybody sees it, everybody feels it, everybody's like, "This this is cheap. This is AI. This is SNL. Looks like a cosplay. Looks amateur." So, I don't know, guys. Again, I don't have the perfect solutions. I'm not always right, but this is just a proposal that I have that I think in my mind, in my tiny brain, is the theory why this didn't work. It didn't hit the way it was supposed to, even though the costume designs were great. Anyways guys, I'm hoping this succeeds. Um, but I always love some drama. I think this is a very, very good learning lesson for all of us. Hopefully seeing this opens your eyes and has unlocked a part of your brain that you didn't really explore before. Okay, with that being said, guys, subscribe to my channel if you guys want to see more art related videos and check out my Patreon for monthly art tutorials where we go much more in-depth on specific topics. And I will be sure to see you guys on the next video. Thanks for watching all the way to the end. You are a real one. The original creator of a God of War literally said, "It looks so dumb. It looks terrible. And it looks like he's shaking in the woods.

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