VGA ZINE QUESTION ZONE: Gage Lindsten
Gage Lindsten (@gage_lindsten) is a 3D Artist and Illustrator. Gage is interviewed by Eleanor Schichtel.
@gage_lindsten, Instagram
How would you describe your work, and what are you working on now?
I make phantasy art. I've adopted the "ph" spelling because I sort of hate the term "dark fantasy" and I really like the word phantasmagorical. I'm currently working on an animated short film that I'm making with the Unity game engine, and a few illustration commissions for album covers.
Earlier on in the pandemic, you posted clips on your instagram of a fantasy game called Vessel. Can you tell our audience a bit about that project, its influences, and your intentions for it?
Vessel came out of two impulses. The first being my need to come up with a new challenging 3D project for myself. A lot of people are more familiar with my illustration work since that's what I share mostly on my IG, but I'm always working on 3D interactive game-y stuff on the side with some pals. After Chicago's self-quarantine order came down, and I realized I would be spending a lot of time at home I started brainstorming self-contained 3D projects that I could do entirely on my own. On a totally separate track I was thinking about how lonely the next month would be since I wouldn't be able to see my friends or family. So, thoughts about how I could be more social some other way were swirling around my head. I'm fairly active on Instagram. Over the past couple years I have built up a decent little base of followers... I hate the term "followers." I chat with people, through the app, about art and music constantly. It feels more like I just have a bunch of cool art friends from all over the world. So anyways, it occurred to me that it would be fun to try to do something interactive with all of my Instagram pals. I spent a day or so brainstorming what format of game would work well within the constraints of Instagram?
Myst popped in my head. I remembered my parents loving Myst, and my parents generally do not mesh well with video games. So I went down this hole of researching point-and-click and FMV (Full Motion Video) games like Myst, Snatcher, The Journeyman Project, Night Trap, and in particular this one horror game simply called "D." All these games were mostly made up of a series of pre-rendered videos that were queued up based on fairly simple decisions the player made. The added bonus was that most of these games came out in the mid '90s when 3D graphics were in this wonderfully weird and forgiving mid-point that I find very inspiring. The characters looked like these plastic dolls and all of the animation was a bit floaty and surreal. I've always been a huge fan of how especially weird the cut scenes from the first two Tekken games looked, and had been trying to find a way to make something informed by those aesthetics for a couple years now. These ideas coalesced pretty quickly, and so I decided I was gonna try to make a 3D choose-your own adventure on Instagram.
The setup for Vessel was pretty simple. I would post short video clips of a 3D room which contained objects or characters that could be interacted with, and then asked people to vote in the comments on what they wanted to do. I would tally the votes and then the next post would reflect the collective decision and move the story forward. Some of the decisions were multiple choice, some were open-ended questions, and occasionally I had the commenters work together to formulate plans. So, over the next couple months I weaved this bizarre story about the consciousness of an alien race trapped in a woman's mind, and they needed to help her find a way out of this strange facility. That concept let me sort of play with the audience, by bringing their comments and collective decision-making literally into the story... like they were the alien race in this woman's mind.
The engagement for the Vessel posts were kind of insane, and people were way more excited about it than I expected. By the end I was tallying up hundreds of votes for some of the posts. I tried my best to keep the Vessel posts on a regular schedule, but after a couple months I just didn't have the energy to keep it going. The simplistic PS2 era graphics let me work quickly, but my ambition caught up with me eventually. I ended up pulling the plug on it right before we were about to reach a pivotal moment in the story... I was just too exhausted. I'm still bummed I couldn't see it through... but maybe I'll come back to it and we can finish up Vessel in the future.
Do you have plans in the future to create interactive games, and if so what would your dream project look like?
Yes, definitely. I'm not sure I'm interested in working on traditional video games anymore, as in where you need a controller or mouse and keyboard to navigate a world. I've spent the past five years beating my head against the wall with not much to show for it. I'm still pretty stoked on the pared down choose your own adventure vibes of Vessel, and would like to explore that more. My dream project would be to direct an interactive, animated phantasy adventure TV show. A similar setup to Vessel where the audience is able to collectively vote on certain story decisions that would be reflected in the next episode, but on a larger scale with a team of animators to help me make it happen.
How does music influence your work, and what are your thoughts on collaborating with musicians?
It's all about immersion for me. I mean what's better than visual art paired with good music? Bring headphones the next time you go to an art museum or gallery.
How do you situate your work in relation to the term "contemporary art"?
When I hear "contemporary art" I think of challenging work that is very of the moment. I don't think I make art in that kind of mindset, I'm not interested in challenging perceptions or something. I see myself as more of an explorer. I wander around until I happen across a fragment of an image or concept that either soothes my mind or excites it, and then I just see where it goes. A lot of my influences are rooted in the past, so there tends to be some kind of familiarity to my work…But I'm definitely not interested in just making retro redux art either.
How much do you think one's region/physical location becomes imprinted in the art they make?
I imagine physical location is less important now or less obvious in it's impression on art than it was in the pre-internet days. For better or worse, we can pull from such a vast pool of data and inspiration that I'm not sure our surroundings matter that much anymore? There are teenagers drawing insanely amazing anime characters all over the globe now.
What games and/or other media have directly inspired your current work?
I really love all the cover art Roger Dean did for Psygnosis's games. I come back to them constantly. I've recently become obsessed with the dark Tokusatsu films of Keita Amemiya. The design aesthetics of his films Zeiram 1 & 2, Mechanical Violater Hakaider, and Mirai Ninja have played a huge role in my design decisions of the lil short film I'm working on.
What have you been playing lately?
I'm currently playing Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga and its Hindu inspired cyberpunk-hell world is blowing my mind. Kazuma Kaneko, who does all the character / demon designs for the SMT series, is a character design god.
In a maneuver that we are brazenly stealing from the A.V. Club, please answer our last VGA ZINE QUESTION ZONE interviewee Ashlynn Barker’s question: Favorite bad video game?
Final Fantasy XIII. It's a terrible game... like literally hours upon hours of totally no fun, repetitive gameplay, but I love the art direction so much. It's peak grandiose, non-practical Final Fantasy design for me. Plus, the soundtrack is killer. It's got this magical girl anime meets The Matrix vibe that I just adore. I even have the soundtrack on vinyl lol.
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