There's this great article on ScreenCraft.org which describes the movie jaws as a slasher flick meets Moby Dick. And I think that is just perfect. And that construction there is a term that I'm sure you've heard of, which is the elevator pitch. And though we normally associate that with screenplays and movie ideas, how can an elevator pitch help us improve our concept art? Welcome to episode 8 of the ConceptArt Playbook. I've teamed up with a game designer to create a series of 30 concept art challenges for you to tackle. Today, we are tasked with creating an elevator pitch for an existing video game item. I'll be using an ether from the Final Fantasy series for our demonstration. Now if you're not familiar with the term elevator pitch, it's generally thought to be a verbal shorthand used to communicate some new idea. So let's roll back into the 70s and we'll say I just wrote the screenplay for jaws. And what I want to do is I want to get an investor interested. I want to sell the story. Now a bad strategy would be if I just got out my 200 page screenplay and started reading. My audience is already bored. Instead, I could combine two well-known ideas. One is a slasher film. Everybody knows slasher films. Two, it's kind of like Moby Dick. Those people know Moby Dick. Well, here's the thing, we're not screenwriters. But as we saw in the previous challenge, bullet points are more manageable than long paragraphs. That's exactly what we did in Challenge 2. We turned the long text into something more manageable. Today, the challenge is to go even further to distill everything we know about a game object into one sentence. It can be easy to think of elevator pitches as cheesy or lazy, but they're actually amazingly information dense. Remember, in this thought experiment we're living in the world when jaws is a new idea. Nobody's ever heard that famous music. So when I wrote the screenplay for jaws, I know all the details, all the characters, all the locations, but I need to communicate that essence to a stranger. So by using the term slasher flick, what I'm doing is I'm quickly calling to mind the structure of jaws. Even though it's not strictly accurate, nobody in jaws has a knife. And then when I invoke Moby Dick, I bring to mind this epic struggle between man and the ocean, man and beast, even though we happen to be talking about a shark and not a whale. So each of those components has an essence. And then when we add those together, we do a great job capturing the essence of jaws, even though none of the details are perfect fit. Okay, back to Final Fantasy. This RPG series has a collection of staple consumable items. Potions give you health, antidotes, cure poison. If a party member dies, you bring them back to life with a phoenix down. And then an ether refills your magic energy. So at a glance, we could say these are all pretty similar. They're sort of like different items on a medicine shelf that you'd see at a pharmacy. But if you've played any Final Fantasy games, you know that there's actually one other crucial detail. Others are extremely rare. I can go to the shop and I can buy tons of potions. Phoenix towns are pricier, but at least they're available. Now if I want an ether, I have to get really lucky and find one out in the world. So here's what we're working with. It's a consumable potion that fills up our magic batteries, I guess, and it's really rare. It's so rare that I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I have beaten Final Fantasy games only to remember, oh, I never actually used my ethers. You know, I'd been kind of hoarding them, waiting to use them for that most dangerous moment, and then the moment never came. So we have our clues here. But when creating an elevator pitch, what should I emphasize? The easy answer would be we've got, you know, four different medicines. They each do something different and this is the magic one. Just like the potion would be the health one. Without the case, I'd really just be kind of color coding these different medicine bottles. But I think that overlooks a crucial factor. I really think that the ether is so rare that you're really always waiting for that right occasion to use it. You know what? I think that's it. I think that is an experience in real life that everybody can relate to. Maybe it's your friend that go overseas on vacation and they bring you back a souvenir. Maybe something tasty and a small, fancy bottle. And you know it's going to be delicious. But every time you see it on the shelf, you think, is today fancy enough occasion to open it? Maybe we'll wait until the next time we entertain. Or maybe not food. Maybe we're talking about jewelry. If you wear jewelry, maybe you have a nice necklace that you haven't actually worn in years because dress code hasn't really called for it. There hasn't been a fancy enough occasion. Actually, no. Here's what I think it is. I think it is fancy dishes. Every day we eat with the same normal plates, normal silverware. But for some reason, we've got this entire second set stored away, which in theory is waiting for the right occasion. To me, the fancy silverware is the right analogy for the final fantasy ether. For my homework, the final result is some phrasing along the lines of an ether is the fancy silverware of the final fantasy world. By relating it to a cultural experience that other people are likely familiar with, I've packed one sentence with lots of extra meaning. Even if somebody doesn't know final fantasy, they immediately understand that this item we're talking about is rare, it's expensive, it might be embellished or made from high quality materials. So, starting from this sentence, if you were to begin drawing, you now have a much clearer idea of where to start. You have the essence. For your homework, I challenge you to distill an elevator pitch for a video game item. Pick a game that you know intimately well, and then use that familiarity with that game to try and clarify an item's true essence. But remember, just like the screenwriter for Jaws, envision that you're explaining this item to someone that doesn't really know the game, you're trying to communicate something universal. And this is not easy. But learning to distill huge chunks of information down to a clean, simple essence is really central to being a concept artist. Take your time, have fun, and when you're finished, I'll see you in the next lesson.