Creating the Curator

*All that glisters is not gold, often have you heard that told...**This article is about The Dark Pictures Anthology's first installment,* ***Man of Medan***
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***Creating the Curator*** is the third segment in *Man of Medan*'s Special Features. This feature shows the creation of The Curator through technological and creative means.

## Preview

The segment contains comments of developers, talking about the Curator's personality and goals, his clothes and repository, discussing their various ideas in the game.

## Transcript

[The Curator]

Hello! I am The Curator. The Curator of Stories. Stories of love and hate... greed and beauty... life... and death. Stories such as this one.

[Pete Samuels]

The Curator of The Dark Pictures Anthology bridges between the player and the story, being very aware of what they've done, but also much more aware than the player about what's actually going on in the story, and what the context is, and what the scenario is.

[Brad]

What do you think happened to this guy?

[Pete Samuels]

Now for the first time, for some reason, that he himself doesn't even understand, he has been given the opportunity to talk to somebody, and that somebody is the player. As far as he knows, it's always has been him, that has done this job and nobody else, and within his library is the story of everybody's life and death. There are even rooms in there, that he can't remember ever going in, but he's way too busy to go and explore, because there is always another end of life to record and document.

[Stephen Lovell]

Clothes are so important, because they provide an insight into the character, they explain, where the character's been, they describe, where he is going, they suggest motive. We want the audience to perceive him as having everything completely in control, so all of the ideas of his clothes being tailored to his body, it's really important to us. We work with a costume designer. He did a lot of research into the authenticity of materials and textures, he provided us with lots of authentic high resolution reference. He even gave us material swatches. It was really useful for us, because looking at the folds, looking at the visual language of cloth. How do they sit on the character? Is it working from a distance? What's the weight of the material? It gave us a really good platform in order to produce high quality, realistic materials.

[The Curator]

I am here to record the story you choose to tell.

[Robert Craig]

I think that, whenever you are dealing with a realistic, human acting performance and facial expressions, that part of it, is so key to transferring the emotion that you want to over to the player. Just the definition and detail that you need now is quite challenging.

[The Curator]

But there are repercussions.

[Robert Craig]

In terms of cameras, it's quite interesting as well, because we're talked a little bit before about how we use skewed angles, upshots, tilts and all that kind of things to create this feeling of unease and anxiety in the horror moments, and for the Curator it was quite the opposite actually. He's very much in control, and he knows everything about the game you are playing, and he's very much at home in his own environment, so we took the approach to have a lot more flattering shots, a lot more level shots, so you look at him at a natural height, you're never like below or above him, and it creates this veneer of control. It's almost like it's very straightforward, and he's just delivering you these statements.

[The Curator]

You see, we each make decisions according to our own moral compass.

[Pete Samuels]

And of course he's British. As soon as we'd established that, and who he was, and what his personality was, our minds went, pretty much, straight to Pip Torrens to deliver the performance, and Pip's done a brilliant job of putting in everything that we want in the Curator to life on the screen, and pretty much everything that we shot was nailed in first take by Pip.

[Pip Torrens]

But the truth of this story isn't fixed - far from it. A story can change a great deal when told from different perspective.

[Robert Craig]

One thing, that was really important for us with art direction, was to somehow differentiate him from the rest of the game you are experiencing, and with that we could make a really interesting contrast, because as the player you might be experiencing all this horror, all this craziness, and all of a sudden you are taken out to quite a different and quite an unusual place, so that was a really fun thing to play with. We tried to play up on that contrast, and really signal to the player, that there is a change happening, and the Curator addresses the player directly, he's quite ambiguous, he's quite mysterious, you're really not sure, if he is there to help you or hinder you sometimes, and I wanted that to be reflected in the art. The corridor, that he is in at the start of the game, and where you see him a lot of times, we wanted to get this feel of an almost infinite corridor, that's got this maze like feel. It's not a set out space, that you automatically understand as a viewer, when you see it. You're not sure, how long it goes on, how many paths there are, how much of a maze this corridor is, so to light that we wanted to get this feel, where there are not markers, that tell you, this is where you are right now in the corridor, you've been here before, just to increase that feeling of not being fully aware of your surroundings, and add to the mystery of the scene.

[Lee Robinson]

And then he goes into his repository, which is a huge vault of books and secrets with his main desk right in the middle. He's got large windows for light, a skylight above, that would also let a lot of light in, a mezzanine floor, a marble fireplace, classical, opulent, sophisticated.

[Simon Britnell]

The central feature of the repository is the Curator's desk, so we researched, how that might look, and wanted to make it look big, substantial piece of furniture. We added a lot of scroll work and detail to the front and rear, all of the things that you'd expect, the brass fittings for the drawers. There's quite a lot of detail went into that, and we thought we might be seeing that quite close as well in game, so in the end it fits nicely within its environment, it references some of the Victorian era detail, that you might see on a piece like that.

[Lee Robinson]

The Curator has the ability to access stories through the pictures on the wall. They are almost portal through to another world, and that all had to fit within our architectural environment, so we looked at very ornate framings. Large pictures that would hang on the walls, that would feel correct and not out of place and something of this nature.

[Robert Craig]

We thought about where we could include light sources, that would be interesting, and put light in the right areas of the room. The skylight is a really good example. We decided, that having this top down ambience would really bed the scene in nicely and create this nice veneer to it, and then add in another number of interesting light sources, that we can use for accents such as the fireplace, such as the candles, that just are there to give that extra range of colour, if you need it. They are there to draw the eye of the player to what we want to show them.

[The Curator]

It's not my place to interfere, but I might be persuaded to offer the occasional hint. Here is one for free.

[Robert Craig]

It's a strange place. Who is this guy? Why is he talking to me? Where am I now? I was just on a ship, having some horror happening, and now I'm here, and this guy has the appearance of being there to help you, but he seems like such a strange guy, and the environment he is in is so different. There is a certain ambiguity to it, and we wanted the player to question, whether or not he is on their side, or whether or not he is kind of playing his own game with them.

[Pete Samuels]

The Curator is no ordinary person, and his repository is no ordinary place, and you'll get the chance to see him again in the rest of the Dark Pictures Anthology.

[The Curator]

We will meet again. It's... inevitable.

## Gallery

The Curator in the corridor.Drawings of the developers.The closer look.The concept art of the Curator.To the left: 3D model without the pocket watch.
 To the right: the Curator in his dinner jacket.The concept art of the Curator in his repository.The massive Curator's desk.The Curator's clothes design.The design of the Curator in the waistcoat.Pip Torrens is making his performance.The corridors in Unreal Engine.The Repository in Unreal Engine.