Painting the Oval Office

280 layers of paint, Resolute Desk, carpets, and more.

Now that the Americana Style of Mr. President has been established for the art of the Game, then where do we go from here?

We wanted to evoke that the President was/could be anyone so we decided to not show the President’s likeness, but only his back. We want players to look within and imagine themselves as the President on the United States. This is an artist tool to mentally imagine themselves in the office while they picture the image. In Art Psychology, this is called: The Theater of the Mind. There’s no likeness, or President I can draw more faithfully and more artistically than what your own imagination will create, therefore visual guides like this help with the visualization process.

We start with some initial exploration images, akin to storyboards, for the main screen. Here you can see my initial painter sketches, one is close to the desk, and one is with the camera zoomed out to reveal some portraits with the President looking at the lawn from the Resolute Desk; looking at the windows, as if he’s pondering a decision or reflecting on a crisis that’s happening - and you as the viewer, are seeing him through your own window. The parallels were there visually so we chose the latter.

Simple digital pencil sketch with some colors and brushes indicating possible lighting and as well as two distinct portraits (these would become Lincoln and Washington), as well as the US Flag and the Presidential Flag with the motto, from the Latin ”E pluribus unum” — which means: from many, one. Thus representing even more the visual message to get across.

A few days later, leveraging modern painting techniques we discussed in the previous post, we arrived at this.

The Washington portrait by Gilbert Stewart oil on canvas 1796, and the Lincoln portrait by Willem Frederik Karel Travers, oil on canvas, 1865 - were the obvious choices for this.

While this was a good start, we felt it was missing some more details, aside from portraying the President as a Baseball Fan (with a ball signed on glass, acting as the painting’s secret Artist Signature) furnishing the Painting with a bust of Lincoln on his side and George Washington’s favorite flowers underneath him, we needed more. Our game designer Ananda mentioned that perhaps more details were needed from the Resolute Desk, as it’s quite elaborate and symbolic for a desk and to our nation.

With a reference image of President Obama I was able to then replicate and Draw all the details and make modifications (by hand) due to the select intricacy of the details that needed to be there for both accuracy and history buffs alike. After some time, and with more tweaks to the lighting we arrived at our final Main Screen of the game.

Overall, we tried to stay away from “partisan” colors like red/blue dominant colors as to not portray any bias and let them choose how the game of Mr. President will be played from the get-go. The carpet is usually blue for example, we went for a more cream, and classic look to the Oval’s signature carpet, as well as the drapery, which can sometimes have party colors depending on which President sat there.

At the end, the painting had over 280 layers of paint, VFX adjustments, Color Correction (LUT), Levels, Saturation and Color Balance were added, alongside a desk phone they have, with more papers and the reflection on the desk (see resolute details above).

Tools change, time goes on, but the Painter and its Art never dies.

- Joshua Balcaceres
Studio Art Director