Author: Jean-Remi

Hi everyone!

Jean-Rémi here, I’m the artist working on “Méliès is Gone”. The detective game inspired by the life and work of filmmaker and magician Georges Méliès.

In our game, we did not want the main character to be a random detective.
Instead, the player will play as Méliès’ daughter, Georgette.

We don’t have a lot of information about Georgette.
From what we gathered: she was one of the first EVER woman to work on films. Both as an actress and as a camera operator.

Since our main character is going to use a cinematograph to solve mysteries, we thought she would be the perfect character to play as.

Here are some early sketches for her design.

Our game takes place in the late 20s in the suburbs of Paris.
At the time women started to fight for more rights and it impacted fashion. Women started to wear clothes that allowed more movements borrowing element of men’s clothing creating “La Garçonne” style (similar to the Flapper movement).

Since our game is about investigating on Méliès’ disappearance but also to explore his cinema studio, we thought it would be fitting for Georgette to be dressed as a Garçonne.

Here’s the frame by frame animation of Georgette idle’s

And here’s my working process to animate her walking cycle animation

Hope you’re enjoying Georgette’s look.
Cannot wait to show more in the next devlog.
I’ll try to talk a bit more about environment and art direction.

Au revoir !

Hi everyone, Jean-Rémi here.
I’m working on the visuals for our game “Méliès is Gone”.

In “Méliès is Gone” the player will play as Georgette, the daughter of film director Georges Méliès.

The game story will be a fiction inspired by Georges Méliès’ work and life.

In 1929, Georges Méliès is missing.
His daughter Georgette is left without any news from her father. That’s why she decides to go back to her father’ss cinema studios in Montreuil in order to investigate on his disappearance.

This is what the real studios used to look like in reality :

Before making movies, Georges Méliès was a magician.
One of the main theme used in his work, both as a magician and as a film director, is “fantasmagorie” also know a form of horror theatre: “the art of making ghosts speak in public”.

That’s why we wanted the setting of our game to be a reimagined spooky version of Méliès’ studios. As if we were in a haunted mansion.

Here are some early concept arts of what the studios could look like in our game.

I chose to keep the canopies of the real studios that were used while Méliès was filming in order to let the most light enter the room.
And since we are in 1929 in France, I mixed it with some Art Nouveau inspired architecture elements.

The organic vocabulary in Art Nouveau esthetic is often used in horror movie to give life to the architecture, that’s why I wanted to take some inspirations from it.

That’s all for now!
I hope you’ll enjoy how the universe of “Méliès is Gone” looks so far.

There’s a lot more we cannot wait to share with you so make sure to stay tuned here, on Threads, X and Instagram.

À bientôt !