~ Happy Halloween ~

'Sinister Pact' by 'Midnight Syndicate'



~Happy Halloween Everybody ~


I hope everyone has a good night! You gotta love this time of year... all the costumes in the shops, the excitement of what is going to happen at night and the general air of spookiness~ . Nothing left to do now but watch a scary movie and devour and the piles of candy!

The Reversed Lady

My second character that i have created for my upcoming Freak Show animation. You will notice that she looks much more human-like compared to my shadow monsters. This character has both of her hinge-joint bones (the knees and elbows) reversed to how they normally should be. This character is heavily influenced by Ella Harper – The Camel Girl. She was an attraction in a sideshow in the late 1800's.

“I am called the camel girl because my knees turn backward. I can walk best on my hands and feet as you see me in the picture. I have traveled considerbly in the show business for the past four years and now, this is 1886 and I intend to quit the show business and go to school and fit myself for another occupation.” - from an advertising flyer for the sideshow she was a part of.


Here is my progress so far with her:

Again, we see an example of how nice a stencil that the shadow puppets can make.

A second, better, version of the spraying that's now hanging on my studio wall.

Shadows cast from a prototype hanging in my studio.

Music ~

I can usually be seen with my ipod blaring into my ears.What a cell phone is to most people nowadays, that is what my ipod is to me. I can definitely say that music inspires me and my work. I own nothing or the below, they are just a teeny tiny (seriously...itty bitty) sample of what i am currently caught up in listening to:


'Lullaby' by 'Midnight Syndicate'.

From the album 'The Dead Mater: Cemetery Gates'. Midnight Syndicate seem to create mainly, atmospheric music and its very appropriate for Halloween and ooky spooky times. It also fits in quite well with my project haha!



'What is Eternal?' by 'Trans-Siberian Orchestra'.

"From their album 'Beethoven's Last Night'. The album tells the fictional story of Ludwig van Beethoven on the last night of his life, as the devil, Mephistopheles, comes to collect his soul. With the help of Fate and her son Twist, Beethoven unwittingly tricks the devil and is allowed to keep his soul which he had thought lost, but that the devil had no claim on." - quote Wikipedia



'黒のリリアナ' by 'u2'

And not Bono's 'U2. Translated, the name of the song is 'Black Liliana'. It is a background music track from a Japanese visual novel called Umineko no Naku Koro ni (When The Seagulls Cry). I love nearly all the music from the series, but this one is one of my personal favorites. I love this classical-trance music ~ ♥

Progress Reviews

What a week! We’re past the point of no return with our projects now, I guess.

Watching the clock, the hours slowly passed by until it was my turn….surprisingly on the first day! Us ‘O’s’ always get left until near last usually! Did anyone else have that nervous feeling, like someone was squeezing onto your tummy? Luckily, in the end I did not have to be so nervous. I think I had a pretty damn good response to my work from both lecturers! My shadow puppets have gone down rather well, and have become my domineering feature of my project.


What’s to come:

Come one, come all! Prepare yourselves for the greatest show on the earth! See the beautiful, but strange oddities that have captured our interest and imagination!

I am focusing now on the old Victorian freak shows, and how the deformed performers movement would be effected by their unusual bodies. So basically, this means I will be making two or three more characters as shadow puppets and try and work them into different forms, and hopefully, a stop motion sequence at the end of it all. Lets see where this goes…

The Circus of Freaks is coming to a studio near you soon! Look out for it this winter!


'Black Rider' by 'Tom Waits'

Yet Another Notebook Thing!

This is another little book we had too keep for the hour long CCS class on Thursdays. We were told it could be where ever our thoughts took us, so, after using it for Giger, I'm using it as an extension of my Contextual Notebook.

I still have stuff to add in on this page...

And so, I connected H.R Giger to Hans Bellmer due to their similar tendencies to create work with strong provocative images.

//Note: While I designed Giger's image pages with rather linear decoration in just black and white, I chose to decorate Bellmer's images with the theme of circles. This is because the dolls he makes are 'Ball-Joint Dolls'. Also, in my decoration of Bellmer's pages, I have added in the tiniest bit of red into the black and white mix.//

Those tiny little circles you see in the background... yeah, that's over four hours worth. Was it worth it? ...I think so :3

"The Conceptual Development Diary"

My my, what fancy wording for 'sketchbook'.

Essentially, that is exactly what this post is. Just pictures on a page of, pictures on a page Page-ception...we need to go deeper... *waits for people to get the meme reference*.

*coughcough* Moving on! This is what i consider the best of my sketchbook... though posting it up here makes me realize i really should put more into it.

Where the work really begins.

First up, we start with the 'Silent Hill' Nurses and a little leading into the Darling Dolls.

And now, for the start of my shadow puppets!

RAAAWWWRRR!!

I'd love to do something like this but on a huuuuuge scale! It looks so pretty ~

Just Fantastic...

I think it's about time i shared a favorite flash video of mine. For those who have played 'Silent Hill 2' it's a spoof that's actually pretty actuate for the first 20 minutes or so of game play. Enjoy!



I didn't create it, and I'm not taking any credit for it. That belongs to the genius who actually created it.

Shadow Puppets

It was mentioned to me how rigid and stiff movements can come from shadow puppets. I decided to explore it more and came up with a pretty interesting result.

The shadow monster is inspired by contortionists able to walk on their hands, with their feet looming on top, and the face is based off of that of 'Asphyxia' from 'Silent Hill: Homecoming'. While they look unnatural, they movements and position is very much possible for humans if you are flexible enough and have good upper body strength.

Line art for Asphyxia, by Kenzie LaMar.
A pretty face huh? Haha.The story behind Asphyxia's story is a rather sad one actually. A character named Nora was sacrificed by her mother to appease the gods that are often mentioned in the Silent Hill series.

'The numerous hands choking and groping Asphyxia's body portray how Nora's family abused her and most prominently how she was murdered. Nora also loved to read, particularly her favorite book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, as seen in her photo. Having multiple arms, Asphyxia's form appears similar to that of the Caterpillar in the book and her "scream" is similar to how the Caterpillar blew smoke from his hookah at Alice...' Quote from Silent Hill Wikia.


That being said, Asphyxia reminds me a lot of the movie 'Human Centipede'. It's exactly what you're thinking. One only to be watched if you have a strong stomach.

The first ones top-heavy weight made it impossible to use him as a proper shadow puppet, since his top half kept leaning back.
Number two came out far more detailed and did work better that the first, although I could not get wires to actually move his legs more than once.

I went on to explore them by creating mini shadow monsters, scaling down the metal pipe with our lights wiring inside that is in front of me in the studio.

This is their final stage, without the icky masking tape taking away from their poor claw...hand...feet things.

I think the shadows look really pretty ~

We're gonna getcha!


The pattern of the shadow monsters body is quite nice. It can be rather intricate to do, and while drawing the puppets takes no more than a few minutes, with their pattern being random, cutting it out can take anything from 1 – 3 hours depending on the puppets size. It's based roughly off of the idea of its veins and arteries being able to be seen through their skin.

In the end, I wanted to do a little more to show the movement of my shadow puppet. I made this short clip, using the same techniques used for stop motion animation to get the result.


The wonderfully appropriate music is 'Hanyo' an extra track from 'Silent Hill 4: The Room'. © to the amazing Akira Yamaoka. Now, this music has been liked and disliked by different people. What do you guys think? Keep it in? or get rid of the creepy music?

I have also made these guys out of wire. The first one, I thought, was a bit of a flop. Looking at the photo though, I do like how his shadow makes him look like he's kinda on darkness fire or something... *weak laugh*

I continued my work with wire, and got a rather interesting mobile out of it. They're linear arrangement was supposed to replicate a hangman's gallows to keep with the horror theme but... i don't really think it shows much.

Sorry if the following images are hard to make out. They're of the shadows cast from the mobile and look really pretty when you see them in reality. I promise ~

A small video clip of the shadows in motion. Audio track belongs to Akira Yamaoka, titled 'Serious' an extra track from 'Silent Hill 4: The Room'.


I have also done a series of drawings in various mediums, base on my wire-mobile shadow minions. Or should that be, their shadows when they are actually moving? I stuck sheets of paper on the wall, hit the mobile and tried to draw...something. Instead of throwing up a whole bunch of what are, essentially scribbles up here, i've picked out my favorites.

There's also a birthday card design thrown in there.