Last Seen Blogs
wikal
wwikal
livinglavidagreenberg
yeah, i did the reading. what of it?
futestuff
football stuff
nicoleofthestars
Untitled
study-tea-mse
Motivation for MSE
Text
Myth and Legend
After discussions with the group about my project I decided to broaden my focus from just ghosts to ghosts and monsters/cryptids and possibly even create my own from some of the ghost signatures and textures I have created in my early research. I started looking into already existing hereford monsters and legends before hopefully creating my own monsters.
Sin-Eaters:
A person who consumes a ritual meal in order to spiritually take on the sins of a deceased person. The food was believed to absorb the sins of a recently dead person, thus absolving the soul of the person. Sin-eaters, as a consequence, carried the sins of all people whose sins they had eaten.
The Mermaid of Marden:
In the village of Marden in Herefordshire, alongside the banks of the river Lugg, their small church had one such bell which was the pride of the parish. The priest was a big, strong fellow who would pull lustily on the bell rope at the time of mass. Eager and strong he might have been, but the priest was not the most observant of fellows, and not too bright either so he had not noticed that the bell rope that he pulled every day was fraying and becoming very thin. One Sunday, he was tugging away with his usual zeal, when the rope snapped, causing the priest to fall over and topple down this humiliation of his little fall was however a stroke of luck in disguise, for if he had stayed where he had been standing, the heavy bell would have smacked him right on the head. Instead, it crashed from its bar onto the grass with a loud bong, and rolled down the hill clanging and donging until it fell into the river Lugg. He was mopping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief, with the shock and worry of this mishap causing him to tremble in his boots. This sight filled the parishioners with fear, for they wondered whatever had happened to cause such a large man such distress.The priest told his flock what had happened and then sat down on the grassy slope with a depressed sigh. Helpfully, some of the men went and fetched great hooks with which they tried to drag the river and pull out the bell, but this had no success. They could find nothing but weeds. Now the mermaid was enjoying a bit of peace and quiet at the bottom of the river and huffed to herself at this disturbance, scattering a shoal of minnows. Partly annoyed at being disturbed, but mostly curious about who had the nerve to summon her, she swam up to the surface to see what all the fuss was all about. “Fair lady, our bell has fallen into your river. We apologise for the disturbance. Please will you help us to retrieve it?” the mermaid was not charmed by his sweetness and replied indignantly, “Retrieve your bell? Retrieve your bell! Every day that fat man wakes me up ringing the wretched thing. Now it has come into my domain and it will make a very nice nest for me. You won’t get it back if I have anything to do with it.” the oxen pulled and heaved, and before too long, the bell was dragged up out of the river and up the bank. The parishioners could see the mermaid fast asleep in it, her tail curled around her like a blanket.she was woken from her sleep and in a fury broke the rope attaching the bell to the yoke. She was not in the best of moods having been roused so rudely. She leapt up like a salmon and darted back to the river Lugg with a splash that soaked the parishioners, the bell sinking into the depths with her.
Dragon of Mordiford:
The legend explains that the dragon was found by a little girl from Mordiford, Maud, who had desperately wanted a pet. While wandering the forest adjacent to her village one day, Maud had found a small bright creature with a snout and small, translucent wings prowling around a small group of flowers. Excited by the creature, the girl took it home to show to her parents. Immediately her mother and father realized it was a wyvern and commanded Maud to take it back to where she had found it because it would cause trouble in the village. The indignant Maud pretended to obey but instead hid the infant dragon in a safe place in the forest. There she nurtured her "pet" with milk, playing with it and watching it try to fly. In the legend, after reaching maturity, the dragon's hunger could not be satisfied with milk anymore—it now had an enormous hunger for meat. Soon, it began to plague the local farms, killing their livestock, especially cows and sheep, and farmers were intolerant. These men tried to stop the beast by extermination, but it soon feasted upon them, finding human flesh delicious.Maud implored the beast during her visits afterward to stop its rampage. Still the beast, now fully mature, killed everything in its way except for Maud, it's only friend.The townspeople in the tale grew exhausted of the constant attacks from the dragon and desperate, sought help from the noblemen of Mordiford. A man from the local Garstone family set out in full armour to end the beast's life forever, finding the beast nearly camouflaged into the forest's many plants. The dragon almost instantly released a blast of fire, Garstone barely deflecting it. He aimed a lance at the wyvern's throat, releasing it and fully penetrating through the dragon. Maud, insane with rage and grief, burst from the surrounding forest and came to mourn her past pet.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Eugene Thiebault and William H Mumler
Eugene Thiebault is the photographer behind “Henri Robin and a Spector” which is a series of photos in the style of ghost photography of the 19th Century. William H Mumler was also a spirit photographer, his first spirit photograph was apparently an accident—a self-portrait which, when developed, also revealed the "spirit" of his deceased cousin. Mumler then left his job as an engraver to pursue spirit photography full-time, taking advantage of the large number of people who had lost relatives in the American Civil War. His two most famous images are the photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of her husband Abraham Lincoln and the portrait of Master Herrod, a medium, with three spirit guides.
William H Mulmer: famouse Lincoln ghost photography
‘Henri Robin and a Spector’
0 notes
Text
Georgiana Houghton
Georgiana Houghton started creating her spirit images first by drawing and eventually started experimenting with water colors. She produced automatic drawings, which means her hand was guided by spiritual influences during séances. This technique will be revisited by the surrealists during the 20th century. Her first images depict extremely stylized flowers and fruits, probably due to the artistic training upper class women received at that time. By experimenting with her artistic style, she will end up creating completely abstract images, close to 60 years before Kandinsky and Malevich. Houghton’s choice to work with abstract shapes correlates with the unnatural nature of her subject. She doesn’t depict objects of the natural world, but a spiritual experience.
1 note
·
View note
Text
Susan Hiller
Susan Hiller would often experiment in automatic writing, burning all her paintings, creating a museum collection of detritus, communicating with the dead. Her art was not programmatic, but driven by curiosity and an alertness to her surroundings.The ghosts were sometimes real, but mostly the phantoms of cultural anxiety. Hiller reworked the Punch and Judy show into a terrifying video installation, orchestrated commercial film footage of young girls with psychokinetic powers, and filled a room with dangling amplified speakers, like a swarm of flying saucers, each broadcasting first-hand stories of alien abductions. She worked with the experiments of Latvian psychologist Konstantīns Raudive, who believed that tape recorders left in soundproofed rooms could pick up the voices of the dead.
0 notes
Text
FMP: A Project For Ghosts?!
We did an exercise with our tutor to try and narrow down our ideas for an FMP by coming up with silly ideas or throw away projects that we could make as wild or whimsical as we wanted. As a starter Nicholas told us about ‘Object Oriented Ontology’ which is defined as “Object-oriented ontology maintains that objects exist independently of human perception and are not ontologically exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects.” which basically is the theory that objects over time can have their own objectives independent of humans or other objects. So this sparked the thought that you could make an art project for an entity other than humans, possibly ghosts? First off I decided to look into ways of communicating with ghosts or energies that are non-human such as:
Automatic writing, ghost signatures, ESP etc We did an exercise with our tutor to try and narrow down our ideas for an FMP by coming up with silly ideas or throw away projects that we could make as wild or whimsical as we wanted. As a starter Nicholas told us about ‘Object Oriented Ontology’ which is defined as “Object-oriented ontology maintains that objects exist independently of human perception and are not ontologically exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects.” which basically is the theory that objects over time can have their own objectives independent of humans or other objects. So this sparked the thought that you could make an art project for an entity other than humans, possibly ghosts? First off I decided to look into ways of communicating with ghosts or energies that are non-human such as: Automatic writing, ghost signatures, ESP etc
0 notes
Link
0 notes
Text
Man in the Moone
We compiled a list of all the changes that Rachel wanted to see so that everyone in the group was on the same page and we can sort of tick them off as we go, murph chimed in with some helpful influences for the tone of he animation namely Wes Anderson for the comedy influences as the flight to the moon is quite somber and that mixed with overly slapstick comedy was a tonal crash the subdued comedy of Wes Anderson works for what we want to achieve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ThhMH4MyU
0 notes
Text
Rachel’s Feedback
After Rachel’s visit today we have come away with good news and things to improve, for example the story we had settled on had left out a few little details she thought were crucial to the piece like there being 3 stones instead of just the one as they were a parting gift from the head Luna cementing there friendship. She wanted to lose a scene where he landed after a shaky first flight and takes back off which coincidentally was my second scene, i agreed with this decision as it muddied the story and took away from the flow of the story and his big ascent to the moon so as to not waste those storyboards and cells i had created we decided to splice scenes from mine and Simone’s scenes together so that i hadn’t lost a whole chunk of work. She enjoyed my Ganzas as i had drawn them in my first draft of the scene as they had a Wallace and Gromit feel to them and were comedic in tone just by being on screen.
she wanted us to include a narrator at the beginning to give context of Bishop Francis Godwin who wrote the book to tell the story as its a very important part of their production, she suggested using the actor who plays him introduce the piece and Neil later suggested rota scoping his face at the start and end which would look quite impressive but would have to be factored into the time we have to animate the project. She wanted a finalised character by the next time she saw the animatic for continuity and i think we are heavily leaning towards a simple design i.e Penny’s design because it is simple to draw as it is made up of a few shapes but equally expressive and charming. I think by the next time she sees us everything should be coherent and cohesive with a clearer view of what we want and what we have left out completely.
0 notes
Text
Concept Art
We started on some basic concepts for characters and settings today so that we could see the direction everyone wants to take the project in and hopefully give Rachel a good range of concepts to pick from when she came in to see our storyboards. we have yet to make a decision on what collective style to work in so hopefully Rachel will shed some light on what she likes and what she doesn't like. At this point we are hoping the story is solid and we can focus on character design and animation but things are not set in stone as of yet.
0 notes
Text
The Good Morrow
Taking this piece into Photoshop i was able to clean up the edges and create the inner person out of my already existing textures so that my work appeared cohesive and i could take some of the mess of soft pastels off the whit, i left the undefined edges as this is what i liked about the soft pastels in the first place.i really like the textures that got picked up and even the little imprints of things from the page before gives it so much character. If i where to do it again i would probably make the space for the person a more recognisable eye shape as i didn’t include the eye lashes from the original design as they took the piece from abstract and sophisticated to tacky. In the same vein i took my “Wild Nights” piece into Photoshop to really push those vibrant colours but apart from that there was little else i wanted to change on that piece.
0 notes
Text
Wild Nights
I like the swearling patterns of my thumbnail ideas but i want to keep it to a few colours and different shades of that colour so that it pops off the black background but isnt visually overwhelming. This could be a mix of brights and darks against a starry sky as most of the poems have this night time imagry so i want to incorrperate it into all three.
0 notes
Text
The Good Morrow
I took what i learn’t about the patels and applied them to a bigger piece where i haven’t done the inner person as it was just a test but i think even as it is the contrast between the pastels and the white space is very striking:
i liked the look so much i tried something similare for the idea i had for “The Trick” just as a test to see if thats also where i want to take that piece, i like the effect but i also like the messyness of the thumbnail piece i did i think it has a certain charm to it.
0 notes
Text
The Good Morrow
running with the idea of a person in an eye i liked the idea of it being an opening in the night sky. ive been working with pastels lately and i thought they would be a great way to create the night sky in a colourful way but obviously quite hard to get a clean white line so i thought i should try pens first to get that solid white i was looking for but they just felt to similar to “wild nights” and i wanted a distinct difference for each poem while still being coherence in all three. i tried masking tape first as a barrier and then a paper template as the masking tae wored well but tended to chew up the paper which gave me inconsistencies in the colour which i didnt want so although there was still some bleading of colour it was the easiest way to keep the white plus editing the white space after the fact is always an option.
0 notes
Text
The Trick
i wanted to try two approaches to this idea of two figures reaching for each other, one (above) very almost obvious in meaning but i also wanted to try something really abstract and interperative (below), i wanted it to still symbalise this light and dark meeting in a dream like state but with room for an audiences interretation with the poem to derive their own meaning.
0 notes