Showing posts with label horror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label horror. Show all posts

Wednesday, 10 August 2022

Planket 2022 - On the 3rd of September

 

Time to exhibit some of my work again. First time since 2019, so I am a bit nervous. I have also realized that my pictures push the boundaries of convention pretty far, which makes me even more nervous.

It is, of course, perfectly okay for art to be scary. Art should make us think and feel. It does not have to make us comfortable.

Now, I'd like to emphasize here that my pictures are perfectly okay, by the standards of the 70's, 80's, and 90's. It's just that we, as a society, have changed, and become a bit narrow minded. What was perfectly normal to have on a pocket book cover in 1980, is considered risqué today.

We will see how it works out. Nervous or not, I'm looking forward to the event. A lot!

Planket is a pretty big event. About a hundred photographers exhibit their work. Each one has got a one meter wide area along a fence at Nya Allén in Gothenburg. I've got nine pictures, printed on canvas, so I can't show them all at once. Instead, I'll switch pictures once or twice an hour.

Genres range from Science-Fiction, to Horror, to folk tale-ish Fantasy, to Lost World/Cavewoman.

If you happen to be in Gothenburg on the 3rd of September, come look me up. The exhibit is on from 12 o'clock, to 6 p.m. The address is Nya Allen 1.

About the picture: The author Lennart Guldbrandsson modeled for Blind Fury. You will get to see the whole picture, and many others, at the exhibition.

Sunday, 23 August 2020

Shooting Horrors from the Beyond with Eliza Sica, Part 1

 

When the Sleeper Awakes (a.k.a. The Frozen)

Eliza Sica (Instagram: @eriizas) is an actress and model I had contact with before the pandemic. Recently, we decided to have a carefully socially distanced photo session.

I maintain a catalog of my storyboards in PDF format. I sent it to Eliza, and we set up a meeting at a café in Gothenburg. (Again - a carefully socially distanced meeting.) We went through the storyboards, Eliza selected the ones she was interested in shooting, and we discussed what preparations we needed, and how to do the shoot itself.

We also discussed our contract. Even for a non-commercial shoot, a contract, although painfully boring, is important. Due to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it is a legal requirement in the EU. Beyond that, a contract makes clear the rights and responsibilities of both model and photographer.

I am slowly gathering material for a book about creative photography, and a contract is important for that reason too. When I send my book manuscript to a publisher, I want to be able to show the contracts too.

 The shoot itself went well, despite a mistake on my side: I hadn't made a shot list! This created extra work, because it meant we had to move the studio flashes much more often than we would otherwise have had to do. Eliza was patient though, so it worked. Next time, a shot list will be a priority on my part.

I got the idea for When the Sleeper Awakes from two different stories, both by by H.G. Wells: The Sleeper Awakes and The Time Machine:
What if a group of people are cryogenically frozen, and forgotten forgotten for many millenia when our civilization collapses. Eventually, the cryotubes begin to fail, and only one remains, when it is discovered by Morlocks...
There is one more source of inspiration: I re-read Morlock Night by K.W Jeter some time ago, and that that inspired me to work on a set of Steampunk Time Travel pictures. That got me thinking about H.G. Wells and his stories, and that eventually lead to When the Sleeper Awakes.

You might wonder where I got hold of an old run-down cryogenic facility, a Morlock, and a couple of desiccated skeletons.

I built the environment using commercially available 3D models. I did quite a bit of customization, adding rust, fungi, and molds.

I created the Morlock by mixing commercially available morphs of a Genesis 8 base character. As for the desiccated bodies...it is probably best you don't know.

Creating the Eliza's frozen look was fun. I studied videos on how to create a frozen look, but in the end, I discarded those methods and went my own way:

I rendered the door of the cryotube separately from everything else, because I wanted to build layers of frost on the body and on the door separately. First I matched luminosity and color tones of Eliza and the cryogenic tube. Then I desaturated Sica's skin, and added several layers of frost to skin and hair. After that, I added frost to the cryogenic tube door in the same manner.

For pictures like these, I often use Dynamic Auto-Painter to create a very colorful digital painting version, which I then blend in with the original picture. That gave the picture its final, very strong colors.

The Horror in the Library

The Horror in the Library is of course inspired by H.P. Lovecrafts Cthulhu mythos. Again, both the thing lurking in the shadows and the library are commercial 3D models.

The main thing to get right here, was the light on the monster. I wanted to show that it was definitely not human, but I also wanted to hide the face. What we do not see can be more frightening than what we do see.

There are many more pictures coming up the next few weeks, and perhaps months, given how slow I am when editing.

Long medium to long range plans for the pictures include the book I mentioned, and also exhibitions. For now though, I'll focus on editing the other pictures from the photo session.

Be seeing you!

Tuesday, 8 May 2018

An Evening in R'Lyeh - Intermediate version


An Evening in R'Lyeh. I am experimenting with 360 panoramas again. This is an intermediate version. I am analyzing it, to figure out what to fix, and how.

More to come...

Tuesday, 1 May 2018

Kyla: Interrupted Service


I noticed that I was slipping back into my old habit of showing a scene either before, or after, something happens, but not during. So, I decided to break the habit.

My previous Kyla blog post showed her facing off with a giant Deep One, built more like the Abomination than the creatures H.P. Lovecraft describes.

I wrote that I would trim the Deep Ones down a bit, and that is what I did. I kept the bodybuilding one, but all the others are a more normal size. As you can see, I also made sure that particular Deep One won't bother anyone again.

I do have a couple more ideas for a large Deep One though, so he just may reincarnate...eventually.

The title Interrupted Service is a joke. My son would tell me it is a very lame joke, if I asked him about it, so I won't.

If you look to the left, you'll notice a foot and a pair of legs. I won't tell you who it is, but it is the same guy who is in trouble over here. Click the link if you are curious. Some people just won't stay rescued.

I had quite another idea in mind when I started out with this picture, but I got into trouble, and decided to simplify a bit. I haven't given up on the original idea though, so I might do some more work on the same theme.

Saturday, 28 April 2018

Kyla vs. Deep One (Cthulhu Mythos Meets Cavewoman)


One more Kyla picture. Kyla vs. a Deep One. A very, very muscle-bound Deep One. :-)

The interesting thing to me, is that if I can create a passable Deep One, it opens up a whole range of storytelling. The Cthulhu mythos provides rich, and partially copyright free (check very carefully what is free to use, and what is not, if you do anything commercial) material to base stories on, or to weave in as story elements.

I will hold a Photos Inspired by Books event on the 12th of May, in Gothenburg. This picture isn't a photo, of course, but the important thing is the sources of inspiration. In this case:
  • The Cthulhu Mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft, and developed by many different writers.
  • Marvel/DC Comics superhero comics. Yeah, there is a reason for those overdeveloped muscles. Check out Marvels Abomination.
  • The Cavewoman comic by Budd Root. Technically, Cavewoman belongs to the Lost World literary genre, which is a sub-genre of Science-Fiction. By the way, so does Jurassic Park and King Kong.
So, there are three major literary sources of inspiration for this picture. I believe that in order to create something new and interesting, whether it is a picture, or anything else, you need to stoke the fires of your imagination with many different kinds of fuel. Indeed, creativity is the ability to deconstruct those sources, in order to build something new.

There is more of course. I have written before, about how Kyla herself is a result of playing with genre conventions, and flipping gender roles. Kyla fights monsters, she is no damsel in distress. (She has been quite distressing to some people in Facebook art groups though, who prefer more demure, and more fully dressed, women.)

A little bit about the technical side of creating the picture:

The Deep One is a Michael 4 3D mesh with Creature Creator and The Freak morphs. I used the Daz Studio Leather shader for the skin, and changed the skin color.

I rendered with Iray in Daz Studio, tweaked the picture (strategically placed hair and a bit extra brightness and contrast) in Affinity Photo. I worked in 16 bit mode to get a little bit of extra punch in the colors.

Finally, I painted the whole picture in Dynamic Auto-Painter.

Just like there were three different sources of inspiration for the idea, there were three different tools that contributed to creating the actual picture.


Here is the original 3D scene, as I built it in Daz Studio. Whether you prefer the painted version or the original is a matter of taste really. (I doubt anyone who does not like either reads this far.)

While working on this picture, I was actually more concerned with the lighting than the scene itself. The reason? Because this picture is a warmup picture for a slightly more complex picture that I haven't done yet.

Be seeing you!

Saturday, 7 April 2018

The Tunnel

I started working on The Tunnel about a year ago. The photo is a selfie I shot in a tunnel under a railroad a couple of kilometers from where I live.

I set my camera up on a tripod, took a remote triggered hotshoe flash in my hand, set the camera timer for 10 seconds, and ran like crazy to get into the right position in time.

It took several tries, but finally I had a shot that was good enough.

I wnt to a fish store and shot octopus tentacles. However, that did not work out as I had hoped. Dead octopi don't pose well.

After several tries, I finally put the picture aside. I realized I would have to try something else.

Awhile ago, I started using Daz Studio to compose 3D scenes. That got me thinking about using a 3D model of an octopus to create the picture you see. A couple of days ago I gave it a try.


With Daz, it was relatively easy to position the tentacles.


What you see here are the rendered tentacles, right out of Daz Studio.


I composited, added shadows, and relit the picture in Affinity Photo.

At this point, I had a so-so photo composite. It did not quite work as a photo, because the tentacles looked a bit artificial to start with. Also, the photo was a bit too clean. I wanted a dirtier tunnel.

Filters in Affinity Photo, Photoshop, and most other tools, do a mathematical transformation of the image. In many situations, that is exactly what you want.

However, I wanted a more painterly feel. At this point, I had two ways to go:
  • Use the Paint Mixer tool in Affinity Photo to paint the whole picture manually. That works very well, but it is also very time consuming.
  • Use Dynamic Auto-Painter to paint automatically, with manual input only where necessary. Much faster, nearly as fun, and arguably, better results. (Depending on how good an artist you are.)
I went with Dynamic Auto-Painter, and created the picture at the start of this blog post.


I also created a couple of variations. The very dark one you see here is actually closer to what I had in mind originally.

My son thinks this is the best version because "what you cannot see is scarier than what you can see."

He's got a very good point.

Because the picture is so dark, it can appear almost completely black on some monitors though.


I created an in-between version, darker than the first, but brighter than the second.

Which version you prefer, is of course up to you.

You can find these pictures, and a portfolio I am building, at ArtStation.

Wednesday, 27 December 2017

The Pit - Digital Painting Horror

The Pit - Digital Painting Version

I had the idea for The Pit some time ago. The original idea was for a photo composite, but I wanted to try it out as a 3D digital storyboard first. It ended up being a digital painting. There might, or might not, be a photo version in the future.

I'll walk you through the process I followed to create the image, and show you a few of my intermediate versions of the picture.

Be warned: There is some full frontal, albeit digital, nudity ahead. The first versions I created in Daz Studio used default lighting. My intent was to get an overall idea of the picture before I added lighting for mood and modesty.


I began building the scene in Daz 3D using stock 3D models. My first image used the 3Delight renderer, and default lighting.

In hindsight, this was a mistake. I should have used the Iray renderer, that also comes standard with Daz 3D, from the start, because the lights created with 3Delight and Iray are completely different. The 3Delight lighting setups I created became completely useless when I switched to Iray, so I had to relight the whole scene.


Originally, I wanted the whole picture to be done in shades of green. The idea was to associate with the deep, dark sea, deep ones, and Cthulhoid monsters in the depths.

That did not quite work out. The picture above is my 5th render. As you can see, I have changed the lights. There are two spotlights from above, one from below, and one behind the woman, lighting the wall behind her. Originally, I wanted to light the wall with the spotlight from above, but that did not work out very well.


I did briefly experiment with using a sktetch filter in Comic Life on my original base image, but I abandoned the idea. Still, there are things about the image that I do like.


Instead, I blended two of my base images together using Affinity Photo. It looked failry good, but I decided to relight everything so I could use the Iray renderer instead of 3Delight.


Above is a base image rendered using the Iray renderer.


After a few more renders, and a bit of tweaking in Affinity Photo, I had the image above. I thought it did look a bit too stiff and artificial, so I decided to experiment with the painting tools in Affinity Photo.


Here is the final result again. I used a brush from the Paint brush set, and the Paint Mixer tool to paint over the image. I was careful to follow lines in the original image with my brush strokes. That way, I kept as much detail and shadowing as possible.

I used the default 70 pixel brush for most of the picture, but reduced the brush size to 20 pixels to paint the woman, and other parts of the picture that needed to retain small details.

That is it! A small rendering and digital painting experiment, but I learned a lot. Also, I have a storyboard that might be the basis for a composite photo.

Sunday, 19 June 2016

Something wicked - Comic pre-production agony

Horror from Above – Petra Brewitz looks up, and something wicked looks back.
When I wrote the manuscript to A Rift in Time, the time-travel action adventure comic, I planted a few seeds for new stories.

Petra Brewitz, Petri Olderhvit, Julia Reinhart and I have started kicking ideas around for a sequel. That means we are in the oh so agonizing pre-production stage, the pre-idea stage really, when we try to come up with new ideas, and connect them to each other, and with some old ideas, without making a total mess of it.

Comic version of Horror from Above. We want a look similar to the first Rift adventure, but with a slightly more realistic look.

A project like this starts out pretty messy, and that is perfectly okay. Actually, it is a prerequisite for making something really good. The trick is to have the right kind of mess, and to narrow it down to a logical structure in the end.

Something Wicked.
What you will see in the final comic may, or may not, resemble what you see in these prestudy sketches.

When we will be done? I have no idea. We are doing this for fun, in our spare time, so it will have to take a back seat to just about anything that pays the bills.

In addition, we are deliberately planning to make things difficult for us again, setting goals way beyond what is reasonable. Creates headaches, but also makes for a wonderful learning experience.