I've been working on a little #horror minicomic about artistic burnout & trying to feed an ever-unforgiving algorithm - and I've finally finished it, so here's the first three pages.
You can grab a PDF from my Ko-Fi store here: https://ko-fi.com/s/00d1abcfb9 shares appreciated! 😊 #Comics#GraphicNovels#MastoArt
"Weight of the Dead"
Watercolor on Arches Cold Press
Illustration unpublished: originally commissioned by Cemetery Dance Publications for the book by Brian Hodge
Harlequins, supernatural Victorian music boxes, a wolf's tale, occult rituals, invasions of Triffid-like hogweeds, hermaphrodites, Gog & Magog, aliens, the Pied Piper, King Canute, souls of unbaptised children, the devil and the apocalypse...
Musical #folkhorror in the very year the term was 1st coined. #NowPlaying#progrock
William Friedkin, who directed The Exorcist, read the darkly surreal story on the rear cover of Live and engaged Peter Gabriel to collaborate with him on a future film project (which, sadly, never came to fruition). #folkhorror#horror#progrock#cinema
This filme is such a masterpiece! It is a horror movie about the scariest thing on Earth: us. Trust me, you must see this; it's a lesson of what we did as species, and some people today ( so soon ) have already forgotten.
I'm almost done with #Shiki (the #anime)! Ritsuko is probably the most selfless character so far, though I suppose you can't exactly expect or demand this kind of courage from people.
One more thing: as a seasoned #horror fan, I rarely find #anime creepy because most animation simply doesn't feel scary to me (upsetting, yes, sometimes, but not spooky in the true sense of the word). Yet #Shiki does have a number of rather unnerving scenes.
Despite its sensationalist pulpy title and #ColdWar premise, Jack Arnold's adaptation of the #RichardMatheson novel is an existentialist treatise.
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) plays with the understanding of what it means to be acknowledged as a human, and one's place in the world. The story is told through the eyes of the titular Shrinking Man – Scott Carey – who after being exposed to strange fog, finds himself increasingly lost in this world.
A slice of teenage bravura is just enough for a couple of kids to #dare each other to a drag race. Hours after the car of one of them plunges from a bridge into the murky waters below, Mary Henry resurfaces.
Carnival of Souls was Herk Harvey sole feature length #film. He's much better known – albeit mostly uncredited – for his short PSAs including Halloween Safety, ruining your kids' favourite holiday since 1977, and Shake Hands With Danger (1980). You don't have to tell Three Finger Joe about taking no risks.
Joseph #Losey's The Damned (1962) starts out as your conventional, lurid, early counterculture affair.
An American tourist visiting #Dorset is tricked by a prostitute, then falls victim to a youth gang controlled by King, a still very green Oliver Reed at his meanest. The trickster is King's sister, who confides in the American hoping to escape her brother's incestuous avances. They elope to a nearby island, closely followed by King and his gang, where they find a group of #children, all contently living in an underground lab, with #AutomaticDoors only they can control. These are the damned.
Here's my introduction post:
My name is Tyler Crook. I'm an Eisner nominated comic book writer and artist. I have mostly worked on horror and fantasy stories. I'm best know for my work on B.P.R.D. HELL ON EARTH, HARROW COUNTY and THE LONESOME HUNTERS. Most of my comics are painted traditionally in watercolor and ink.
American #Fantasy, #ScienceFiction & #Horror writer. He wrote the #StarTrek episodes "Shore Leave" & "Amok Time”, featuring the first appearance of pon farr, the Vulcan mating ritual, #LiveLongandProsper & the 🖖 symbol. He also wrote Trek scripts that weren’t produced, one of these introducing the Prime Directive. The SF&F HOF inducted Sturgeon in 2000.
Sturgeon’s Law: "90% of [science fiction] is crud, but then, 90% of everything is crud."
Hi! Sarissa here ✨✨ finally coming back home to this server so here's another #introduction post: I'm an independent researcher and uni staffer newly based in #Nottingham 🇬🇧. I'm #trans 🏳️⚧️ (she/they), I love #horror (watch Incantation!!) and my ideals are a confluence of #anarchism 🏴, #Buddhism ☸️, #Daoism ☯️ and #prefigurativism 🌅.
I enjoy meeting new people here and have loved my experience so far. I return follow, especially if you have an avatar photo, some posts, an introduction, a bio. Cheers. 🖤 💀 🦋 👾
I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
The game's intro has you (intro makes it clear you're a man) out to sea in your fishing boat, which gets shipwrecked near a small fishing village, whose previous village fisherman has disappeared under unclear circumstances.
You are pressed into service as the new village fisherman, and given an old boat, and a loan you must repay. The village & villagers are all slightly unsettling.
The game then revolves around catching & selling fish, & dredging the bay to upgrade your boat so you can go further & faster to ensure you can get back safely to dock each night.
Fish are all different sizes & shapes, so part of the game is a puzzle minigame to arrange the caught fish in the most efficient way.
If you don't get back to dock before 6:30pm in-game, weird stuff starts happening, & your "panic" levels increase.
I played Dredge for 3 hours straight last night, because Dredge is:
Apr 12, 2023 - Day 102 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 109
Game: Subterrain
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Jan 21, 2016
Library Date: Apr 9, 2018
Unplayed: 1829d (5y3d)
Playtime: 73m
Subterrain is a top-down sci-fi horror survival game.
Apparently.
You play an imprisoned scientist who has to break out of his cell, and finds that the entire prison, and apparently, base on Mars has been overrun by zombies, maybe. Based on some flavour text, on something I picked up.
It's moody & atmospheric, and I spent 73 minutes exploring all of the nooks and crannies of the prison, waiting for something to happen.
There's next to zero guidance, and you need to discover your way forward, which is why I explored every nook and cranny; all the while collecting things until I hit my carry limit. There's a recycle-and-build system in there somewhere, but by the time I got close to it, I'd had enough.
The game itself is well designed, and the sound design kept me thinking that something was just about to happen... but no. I killed two zombies in the first two levels.
There's a hint of something interesting in there, but it's buried under so much drudgery, that for a moment I questioned why I'm doing these reviews at all.
Ultimately Subterrain felt like style without substance, and I'm genuinely disappointed; it feels like I wasted 73 minutes of my life that I didn't enjoy, and won't get back. It's just: