MHSRESEARCHCOMIC: Influences.

INFLUENCES USED

THROUGHOUT MY ONLINE COMIC

In this section I will explore the various influences that helped to shape my comic book from fine artists to horror movies. I have taken inspiration from a wide range of genres, from years of tormenting my mind with horrific and violent images and finally putting these into good use and letting my own tortured soul spill out onto a page and eventually put it out there for the entire world to enjoy or squirm at. So let me take you on the journey of those before me that have explored the realms of the strange and the weird.

FRANCIS BACON

28th October 1909 - 28th April 1992

Francis Bacon has long been a huge influence on my work, with horrific imagery depicting scenes of horror, isolation, fear and loathing from religion to the holocaust, sexual torment and beyond. The main pieces that have influenced my work for this work are three fold and I will give a brief explanation for each in this section.

Three Studies for Figures at the base of a Crucifixion

The above paintings were exhibited as a triptych in 1944, as a response to the emerging reports of the Nazi death camps. Bacon intended to shock with these pieces of work and he did just that, they were met with harsh criticism for what people though were overly violent and horrific imagery. The inspiration behind the pieces was based in Greek mythology, the three goddesses of vengeance, Alectto, Meggaera and Tisphone, these goddesses were tasked with punishing crimes deemed beyond the consequence of human justice.

The horrific images really grabbed me and inspired my work in one particular panel. I had studied these images a few years ago and produced a series of prints which I pretty much directly used for the panel as I wanted to convey the same torment and punishment being inflicted upon my character. In the pages of transformation the character undergoes a range of stages before what is ultimately his rebirth into the next realm.

Panels from Hunt: Part Two

The mouth features quite heavily in the transformation pages, although not usually from the main character but from the beast or demon that is tearing him apart. This comes from the original idea behind the character and the importance of speech to people for communication, and more importantly manipulation. It also doubles as an entrance into the next realm along with the vaginal entry in which the main character is sucked into. This is to double as an insight into who we are as people and how we can change ourselves with simply the use of language we use and how we portray by communicating with people. Eventually being consumed and sucked into this for gestation and eventual rebirth.

Splash Page from Hunt: Part Two

EXAMINING A RANGE OF INFLUENCES

ON THE TRANSFORMATION.

Splash Page from Hunt: Part Two

I have selected these pieces as a prime example to show the disturbing imagery that has filtered out of my own mind and fallen onto the pages of the comic book, these best incapsulate a wide range of the influence that I am interested in. With twisted forms and writhing skin, grotesque but impossible to ignore. The fear of having your body being inhabited by another creature wether that be a worm in your intestine or a spider laying eggs in your ear most people can't image a violation of that type.

H.R. Giger said that "I feel that the strongest thing is always if it happens in your body, or in someones body, thats enormous, a worm in a living body, just under the skin and you see how it moves, awful." This really resonated with me. Having something that intrusive upon our being is something that will literally make your skin crawl. Feeding upon your person and on your life source, depending on sustenance from you becoming a part of you either until find a way to flush it out or it is ready to leave your body, by what ever means it is capable of, wether that be eating its way out or expelling itself from one of your orifices, neither way is going to be very pleasant.

I looked into a particularly nasty little creature Glyptapanteles, A parasitic wasp that will lay around 80 eggs into the back off a Caterpillar, the Caterpillar will continue on with its life allowing the eggs to grow inside until eventually the larva will burst out and form cocoons to finish the rest of the life cycle. What happens next is very interesting, although the wasps have left the Caterpillar it doesn't die, instead it fiercely protects the larva until the larva are fully grown and then the caterpillar dies. A rather unpleasant end, but can you imagine a more horrific parasite gestating inside your body and essentially turning you into a zombie to protect you.

Parasitic Wasp

This has been worked into the story of the web comic and will feature in later instalments, not as literally but I found this interesting enough that it began the wheels turning and will help shape the journey the character goes on.

Panels from Hunt: Part Two

Other artists that have influenced are such prolific painters such as Jenny Saville and her studies of twisted forms, which have been described as grotesque and disturbing, probably best known for her work featuring obese forms her work can look almost sculptural on the canvas but with its grotesque nature you find it very hard to look away. I wanted to bring this into the comic, which can be quite difficult to achieve especially working in black and white, especially with the splash page showing the initial separation, I tried too make it look almost sculptural and really try to give the disturbing feeling of something writhing and twisting to break free.

Jenny Saville

I felt it very important that although the psychical form was being twisted, pulled and deformed that the anatomy should be recognisable otherwise I would run the risk of losing the form in a twisted blob. I looked into anatomical drawings and had the luck that during one of my trips back to Belfast they were exhibiting Leonardo Da Vinci's anatomy drawings, as may be expected photography was banned in the exhibition but luckily there are plenty of online sources. I copied these and incorporated them into the work, I found these interesting as although visually brilliant they are not correct muscle anatomy, as he had to work from cadavers and draw the muscles as best he could but this helps to give a strange sense of anatomy and form to the body.

Da Vince Anatomy drawings

I tried to incorporate aspects of the drawings into my own such as in the first study of the legs I mimicked these to give a strange muscle form and twist the image slightly, again with the stretched chest muscles I took influence from them on the stretched skin on the abdomen. I found these works extremely interesting especially when thinking about other artists that have influenced my work. Possibly one of the most influential artists that I have came across is Vince Locke and when looking at the Da Vinci works here it brought his work to mind, the use of the muscles in his work seems slightly of and unrealistic but completely justified and I wondered if he perhaps had brought this element in from Da Vinci.

Vince Locke

I think some of the similarities here are quite striking, even though Locke's work is obviously and exaggerated work to emphasis the horror and grotesque nature of his zombie figures, I can't help but see a similarity. I'm sure that this point would have me hung, drawn and quartered in a fine art circle but I say "have at you". In my opinion I feel this work holds up just as well as any fine art, but hats just my opinion.

As a you have probably gathered a big reason behind my work is to disturb people, not the only reason, there is under lying messages that I want to get across, but through images that will hopefully captivate you and make you want to look away but also want to study the images and find things that interest you and repulse in the same second.

This is a technique used a lot in horror films, that pose with the hands over the eyes but with a slit that you don't want to close in fear (ironically) of missing the horror unfolding before your eyes. One of my favourite horror directors is Clive Barker, director of such classic films as Hellraiser and Nightbreed. Two films that have found there way into my work, usually unintentionally, and it will usually take other people to point out the similarities, this is not a bad thing of course, being compared to a master of any medium or genre never is.

Clive Barkers Hellraiser

Most people will be aware of Hellraiser and its main villain for lack of a better word, Pinhead, but a perhaps lesser known work would be Nightbreed, a strange tail of strange creatures who live under ground, not dead but not alive and by no means zombies. Dwelling under the ground of a graveyard called Midian, a bible reference and also a prolific feature in many occult sects. The story isn't to important here but the strange creatures that inhabit this underground world are rather intriguing. From porcupine woman to an obese blob with a heads situated in the middle of its torso, these creatures can be seen as the stuff of nightmares but aesthetically brilliantly executed and grotesquely marvellous and extremely sinister.

These are the main aesthetics that I want my own strange and wonderful creations to have in common, terribly beautiful.