Hippocampus, the ancient greek word for Seahorse from the words horse and sea monster, are of the fish genus, within the family Syngnathidae which also include the pipefish.
With over 50 species, seahorses are mostly found within tropical, shallow waters throughout the world and usually live in sheltered areas like among seagrass, coral reefs or mangroves. They also come in a variety of patterns and colours, something which I myself may be able to incorporate into the design of my hybrid.
Their most distinct feature is their long, coiled tail which they use to hook onto their surroundings in order to prevent them from being whisked away by strong currents.
I have used this feature a lot in many of my designs--a whip-like appendage for an arm, shoulder spines, a 'pony-tail' appentage coming out from the back of the head and even used it as a replacement for a pair of legs to form a mer-creature shape.
The reason as to why they are referred to as sea'horses' is their long snout which strongle resembles that of equines, another concept which I incorporated into one of my thumbnails by combining myself with a horse as well as a seahorse, though this idea was scrapped because I figured I was only allowed to combine myself with one animal.
The seahorse is often used in Chinese herbology and at least 20 million are caught each year. Medical seahorses are not bred in captivity due to being open to disease and they may have different medical properties from aquarium seahorses.
Story is one of my favorite aspects of any fantasy or sci-fi genre. It's what makes the audience understand what is going on. Whether it's simple, humble tales to long, epic stories of good vs. evil, you can almost guarantee that anything and everything in the genres will have a story behind them.
Some of my favorite stories (or 'Lore' to be more precise) are the background lores behind Guild Wars 2, Dungeon Siege and the Halo saga. Though they are all simple about the battle between good and evil, the universes in which they exist in are expansive and epic. What is/are the origin(s) of the main character(s)? Why do they do what they do? What happened before the story began? When and where does the story take place?
In almost any film, game or anything with a plot in it, you can guarantee there will always be some kind of 'lore' behind it.
Here are a couple of introductions for an example, both telling their own story.
As you can see, both are entirely different, but both of them explain the lore behind their respective film and game.
Trying to go for less of a traditional merman, I went ahead and combined features from The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Seahorses (of course), Abe Sapien from the Hellboy series and a high fantasy aspect to them. Perhaps this species has an organised military system in place.
With the outfit I had to think about what kind of materials might be readily available for them to use while under water. Shells and long bands of seaweed came to mind, as well as broken wooden poles from shipwrecks. I alsp took some inspiration from the Naga from the Warcraft series.
Trying to adopt a more abe-sapien like approach while also taking inspiration from the Creature from the Black Lagoon, I came up with a sort of mer-creature with a seahorse's tail and a humanoid upper body, though not fully human.
I've noticed that the human head seems to usually fit into a fox, with the main skull shape being circle. I'll have to remember this when drawing heads from a profile view.
Black Swan is a very strange film which plays on your phsyche and terrifies you not only through visualhorror, but also through your mind.
This lurid phsycho-sexual horror movie is like nothing that director Darren Aronofsky has made before.
"It’s rarely clear what’s real or not in ‘Black Swan’. Aronofsky’s approach to psychological drama – to making real the horrors of the mind – makes the likes of Polanski’s ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ or ‘Repulsion’ look very timid. He doesn’t go for a gradual reveal of insanity. Instead, right from the off, we see Nina tearing off impossible amounts of skin from her fingers and hear awful cracks and snaps as she exercises her feet." (http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/88567/black-swan.html Paragraph 3)
Here, young dancer Nina is cast in the production's lead role, and is tasked with performing as both the White Swan, and the antagonistic Black Swan. Although, while she is perfectly capable of executing the poise and grace of the former character, she is lacking a certain something when it comes to the darker side of the performance, something beyond technique, which director Thomas pushes her to attain.
"Thomas encourages Nina to admire the company's new ballerina: funky free spirit and Olympic-standard minx Lily (Mila Kunis), who helps unlock Nina's life-force with seductive overtures of friendship, and more. But does Lily simply want to steal Nina's role?" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jan/20/black-swan-review Peter Bradshaw, Paragraph 4)
The toxically close mother and daughter relationship is almost what some young people may be able relate to in terms of clingy parents, yet this mother takes it to various extremes. Her backstory is that she was once a ballet dancer, but eventually gave it up in order to have children and most likely didn't recieve the spotlike like her daughter does, being blessed with the main role of Swan Queen in her ballet performance.
Perhaps it is a form of jealousy that causes her to sabotage her daughter by tempting her to eat too much confectionary or keep her in her room, deeping her too 'sick' to perform.
On its most simple narrative level, Black Swan covers the strain of performance and the various issues that come from a love for the spotlight. However, Nina is a newcomer, and her problems are all related to the anxiety of making a lasting first impression. Paranoia eventually gets the best of her, thinking that the previous one to fill the role, Beth and her major rival, Lily.
They both hold something Nina lacks, one, experience, the other, a sense of sexuality, as obviously portrayed throughout the film, and it is this latter quality that Thomas, through harsh, emotional manipulation, hopes to see on stage.
It is quite a surreal and shocking representation of the world of performing arts, and the impression of forceful directors is an interesting one, too.
The film, for the most part, is either shot close up to the character or over the character's shoulder, giving a sense of closed spaces and generally making the audience feel uncomfortable.
"As a study of female breakdown, Black Swan is the best thing since Polanski's Repulsion. But, in fact, with its creepy Manhattan interiors, its looming, closeup camera movements, and its encircling conspiracy of evil, it looks more like Rosemary's Baby, particularly in cinematographer Matthew Libatique's brilliant continuous shot in which Nina makes out with a random guy in a club, then wakes up to what she's doing and, freaked out, blunders through murky winding corridors and out into the night air – there seems no difference between inside and outside. Everywhere is claustrophobic." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jan/20/black-swan-review Peter Bradshaw, Paragraph 5)
The pursuit of perfection gets the better of Nina, who cannot handlethe stress of such a role. That seems to suggest an eventual breaking point, but Black Swan does not rely on cheap twists. Instead, Aronofsky fills the film with unnerving, creepy moments, keeping the audience on edge as the tension mounts.
As a fanatic of both science fiction and high fantasy, I love almost anything to do with it: video games, books, films, TV series...
My main inspiration is, however, games and the like, especially MMORPGs (Massively multiplayer online role-playing games) and the various creatures and characters inhabiting it. I also love the cinematic aspects to them. For example, this trailer for an expansion of one of my favorite game series, Guild Wars, has stunning CGI effects as well as, even though somewhat vague, a great story line to boot.
Another favourite game of mine is, of course, World of Warcraft produced by Blizzard (shame on me, I know. Sue me. :P)
I have to admit that the Blizzard cinematics team did an outstanding job and they do so for almost every game trailer that they do.
However, I don't just draw inspiration from CGI game trailers alone. There are many other such sources, too.
Music, for example, is one of my main ones. I have a wide range of tastes ranging from 80s music, to classical, to orchestral and to immediate music.
Here are some such pieces.
Play this in the background while doing any everyday task you feel like a hero.
Yes, yes, this is from World of Warcraft, but it's one of the types of music I like to listen to!
When I listen to this, I think of leaping through forest trees, pouncing from branch to branch. (1:20)
This piece is from the first ever RPG game that I played. It brings back a lot of memories and is one of the pieces of orchestral music that inspires me the most.
I'm not just inspired by game music alone. The famous Lord of the Rings film saga also has some great suites.
Disney is also a major inspiration in my work when I create quirky and zany characters. Dr. Facilier from the Princess and the Frog is perhaps one of my favorite Disney characters and villains. He brings style and suaveness to villainy!
However, it's unfortunate that Disney moved away from classic animation and decided to fund the trash on the Disney Channel.
Let's move away from music and on to art. Concept art more specifically.
I love concept art; it's what gives me most of my character and creature ideas. The most prominent concept art is that of Kekai Kotaki, Daniel Dociu (Pronounced doy-choo) and Matthew Barrett who are all concept artists for ArenaNet, the company behind the Guild Wars saga.
Here's an example of Matthew Barrett at work:
I love the Asura. They're such a quirky race (which, again, brings me back to my enjoyment of drawing characters like these from Disney).
The Elephant Man, a film from the 1980s directed by David Lynch, is centered around the true and tragic story of Joseph Merrick who spent the majority of his life in the carnival as an attraction with the same name as the film.
Fig 2: At the freakshow.
To many, this was their first introduction or the most memorable of Lynch's work. For me, this was one of the most powerful tear-jerking films I have ever had the pleasure of seeing.
During the first five minutes, the audience is treated to Lynch's sense of surrealism, though the movie rotates around Merrick's tale.
"It is filmed beautifully in black and white. It is a very well made piece of cinema. Lynch, for the most part, stays away from his trade mark imagery and symbolism, and sticks to more traditional story telling, although the elephant involving opening sequence is straight Lynch nightmare. That the characters come from real life and not Lynch’s twisted imagination only serve to add to the surrealism of the film." -Brewster, 2005
Merrick is at first portrayed as a simple-minded mutant who cannot understand speech or speak himself. However, later on in the film we find out that after some help from a benevolent doctor that rescues him from the life of carnivals, being mocked and being gawked at, we find that he is actually quite in telligent and can in fact speak.
John Hurt does an incredible performance as Merrick, managing to pull off some of the most convincing movement and body language once could bear witness to, seemingly not at all hindered by his make-up.
Though his life in this film doesn't correspond zealously with his real life, the heart and emotion is all present along with both subtle and in your face insights about what it means to be human and how it is to be treated like one. There are many scenes in the film that are easily capable of evoking strong emotions--such scenes of cruelty, in this instance, as the one where Merrick is exhibited as a carnival attraction in his own room in the hospital by a guy looking for a quick buck evoke strong feelings of disgust in humanity, but then makes us look at ourselves and how some have been shunned for being different.
"It has been said that Lynch is too sentimental in this movie. That he manipulates the audience too much. Ebert even goes as far as saying Lynch tricks the audience into believing that Merrick is a noble and courageous man. He suggests, that rather than being noble, Merrick is merely doing the best that he can, under poor circumstances. It is true that the film is sentimental. There is hardly a scene that does not prick the audiences emotions."
-Brewster, 2005
Fig 3.
The most memorable scene is after Merrick had been chased into a train station restroom by a mob of people and cornered. If the lines: "I AM NOT AN ANIMAL! I AM A HUMAN BEING!" do not shake you to the very core with emotion then you have not seen the movie.
"In the end, however, the film is carried by Lynch's masterful orchestration of the relationship between Merrick and Treves, and by the former's fight against society. Merrick is a meek, religious man, quite intelligent, and his bane is that he understands why society treats him as it does, making his ordeal even more painful. But throughout his ordeal, the he keeps his soul unsoiled, and when all things are considered, he is perhaps the most human of all."
-Centea
Fig 4: "My life is full because I know that I am loved."
The old fairytale of Little Red Riding Hood has gone through many retellings and reiteration over the centuries. Among these is the film 'The Company of Wolves', a film directed by Neil Jordan who takes on a more surreal and almost nightmarish approach to the tale.
The film starts with the main character, Rosaleen in 20th century England who has fallen asleep as her torturous older sister torrments her from behind the door. She falls into a dreamworld of fantasy which takes place in the middle ages in a small village in the woods. In this world, she lives with her gandmother who often tells tall, old wives tales which plunge the viewer into a story within a story--a very surreal approach in the film which should be expected from Jordan.
The Red Riding Hood story on which the film is based around looks to have been takes straight out of The Brother''s Grimm. However, the characters of the Grandmother and Red Riding Hood have been fleshed out completely. The Grandmother also seems to know quite a bit about wolves with such advice tidbits like: "The worst kind of wolf is hairy on the inside." and "Beware of men who's eyebrows meet."
The film contains a fair amount of body horror and gore, who's special effects are conventional in horror films at the time. Scenes such as the first initial transformation from the Grandmother's first tall tale in which a man transforms into a werewolf by ripping off his skin, followed by the raw muscles stretching and deforming into a wolf-man-like being.
Scenes of surrealism also make their appearences in the film to go along with the dream-like setting; during the first scene, her sister is running away from a pack of wolves while constantly being hassled by human-sized versions of Rosaline's toy dolls. In another scene, Rosaline, after climbing a tree, comes across a nest in which eggs containing small, porcelain babies.
Similar to The Brother's Grimm, Jordan has also attached the story of Red Riding Hood to a lot of other tales which may have baffled common peasents in the middle ages and which may also baffle people today.
While most film viewers think of Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast' when confronted with the title, little do many know of the film's original inspiration: the fairytale and the 1946 French film, La Belle et la Bete.
The film was actually produced while France was still in the recovery stages of World War One.
Overall, the story remains faithful to the original fairytale, the story being that a merchant goes into town in hopes of making a profit only to leave with nothing. After getting caught in a violent storm, he ends up lost and finds his way to a wealthy looking castle. However, though the owner of the estate is not present he finds a table with food set out on it. After eating, he eventually falls asleep.
Fig 2: The Merchant finds the table full of food.
The next morning, he prepares to leave only to remember that he promised one of his daughters, Belle, the gift of a rose. He goes to the castle's garden and plucks one which subsiquently enrages the castle's only residant: the Beast. The merchant trades his daughter, Belle, for his life.
To begin with, the girl is initially disgusted by the Beast's appearence, but grows to love him throughout the rest of the film. The Beast lets her see her father and so while at home, one of her former suitors decides that he'll hunt down the Beast in order to 'save' her from it, but in an ironic twist is turned into a beast himself and the Beast to a man.
Fig 3: Daughter and the Beast still.
Disney, when making the animation version of the film, watered down plenty of elements and added in plenty more such as the curse upon the Beast to turn him into a beast in the first place. He also embelished upon the animate household appliances that we see limited to statues and candlesticks in the 1946 film. The curse caused all the rest of the house's residents to turn into furnature and appliances.
"Jean Cocteau's interpretation of the myth, drawing its inspiration from Mme Leprince de Beaumont's mid-18th century version of the tale, presents viewers with an awkward combination of adult sophistication and childish naivete."
-Brown
Fig 4: Lumierre and Cogsworth from the Disney rendition, primarily used as comic relief.
Both films convey the strong message of 'Do not judge one by their exterior' and both do it very well.
"The tale is presented so purely that a great number of themes can be read into it, like all great fables, but the prevailing one seems to be not so much that love conquers all, more that if you look beneath the surface the most unlikely people not only can be loved, but can be capable of great love even if it is not reciprocated.
The director, Jean Cocteau, used a lot of experimental film techniques, which is why it was renowned for its time and which is also why it still resonates until this day."
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