Update for Friday March 31st.

I am working non stop on my comic and my thesis. It is taking a lot of effort and I am barely holding it together.


In terms of research I have moved on from visual research to more thematic research as I finish my thesis.

My visual research this week was:

TRAIN TO BUSAN

A Korean horror film about a train where zombie begin to board and take over cars one by one. A father has to keep his daughter safe in an increasingly dangerous situation and it's uses of characters, environment and visual storytelling exploring themes of self sacrifice and unsolicited compassion.

My thematic research this week was:

CULTS AND STUFF

I have been pairing with the podcast Sect Ed to research the effects of suspicion, brainwashing and fear mongering in the real world. It will provide useful information when I write about the real world effects of corruptive elements. (The Heaven's Gate cult used the internet to draw in new members and used sci-fi to indoctrinate impressionable youths.)

Hopefully that can give me more information to work with.

Update for Mar 25th

Not a lot to report this week.
I am locked down in work mode, drawing 24/7
luckily that gives me a lot of time to watch horror movies.

I watched a pretty dang good indie horror movie

THE DEVIL'S CANDY

A horror movie about a family who moves into a new home, and the madman who seems to want to get back in.
An artist inspired by demonic voices, a troubled kid, rock and roll.
This movie was a great inspiration for the horror that I am working on now.

Since I have finished the into and set up of my story, I need to have good scary pay off and this movie is all about the pay off.
It was ok for the most part but the ending elevated it to incredible levels and made it all fit together.
I'd recommend it.

Update for Feb 18th

Only a little bit of research this time:

LATE PHASES:

Been awhile since I saw such a good "B-Horror Movie" like this.
It really reminded me of Gingersnaps, another great werewolf B-Movie.

Late Phases is about a blind Vietnam veteran who overhears his neighbor being eaten by a werewolf, the cops write the murder off as a wild animal attack but the Vet decides to take matters in his own hands. Epic montages of gathering silver bullets and making traps ensue.
It also has a great sense of sadness as the man knows he will probably die during the hunt juxtaposed with him settling into the creepy retirement community that he knows he won't be moving out again regardless of the werewolves.

I have been making comic pages with pretty consistently this last month. So I appreciated watching a movie that knew how to use it's visuals to tell the story. There was basically no soundtrack so the audio mixing was telling the story as much as the actors were.

Overall I am still stressed, suffering, drawing and watching too many horror movies.

Update for March 10

(Sorry for the delay I realized that this post didn't get uploaded)

So, while I have been working pretty consistently on my comic pages, I found some interesting research material and a concept I need to keep in mind while I work.

The concept of "Unending Anticipation" as a visual horror trope.

I found this while watching the 2016 horror movie, The Invitation.

It's a horror movie about a man meeting up with his ex-wife after 2 years. They are both still coping with the death of their son and have both remarried.
The dinner party that follows is unsettling and strange, leading to an evening of paranoia and intrique that leads to a sudden bloodbath.

But what made this movie interesting was the fact that 95% of the movie was just talking around a table, and only 5% of it was the gore and horror.
And yet, it was terrifying throughout.
Maybe it was the fact that it was advertized as a horror that I was in anticipation the whole time,
Maybe it was the unsettling music, or the Kubrickesque framing, or the reserved character acting, but with every passing moment it got scarier and scarier despite just being about some white people having wine around a coffee table. It was effective and impactful.

The reason this resonated with me was the fact that I am working with horror in a 2D still medium at the moment and visual horror can't be created through quick cuts or 2 frame flashes of the monster so the techniques included are vital to building my own suspense.

Update for Feb 24th

Spring break is here and I intend to come into the studio at least every other day this week to work on pages all day. Hopefully that will give me the boost of extra time I need to work on my thesis.

In the meantime the most relevant research I did was on the ARG 'Sara is Missing" in which you play a stranger investigating a lost phone that might belong to a kidnap victim, and you have to dig into her virus riddle system, read through all her text messages and look at all her photos for clues.

It really draws the audience into it's creepy and layered story. The gameplay accents the story beats by crafting the scares to what the player would be logically thinking once they are suspend their disbelief. A useful thing to keep in mind

Nightmind did a really good cross examination of the game and it's flaws.

And for a fuller experience, good old markiplier did a solid playthrough.

Other than that I am still trying as hard as I can and trying to schedule my other classes with my thesis meetings. I will keep trying.

Post for February 18th

Things are collapsing in on me but I am going to try my best.
I need to work more on my thesis and last time I wasn't able to find a time to meet with the Thesis consultant and I don't want to miss her this time around.

In other news I have been researching Night Mind (NM)
A youtube channel that focuses on what makes good horror, good suspense and just an all around good story.

(I think I even linked to his twin peaks video in a much earlier post during my initial research.)

His recent video on Resident Evil VI is a great resource for how to lead an audience's anticipation to a scare and how to 'train' the audience to expect things in certain situations.

As I am working on inking the first several pages of my comic, I really need to keep in mind how my 'setup' for the story 'teaches' the audience. You need to warm the viewer up to the world and how the tools of your fiction and really focus on what effect my decisions will lead to further down the line.
It's all about foundation. Strong foundation, maybe it won't topple later.
I hope.

Post for FEB 11th

Well, it is only 8 more weeks until my IP is due and I am going to be doing less and less research and more and more just, working until I physically can't anymore.

The last bit of inspiration comes from a genuine relic from the internet.

MARBLE HORNETS

We all know Slenderman, the internet meme gone awry. Slenderman started as a photoshop contest to make convincing  'haunted; photo, and this one (below) ended up winning, it eventually spiraled into
fan theories, fan art, spin offs, video games and even more spin offs until the creepy "Slenderman" became a meme of the bare bones basic "Spooky urban legends creature," a short hand cliche trope that is no longer considered original

But there was a golden period, right after the photoshop contest but RIGHT before the Slenderman mythos became a pop culture phenomenon.

MARBLE HORNETS

Marble Hornets was a short form web series depicting an old student film found on tapes after the original owner went missing. When his childhood friend re-watched the old tapes, he starts to notice a creature following them in the background, from a distance. A monster known as "The Operator" long before "Slenderman" existed, terrorized the cast and crew of marble hornets. His very presence drove people slowly insane to the point of obsession. The fact that the video series is grainy old footage with the monster hidden in single frames at a time, the audience has to become obsessed themselves, looking at every single image frame by frame to see the horror, just as the characters do. The hidden nature of the operator causes the characters to look for him behind every corner and constantly doubt their eyes, and the abstract low budget quality of the show itself makes the viewer take on the same roll as the characters. This is the exact blend of form and function that I hope to embody in my own work.
I hope.