Finished!

I've finished everything on my dissertation, all chapters, titles, contents for chapters, surveys and all the artwork to go with it. I have to say, I'm very much relieved!

To be honest although I'll be happy when we get it all handed in I didn't actually find this module to be stressful what so ever because I handled my time very efficiently and made the most of the time and research that I had. I finished in good time and have enough days left to go through the essay to make sure that I haven't got any spelling or grammatical mistakes.

Now all thats left to do is make my folders for submission and get the dissertation itself bound properly.
I feel like I've really tried hard on this module and I hope that I've gotten my points across when writing my essay. I know that I've tried my best and thats what matters.

I'm really excited for the FMP. I know what I'm wanting to do so now that I have a bit of time on my hands Im going to start thinking about things that I want to add to my FMP and different things I can draw.

Chapters 1 to 4 Done.

I really feel like Im making a lot of progress with my essay now, I've very nearly finished it. So far I've done the into and 4 chapters that go into great lengths about the whole fear and human psyche  process and also the uncanny valley and how it can be applied into feeling fear.

What i have left to do is to write up the chapter all about my own personal research and how that lead me to the results that I reached in the end. I'm looking forward to writing that as i can really get into the nitty gritty about everything that I have looked at in order to create my monster designs and just generally get the notes I needed to write my dissertation.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to do another two thousand words or so and get a few steps closer to completing my dissertation.

Death & Disease (READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED)

Please note: as part of my essay into looking at what makes the perfect scary monster I have been looking at various forms of death and disease. This blog post features images of extremely deformed humans, human corpses, diseased human limbs, murder and other such material. It is neither pleasant nor pretty. Please read at your own discretion. Although nothing sexual or perverse is referenced in this post the images are regarded as NSFW (Not Safe For Work). Please keep this in mind, thank you. 

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As part of my research into what makes a truly scary monster I've been doing a lot of research into some things that monsters are generally based around, the two main themes being death and disease. For the past week or so I have spent every other day trawling through various online blogs of medical cases, criminal profiles and scientific research to find examples of elements taken from real life and applied to the film and video game monster. I've put them into separate categories for each piece of anatomy that I looked at and applied to my monster creation. FROM HERE ONWARD READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

Limbs

When trying to build a monster one of the most important aspects to consider is what its arms and legs will look like, I found the following images while surfing a medical blog on Tumblr, these and others like it helped significantly in the building up of some of the beginnings of my creature designs:

Syndactyly - a condition that occurs when two or more of the fingers are fused together.

The fist image that I found interesting was a photo taken of a Syndactyly, a condition that occurs when the finger or toes are fused together from lack of development while in the womb. Instantly I thought of Silent Hill: Homecoming boss: Sepulcher who's hands are severely Syndactyly. Though this isn't a particularly threatening nor scary deformity it is still one that is interesting and a common occurrence in horror monsters. 

The hand of a woman who attempted suicide via self immolation.

Moving onto the little more disturbing we have here a woman who survived her own suicide attempt of burning alive. The texture and colour of her skin is something that is used frequently in various horror games and films, both to identify burnt monsters or simply rotting ones. If I were to reference this image in the creation of a monster, it would be for a monster that symbolises pain of wearing its own skin. The film Paranormal Activity used similar effects for makeup that are seen as a real life example here. 

A male with a severe tibial fracture

One thing that monsters are renowned for is the way they move, the way that their limbs and bones don't seem to fit correctly into their bodies. Its for this reason that I found the above picture to be so important. A monster that walks as a normal functioning human being is less likely to be as scary or unnerving as one that is able to walk despite its misshapen limbs, showing that it either does not feel pain or simply does not care that its bones are so deformed.

Face

Obviously when creating a monster or any creature for that matter, almost all the attention goes towards the face (if it even has one). The face of a monster can tell the audience an awful lot about the creature itself and its intentions. Is it meat eating? Nocturnal? Does it symbolise the death of a characters family member or lover? The following images are of what I found to be extremely interesting in the make up and design of my creatures initial sketches:

Real photo taken of a man who's face as been mangled, cause of injury not stated.

The first thing I noticed to be a reoccurring factor with monster faces is the lack of distinguishable features. Creating a monster who cannot express its emotions or intentions creates extreme anxiety and unease within the audience. Monsters with similar traits include the "Bubble Head Nurses" of Silent Hill.

Wet specimen of half of a childs head. 

A lot of the creatures that we see in games and films are often directly symbolic of disturbing events that have either happened to the character in their life or the characters own thought process. Many monsters utilise the shock factor of seeing a horrific monster in the shape of a child or infant. Dante's Inferno "Unbaptised babies" show similar characteristics, they are infants who have had their arms cut off at the elbow and replaced with blades.

Tertiary Syphilitic Ulceration of the scalp (19th Century)

Something that many creatures fall into in horror games and films is the Uncanny Valley. A monster may in fact look reasonably life like, only something is 'off' about them, something is amiss, it is this feeling of unease when looking at an object or creature under the influence of the uncanny valley that makes audiences so frightful. Such things are used in todays world such as realistic dolls and robots.


I will continue to do research into various elements used in the game and film industry for what makes up a good scary monster. The research itself has actually been quite enjoyable and interesting on a somewhat morbid level and has given me a new insight into how the human body works.
I will use this knowledge to my advantage as I sketch up creature designs.

Dissertation Poster

A while ago we were asked to design a poster outlining out intentions of what we would be involving into our dissertations. I quite like the way that my poster turned out, it has bits of my essay in the background and clear categories for the things that I am looking at throughout the essay.

On the day that we submitted our posters we all went around each others pieces and commented on what we thought of them and mine received generally positive comments. The only thing mentioned was that people would have liked to have seen my artwork, this is in fact actually shown behind the "research - applied art work" section as all the artworks are my own.

To be honest although I enjoyed making the poster itself I really didn't understand why we had to make it. I know that we had to in order to show what it is that we would be writing about in our dissertations but aside from that we could have just spoken about them in small groups rather than making a once off poster of intent.

That said I'll be using this poster to my advantage in order to help me plan my essay out into separate categories, this should help it piece together bit by bit and I shouldn't have to worry about having to write enormous chunks of text fearing a lack of direction.