Steampunk Horror Shortcuts

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steampunk2.jpgTime again for some work updates and other news. I mentioned in August that this Steampunk design—created to illustrate a formula definition of the genre by Jeff VanderMeer—was originally going to be a T-shirt. That idea fell by the wayside when an opportunity arose to submit it to Modofly who were asking for Steampunk-related work for a new line of their laser-etched Molekin books.

I’m pleased to announce that the books are now done and on sale at the Modofly store. These are available in two sizes, large (5.25ins x 8.25ins; 13.3cm x 20.9cm) and small (3.5ins x 5.5ins; 8.9cm x 13.9cm), $36 USD and $22 USD respectively.

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Next up is issue 11 of Penny Blood, an American horror magazine due out shortly which includes a feature on David Britton’s Lord Horror character and runs through the often tormented history of Savoy Books. Savoy’s Mike Butterworth and I were both interviewed and the piece should also include some comments from Keith Seward whose Savoy title, Horror Panegyric, examines the Lord Horror mythos. They don’t say yet when the magazine is out but it’s available for pre-order now.

While we’re on the subject of his lordship, I recently updated my pages for the Reverbstorm comics with a lot more samples taken from the re-scanned and re-lettered artwork. Work is still progressing on assembling the definitive single-volume edition of Reverbstorm as time permits. I’ve finished work on all seven published issues and am now engaged with the eighth and final section. More about that, and Reverbstorm itself, at a later date.

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Finally, there’s another new CD design out, my fourth this year and there are more on the way; I’m starting to feel prolific. As can be seen from the cover, this was a very minimal job. A Made Up Sound is a pseudonym of Dave Huismans, aka 2562, whose excellent Aerial album I also designed. Shorctuts is a collection of electronic sketches and Dave took the moodily anonymous photographs himself.

The recurrent pose 23

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These latest examples of the postural idée fixe come via The Other Andrew (again…thanks, Andrew), courtesy of his eye for the vintage male. The first one isn’t quite the Flandrin pose (although that rule has been broken here before) while the second is even more vague but the Jack Baker ad was something that turned up while searching the newly unveiled LIFE magazine photo archive with the keywords “homosexuality 1970s”. In case you’re wondering, the picture is captioned “Campaign poster for admitted homosexual, Jack Baker, running for President of University of Minnesota Student Association”.

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Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The recurrent pose archive

The Kelpies

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Maquettes from which the final works will be produced.

Given the choice between Thomas Heatherwick’s B of the Bang sculpture—a vast bundle of metal spikes situated near the City of Manchester Stadium—and Andy Scott’s proposal for The Kelpies, a pair of giant horse heads due to be erected in Falkirk, Scotland, I’d probably prefer the latter as a piece of colossal public art. Horse heads, from the Selene horse of the Parthenon onwards, are especially suited to statuesque representation and the horse has a venerable history as a symbol in the British countryside. It should be noted that between the two works, Andy Scott has the better location, Heatherwick’s giant piece is stuck in a redeveloped area near busy roads which makes its rusted spikes seem like leftovers from the stadium’s construction. He’s also been unfortunate in having created a work which began falling apart as soon as it was finished, with falling spikes causing a public hazard and a lengthy row with Manchester City Council which was only resolved this week.

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Scott’s enormous horse heads will be standing alone and monumental in newly-created parkland, symbolically representing a gateway to Scotland as they flank and help operate a canal lock. Kelpies is the name for the “water-horses” of Scottish myth and Scott’s Kelpies will stand 35 metres high, taller than the Angel of the North. Unlike Anthony Gormley’s static monument they’ll move back and forth as the level of the locks rises and falls. Scott’s website has more pictures of the maquettes as well as photos of his other public works.

Update: ‘Bang’ sculpture to be taken down

The Kelpies at Falkirkonline
Meet the Kelpies, Scotland’s giant addition to the UK sculptural skyline

Previously on { feuilleton }
Dark horses
Planet by Marc Quinn

Psoakoonaloose me

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— You’re a nice third degree witness, faith! But this is no laughing matter. Do you think we are tonedeafs in our noses to boot? Can you not distinguish the sense, prain, from the sound, bray? You have homosexual catheis of empathy between narcissism of the expert and steatopygic invertedness. Get yourself psychoanolised!
— O, begor, I want no expert nursis symaphy from yours broons quadroons and I can psoakoonaloose myself any time I want (the fog follow you all!) without your interferences or any other pigeonstealer.

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

More from the world of the web meme. Current favourites doing the rounds include various blog analysers which are by no means scientific but which curiosity impels one to try out anyway. The Typealyzer subjects your words to a Myers-Briggs Type personality test which in my case reveals me to be in the INTP class:

The Thinkers
The logical and analytical type. They are especialy (sic) attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

I’ve never tried a proper Meyers-Briggs test but the above seems quite accurate if anything so vaguely algorithmic can ever be thus described. I did try an Enneagram test a while ago and came out as a Four (The Individualist) which is more applicable than the others on that scale.

Back at the web testing, the GenderAnalyzer rates { feuilleton } as 99% male based on the aforementioned “logical and analytical” writing style. So much for gay men being more feminine… I can’t help but feel slightly disappointed by this. I obviously need to get in touch with my inner drag queen, in which case the Drag Queen Name Generator would be a place to start.

Previously on { feuilleton }
The CD cover meme
Another lazy meme post