painajaismetsä

Want to see how tough it is to get an article accepted by Cracked? (and possibly help me out)

I haven’t had a Cracked article since last year, but it’s not for lack of trying - I’ve had dozens shot down as just not being “quite there” or just too redundant with articles they’ve already done. Oftentimes it comes down to just the personal taste of a single staff member who has the power to approve something.

Case in point, I’m currently working on a pitch about surprisingly disturbing children’s characters, which I thought would have been a pretty easy one, but I still need two more examples for the list - they want a minimum of six - and the last dozen things I’ve proposed have been deemed “not creepy enough.”

Anything you can send me that seems a little too grotesque for a little kid’s show may help, but please click “read more” to see what’s already been pitched first.

Here’s an actual screenshot from an actual Noggin show called OOBI. This is one of only four examples they liked and approved of so far.

ALL OF THE FOLLOWING HAVE BEEN REJECTED:

Read More

holy moley.

ngl, I like trying to achieve creepiness without relying on generic EEEEVIL imagery like skulls, mean faces and pointy teeth, all that sort of stuff just sends me the message that someone’s trying too hard. Especially with imagery commonly associated with the jack-in-the-box, I think the unintentionally creepy, if friendly clown designs are the creepiest.

the Uncanny Valley. it’s an interesting place to explore.

(tho okay Jack-in-the-box is meant to be a jump scare but still)

also humans are seriously fetal-level neotenous, so i figure a lot of animals see us as literally giant, muscular babies

monetizeyourcat:

for a dog, it’s a normal thing for an immense fetus to be walking around on the wrong number of legs all day, making strange hunting noises and baring their alien teeth and scent-marking you with their weird vestigial legs. that’s a normal thing to happen and not something a dog hp lovecraft would write about

Oh lawd, I love this description.

Also, it makes me think of an interesting tangent — whenever I’ve made some kind of human-animal hybrid creatures, their humanoid features make them look neotenic and they water down the interesting animal features I tried to convey. There are cases when it looks cool or eerie but other times it feels arbitrary and a disservice to the unique, distinct features of the animal in question. ahhh creature design is hard

(via lampfaced)

Source: monetizeyourcat

how I feel right now (laden with sarcasm as heavy as toxic metals)

I FEEL FANTASTIC, THANKS FOR ASKING (hey, hey, hey)

colorpulp:

zomo:

“Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it.”

i don’t know what this is, but i know it belongs on my blog and that i have some learnin’ to do about klasky csupo ‘n’ micky d’s.

wow that cartoon. and Sundae is just
aaaaaaaaa
when you make Ronald look less freaky….. you must be doing something wrong…

Zoom Info

colorpulp:

zomo:

“Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it.”

i don’t know what this is, but i know it belongs on my blog and that i have some learnin’ to do about klasky csupo ‘n’ micky d’s.

wow that cartoon. and Sundae is just

aaaaaaaaa

when you make Ronald look less freaky….. you must be doing something wrong…

(via touchpulp)

Source: spookyzomo

csoka:

thatdarnbat:

jenfold:

Because the gifs can’t do justice to the insanely funny horror that is Mr Blobby on the Big Fat Quiz of the 90s.

I seriously cannot handle this.

oh no

d-dear god

(via morbi)

Source: jenfold

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dear god this is unnerving

and I love it

View Separately

bogleech:

I was looking for this damn cover FOREVER. I didn’t remember what magazine it was, what issue or what year, I just remembered it in a big book of science fiction I had as a kid, and remember it creeping the hell out of me at the time.

I know this sounds just like my “Mars Attacks!” rant but this right here is why the classic “Bug Eyed Monsters” are still so much creepier than tough guys like the predator, the xenomorph and their endless rip-offs. I love those guys too, don’t get me wrong, but these uncanny goons are the stuff of raw, unfiltered childhood nightmares.

If you look closely, they have eyes on the backs of their heads.

seriously! inducing the uncanny and inhuman eerieness taps to a whole different level of terror and unease than just plain old toothy mean ol’ monsters which you can instantly tell that “yeah, better avoid those mothers”. With creatures like these? You can’t be sure, and that’s unsettling.

Q:hey spoon i've been meaning to ask you anything you know about cyclopian emotions. like...how to draw them. it's kind of hard for me to get it down with that big one eye, and i wondered if you had any pointers or places i could look to help me out.

rhobi

DERP sorry for the late response

Naturally, body language is important in every case, but… heck, a large eye has a lot of potential for emoting that isn’t feasible (then again a giant eyeball isn’t very realistic to begin with), like, say pupil or iris size changing depending on mood! Since the eye is very large, you can even work with intricate patterns in the eye.

BUT YEAH, knowing how to draw expressions in general definitely helps even with a one-eyed critter.

I think my favourite kind of cyclops is somewhat cartoonish to allow for more flexible expressions as well as avoiding uncanny valley. Generally I try to treat a cyclopian eye as a symmetrical thing, combining two hypothetical eyes, BUT depending on the angle, I’ll treat the eye as either a left or a right eye to add expressiveness (with an angry eye it might be a little confusing… so I just take this kind of approach:

)

Oh, and then there’s the eyebrow.

Depending on what you’re going for, it may or may not work with a character design. Also, when looking to add expressiveness, I tend to draw some temporary eyebrows on characters who normally don’t have them. 8I Then there’s other design aspects like …noses? Hmmm I’m yet to work with those (with exception of Noin)