Baku

Baku, or "dream eaters", are creatures found in Chinese and Japanese folklore. They vary in description from an elephant head with the body of a lion, or a lion head, the body of a horse, the tail of a cow, and legs of a tiger, or more like a tapir.

http://akrainforest10.pbworks.com/f/1271288592/tapir1.jpg

 Baku protect people from the bad dreams by eating their nightmares, sometimes unbidden, but sometimes the dreamer must call upon the baku to help them, either in the dream or when they wake up. "Baku, devour this dream!" Sometimes the baku is said to change the eaten dreams to good luck.

Sometimes they are portrayed as troublemakers, eating all the dreams, not just the nightmares.

I like this creature in particular, because I have inherited the tendency from my mother to have nightmares every night. I can't remember the last time I had a good dream (and neither can she. My Psychology teacher said it must be something in our brain wiring), and all the usual good dreams such as the flying dreams that people talk about are completely alien to me. I would say that people are trying to kill me in about 75% of my dreams, and in the rest I'm in a stressful situation (such as driving a car with no brakes, or I'm trapped or paralysed and about to die, or someone I care about is about to die). A baku would have a feast fit for a king in my head.

This creature is obviously suited to children - parents in China and Japan would tell their children about the baku to reassure them at night. Therefore, I want to do a chldren's book. I also noticed in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford that China in particular made simple plushies with painted on features - I could make a plushie to go with the book.

Since I'm not great at writing, I enlisted the help of my best friend and she wrote a poem for me as a story. I absolutely love it. I'm now hoping I can get all this done in time for the London Book Fair, as I would love to show it off there.

The Urayuli

In Inuit and Alaskan folklore, the Urayuli, or "Hairy Men", are transformed children who got lost in the woods at night. They are described as having long arms and large glowing eyes. The idea of this piece was that it would be printed and folded into a tiny concertina, between 5 and 9cm tall, to show the stages of a lost child becoming a Urayuli.

1st frame: A child in a hide coat.
2nd: The coat puffs out to become fur, the child is slightly taller.
3rd: Taller again and antlers starting to appear. Their arms are now dragging along the ground.
4th: Growth spurt! The face is now obscured by fur.
5th: Fully transformed.
6th: The child finds others.

I wanted this piece to be inspired by the style of Inuit art, which uses mostly stark black and white. However, I had the image in my head of a style more suited to children's books. Whether this combination works or not, I'm not sure, but I definitely like the outcome.

I was originally going to do a series of lino cuts for this piece, but after printing a few test-cuts I felt they weren't good enough to justify using them for a final piece. Instead I have used a digital style with no shading and simple shapes. Only the texture I have overlaid offers range in tones. In my test lino cuts, I created a texture very similar to the one in the fur on this digital piece. I think it works better digitally.

I may come back to this and make a more lino-cut-ish, Inuit-ish version, but for now I am happy with how this came out.

Update: Which colour scheme looks best? Darkened this one, and upped the contrast, and fiddled a bit, trying to get a more "Inuit-y" colour scheme.

Fiddled with layers and thresholds for more of a black and white look, with a hint of colour and tone still in there so no everything is lost. Better than the one above.

Rawhead and Bloody Bones

"Rawhead and Bloody Bones, Steals naughty children from their homes, Takes them to his dirty den, and they are never seen again."

A single image piece I've been working on. Though it is of a finished quality currently, I may still come back tot his piece and change a few things. This is the first piece I've ever done entirely digitally, with my new (and first) graphics tablet. Yay!

Bloody Bones is originally a British (or Irish) monster that has been adopted by American folklore, who lives either by water, in a cupboard, or in the pipes under the sink. He steals naughty children, or can turn them into dirt or spots of jam that their unknowing parents will clean away. He is variously described as a burn victim, a man covered in scabs, a boar with missing pieces of flesh, or any other ugly, deformed or disgusting description. I liked the idea of giving him a boar skull for a head, and I drew some celtic knots to tie back to his origins.

 

Various Inuit experiments.
Top: Lino cuts. The first image shows my amazing plan of sticking paper cutouts to the lino so that I knew where to cut. This didn't work very well.
The second image shows my first attempt at a lino cut for the Uryuli piece. After spending hours on it, I printed it only to find that... I hadn't flipped the image.  Since I was planning on it being a concertina book, it was somewhat important that the figure be going in the other direction. I decided not to continue with the lino cuts as they had taken SO long, and I was afraid they might not be very clear with what was going on. I did, however, like the texture where I had done the fur trim of the coat.

Large image: A small figure made out of Super Sculpey based on Inuit sculpture. I love this little guy!

Tailypo in Colour?

Not sure about this... I like how it turns out on the smaller panel, but on any scenes with the trees especially, I feel it just ruins the detail I spent so many painstaking hours on.

I think I will save myself the time, and the money when it comes to printing out copies of this for the London Book Fair, and keep the comic in black and white. I may return to it later and hand in a coloured version at the final deadline, but then again I may not. I really don't want to ruin my details!

Tailypo Line Art

Long time no blog! Been working on the Tailypo line art, among other things.

New Tailypo Storyboard

I am pleased wtih this version of the storyboard. I managed to cut down the pages quite significantly; from 20 to 16 (including cover and end papers). I have roughly kept to the idea of alternating panels with panel-less images, and no two pages are alike in their panelling. I decided to leave out the repetition of the dogs being sent out to chase away the creature and returning one less every time. It was a challenge to make that interesting in comic form, and to be honest I always find that bit of storytelling a bit clunky anyway. And I feel sorry for the dogs. This way, they just get wiped out along with their master when the creature attacks. I still feel sorry for them, but at least it's a quick death with no awkward repetition.