nyktomorphia

[nyktomorphia]

I've been dabbling with my American McGee-ised Phantom Tollbooth concepts again recently (see tag for "Senseless Cities") and realised I never really did anything yet with the Shortest Tallest Fattest Thinnest Man

I pretty much immediately decided that because his role in the book is to make a point to Milo about how putting things in perceived social categories impedes actually understanding them (and I used to wonder why I latched onto this story before I came out), my version is obviously also the Womanest Man, the Smartest Fool, etc, and after several sketches they're turning out to also be the Normiest Punk

(...looks quite a bit younger here than I intended them to)

I especially enjoy the idea that they have a stereotypical Meaningful Chinese Calligraphy tattoo - but just the one, someplace tasteful and easily-covered - but instead of "loyalty" or "dream" or something it just means "ordinary" and this was fully intentional

#senseless cities #pencil drawing #my art #fanart #character art #character design #queer artist #queer characters #nonbinary artist #concept art #the phantom tollbooth #american mcgee's alice

[nyktomorphia]

Further studies in trains, now featuring shapes donated by additional contributing devices

#artists on tumblr #my art #pencil sketch #queer artist #speculative engineering #concept art

[nyktomorphia]

I'm happy that when I want to draw trains I happen to live on an internet full of people who just so happen to love taking detailed pictures of trains, but unfortunately for me almost every one of those people photographs their trains right-side-up

[nyktomorphia]

OCs doing OC things (contorting their limbs into unusual positions for my benefit)

#nadia nowhere #senseless cities #pencil sketch #my art #original characters #queer artist

[nyktomorphia]

Got to meet a friend's cat the other day

#my art #cute art #pencil sketch

[nyktomorphia]

Train studies.

#artists on tumblr #my art #concept art #pencil sketch #pencil drawing

[nyktomorphia]

I might be a little biased but I’m honestly starting to believe that there’s no purer form of love than the defensive spite you see from biologists that have devoted their life to the study of a maligned or misunderstood species. For example:

The hyena biologist that arranged for Disney animators to come sketch captive  hyenas for The Lion King film (Laurence Frank) was so incensed when the animals were depicted as villains in the movie that he later included boycotting the film on a list of ways the average person could help hyena conservation.

Though it’s commonly known that Charles Darwin’s distaste for parasitic wasps played a role in his development of evolution theory (since he felt no loving God would create animals with such a disturbing life cycle), the biologists who study these wasps find it an unfair characterization. When they were tasked with coming up with a common name for the family of parasitic wasps (Ichneumonidae) that old Charles so disliked, they proposed the name “Darwin Wasps” to spite the famous naturalist who had insulted their beloved family of insects.

Parasitologist Tommy Leung was so frustrated with the way people write about parasites to evoke horror and gore that he started writing a Parasite of the Day blog, that specifically avoids inflammatory or unsettling language to describe them. He also illustrates different species in colorful anime art on Twitter in a series called Parasite Monster Girls—which he calls his “love letter to parasites.”

I guess I’m just saying that if you’re a biologist studying an unpopular species and you have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder about it you can always count on me to be in your corner if you want to get a little petty with the public!

[nyktomorphia]

SKETCHBOOK.

SKETCHBOOK.

I have had this specific clipboard for over a decade at least. I only started putting stickers on it within the last couple of years. It is garbage and sturdy and very comfortable. It is filled with cheap printer paper that I scribble on with a mechanical pencil and I basically never use anything else, which has itself been bad for my imposter syndrome but I'm working on it and I feel very validated right now

i don't like to yuck people's yum but i have to say that my least favorite thing to come from the current state of Artists on the Internet is the idea of a sketchbook as something nice and pretty and shareable. like i love me a notebook full of gorgeous art don't get me wrong but that is NOT what a sketchbook is. a sketchbook is my friend who i carry around everywhere like a purse chihuahua. it is the physical manifestation of my notes app. it is the container into which i wring my brain out. it is my therapist. and most of all it is filled with absolutely terrible sketches that should never see the light of day.

[nyktomorphia]

If you want earnestness in art then sometimes it's going to be cringe and sometimes it's going to be pretentious

[nyktomorphia]

The worst thing about having successfully written this out is that it barely actually says anything about the picture I'm supposed to describe

Trying to explain the Frecosystem coherently feels like having to tie conspiracy string all over my own artwork

Monster design in psychological and survival horror is driven by fear and trying to making them scary on a different or more personal level than big predator sharp teeth, and frequently that means starting with an approximate human figure and then making it repulsive, whether that's literally in the text like zombie apocalypses and other plague stories, or just implicit in designing a monster that looks like a crawling human with deformed features

Isn't it interesting how that contrasts with animals whose bestial traits are replaced with human ones until they are acceptably anthropomorphised?

Homo homini lupus est, sed lupus homini homo

And sure, those are basically opposite narrative purposes but they're both depicting the same idea, artistic representations of the point where the fallen human meets the rising ape, and that point is considered transitory

Isn't this just how visual storytelling works though, the audience can only come to understand something new by comparison to what they already know and fill in the gaps with what they expect? Isn't the purpose of such a design to suggest to the viewer how to relate what they see to categories they are already familiar with? Is the human viewer not expected to perceive art made for humans through a human lens? I guess

But you just still end up with fascinating monster designs that are unique to horror, because the way they trigger human fears is the artistic intent, and then by virtue of their genre they proceed to validate that fight-or-flight is the correct response

A monster becomes sympathetic only by losing its monstrosity, until either its "humanity" or its "inhumanity" overwhelms the other, safely neutralising its ambiguity to become a sort of charismatic bogeyfauna

Apathy towards humans is an unimaginable insult; they have no existence independent of their symbolism, the only thing they are is how they are understood

What is a spider in the absence of an arachnophobe?

What is a nightmare in the absence of a dreamer?

They are neither man nor woman, they are neither brute nor human, they are FREAKS

[nyktomorphia]

Trying to explain the Frecosystem coherently feels like having to tie conspiracy string all over my own artwork

Monster design in psychological and survival horror is driven by fear and trying to making them scary on a different or more personal level than big predator sharp teeth, and frequently that means starting with an approximate human figure and then making it repulsive, whether that's literally in the text like zombie apocalypses and other plague stories, or just implicit in designing a monster that looks like a crawling human with deformed features

Isn't it interesting how that contrasts with animals whose bestial traits are replaced with human ones until they are acceptably anthropomorphised?

Homo homini lupus est, sed lupus homini homo

And sure, those are basically opposite narrative purposes but they're both depicting the same idea, artistic representations of the point where the fallen human meets the rising ape, and that point is considered transitory

Isn't this just how visual storytelling works though, the audience can only come to understand something new by comparison to what they already know and fill in the gaps with what they expect? Isn't the purpose of such a design to suggest to the viewer how to relate what they see to categories they are already familiar with? Is the human viewer not expected to perceive art made for humans through a human lens? I guess

But you just still end up with fascinating monster designs that are unique to horror, because the way they trigger human fears is the artistic intent, and then by virtue of their genre they proceed to validate that fight-or-flight is the correct response

A monster becomes sympathetic only by losing its monstrosity, until either its "humanity" or its "inhumanity" overwhelms the other, safely neutralising its ambiguity to become a sort of charismatic bogeyfauna

Apathy towards humans is an unimaginable insult; they have no existence independent of their symbolism, the only thing they are is how they are understood

What is a spider in the absence of an arachnophobe?

What is a nightmare in the absence of a dreamer?

They are neither man nor woman, they are neither brute nor human, they are FREAKS

#frecosystem #thinking out loud #psychological horror #voidpunk #monster design #body horror

[nyktomorphia]

I may have gotten a little distracted in the course of figuring out what to put in the surreal junkyard

If anyone has a good reference for what a train car looks like underneath, please send help - image search only wants to show me them from the top and side

#artists on tumblr #my art #fantasy engineering #queer artist #pencil sketch #cosmodesy

[nyktomorphia]

People and their exotic pets

#artists on tumblr #my art #pencil sketch #silly art #cute art #facehugger #queer artist #fanart

[nyktomorphia]

(Successfully booped everyone who reblogged this before boops were turned off)

[nyktomorphia]

I can look back on my old art and see my technical skills have clearly improved but I still feel like I've been losing my creativity and I don't know what happened

And okay maybe I only feel that way when I'm in between exciting ideas, but there's whole pages that I just filled with writing and I don't do that anymore

looking back at my old art and i don’t think the skill loss was just in my head ngl

[nyktomorphia]

#silly art #i am so bad with krita someone tell me how to make the letters sharp and the screen a gradient #digital art #my art

[nyktomorphia]

I forgot to post anything for trans visibility day because I've been too busy being anxious about posting works in progress, so here

I've already solicited some from friends but could use further suggestions for other junk to fill the background with

#nadia nowhere #my art #art wip #surreal landscape #original characters #queer artist #queer art #nonbinary artist #trans artist #trans art #queer characters