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Hyperactive-Nutcase — Slenderman
Published: 2010-06-18 23:11:24 +0000 UTC; Views: 27223; Favourites: 1132; Downloads: 373
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...Yeah. About an hour of draw time, made mostly here: [link] . I threw it through some filters in GIMP for extra creepiness.I wanted the background to look like a mixture of webs and shattered glass... I really don't like the picture that much.
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Comments: 72
O.o wow, Idk whats up with the link there. XD lulz
Was supposed to be one of the little faces there, :T I still haven't figured that out yet. *grumbles to self*
Anyway, awesome pic. 8D So simple, its complicated.
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Well first, I drew the weird thing, then I uploaded into GIMP... I blurred the background slightly to make the foreground more prominent, then I put it through Softglow, inverted it, and Softglow'd again, then put a very light Oilify filter on... Then I pasted the weird thing onto the original, and erased the layer with a 20% eraser... I know it's not clear how I described it, it's like 2 in the morning xD
I drew most of the picture on the link I had, that helped alot. It still wasn't what I was going for.
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No . 8D it makes sense to me. lulz
Awesomeness.
Well what were you going for? XD lulz
Cuz this was still pretty awesome. 8D
I added it to my favs. :3
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I dunno, but it sorta looks like he's... Stargazing or some crap... in this one. I just didn't really expect this... I was going for a darker picture of him, rather than just a boring portrait.
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Oh.
8 ) I still think its kewl tho. XP
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I really like it. The shattered glass/webbing effect doesn't really seem to fit the slenderman myth, though. Also, it kind of looks like he is looking up towards the sky, which takes away from his creepiness since the slenderman is suppose to have a fixation with the viewer, implying intent and, thus, fear. Still, I do like it.
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While I'll agree on the point of the face seeming unfocused on the viewer (personally I find adding cheekbones helps in this regard), I disagree that shattered glass/webbing is inconsistant with the mythos.
On webbing, Slendy is often depicted with spider legs, and webbing fits this, along with the idea of "trapped in the web of Slender Man's madness."
As for the glass, insanity is a big theme with Slender Man (who is some ways an almost Lovecraftian entity), and the imagery of a shattered mirror fits this.
Anywho HN, (do you mind if I call you HN here? Can't think of a better nickname) I personally think this is one of your better Slendy pics. Embrace the Avatar of Paranoia!
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I suppose that part was just my own opinion. I've heard of him being depicted with tentacle arms/vine arms/branch arms/spider arms but my first introduction to the mythos was from MarbleHornets' chilling youtube series that associated The Slenderman with a subtle kind of torment and fixative madness. He was also depicted as more human. While not to diminish the other depictions of The Slenderman, I find that subtlety suits him better, whereas the webbing or the metaphor of shattered glass are much too simple and obvious associations for him. Clearly I am biased but, so long as the other side of the Slendy fan base can appreciate it, it's all good.
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No, I understand where you're coming from; however, Marble Hornets has a decidedly Blair Witch feel to it, for which subtlety suits much better than the more dramatic drawings of him. Static pictures simply do not display the chilling body language of the much more mundane Slender Man that appears in Marble Hornets. They compensate by emphasizing the supernatural aspects of him, including his connections with Yggdrasil that were hinted at in the blog whose name escapes me at the moment.
Both points of views I find equally valid and equally scary in their own ways, so long as they keep with this singular point:
The Slender Man is the embodiment of Paranoia. He's our modern boogie man.
Where Marble Hornets can give us passing glances of an only subtley unnatural being and slowly degrade our sanity, an image must supply all that emotional impact in one blow, and as such needs to resort to such metaphors.
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I suppose so, I never thought of the effect of body language and realism in video. The more fantastical depictions of The Slenderman just don't quite cut it for me, too close to fiction for an effect, I guess.
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It's partially a matter of body language, yes; the way his head lies slack like a hanged man when idle, his stiff back, the abruptness with which he turns to stare at the camera. But its also just the way suspense is built up (Marble Hornets is roughly 25 episodes or so long, and Slendy's only appeared in about a quarter of those), and the nature of its "surreal entity in a realistic setting" premise.
An excessively fantastic Slender Man in Marble Hornets simply wouldn't work - it would simply look like a CG effect. As is, he sits on just the right spot on the Uncanny Valley to unnerve you. (For similar reasons, I believe John Carpenter's The Thing simply wouldn't have worked if done with CGI.)
I can understand the distaste for the more Eldritch depictions of Slendy, since in both video and in photoedits, mundane works better. (For the same reason. I've yet to see a satisfying photoedit of Slendy in his more fantastic incarnations that did it in a satisfying manner. It again simply comes off as a bad special effect.)
But illustration lends itself to abstraction, and unless the artist can pull off the mundane Slender Man in a way that retains his aura of surrealism and paranoia, its simply better to render him as a creature of metaphors.
(I'm having fun with this, can you tell?)
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(Slendy brings out the analyst in all of us)
I think the biggest impact that a realistic Slenderman has is the fact that it is closer to reality. It's the same reasons most people, when they're in a creepy house or something, fear ghosts more than they do, like, Cthulhu or something. Because it has a human face and a human manner about it, it's not as hard to make tangible in your mind.
If MarbleHornets had used a more fantastical version of Slendy in his series, people would have dismissed it as just a horror show. But in the human form, it makes people question everything. Clearly there are supernatural elements to the series, but there is no clear evidence that Slendy is anything but a creepy stalker. This kind of subtlety lets the viewer guess and keeps them interested. Whereas the fantastic Slendy leaves only to question how and why but not what.
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Agreed. Though the human nature of a haunting isn't even explicitly nessicary. Merely the implication of an unidentified presence is enough. To use your own words, the question of "what" can sometimes be enough to lend to a primal fear, with "why" following shortly after.
For example, in a horror movie, the bad thing in the dark will almost always become less frightening after its been seen, since the question of "what" has been answered. (I would again cite The Thing as an exception to this rule, as its fear comes from the fact that the damn thing is just freaky looking.) If its done poorly, often the question of "why" goes with it. (A monster, for example, often wants to kill you because either a) its hungry, or b) its just plain evil.) Thus the only remaining question is "how do we kill it so the movie can end?" The horror element is gone and suddenly we're watching an action-adventure.
With Marble Hornet's incarnation of Slender Man, the answer of "what" remains unanswered even after he's been seen, since what he truely is and what he's capable of is still completely in the dark.
Hence why I call him a Lovecraftian entity - personally I've never interpreted Cthulhu for example as a giant squid-dragon-man, since that's too comprehensible. I usually think of him as a giant mass of crazy that your brain simply says is "sort of like a giant squid-dragon-man." Alternatively, a giant mass of crazy wearing a giant squid-dragon-man costume.
Similarly, Slender Man is a giant mass of crazy wearing the visage of a faceless man of impossible height (my personal estimates from watching the videos puts him at anywhere between 7 and 16 feet tall, depending on what amuses him at the time) wearing a suit.
Meaning we know what he looks like; this says nothing of what he actually IS. A spirit? A tree elemental? A demon? A hallucination? Doesn't matter. He's creepy, so run away.
But my mutterings here have been more "why is he scary?" My points could apply to a fantastic Slender Man also, since the true question of "what" is never answered there either. The real point, the one YOU were addressing, was "why is he interesting?" I agree that this is a different question, one that my above rant failed to address.
Marble Hornets, as you said, is done in a way so as to avoid being dismissed as a horror movie. I think this was done pretty well in the Blair Witch as well, though I've heard many comments as to it being simply dull. I consider this a matter of taste.
What Marble Hornets has done BETTER than Blair Witch, however, was to introduce supernatural elements without bringing its reality into question. Had the more Eldritch Slender Man of static pictures been introduced - beyond the simple matter of "bad special effect" that I'd mentioned earlier - it simply would have bent suspension of disbelief beyond the capacity for accepting this as a possible scenario.
One thing I've noticed in this regard, in terms of related cinema, is that such things are pretty much always in "shakeycam" as they are often called. For some, this doesn't even make much sense. (For example, while I liked the idea of a kaiju flick from the point of view of some poor schmuck on the street, it was simply hard to swallow the idea of someone carrying a camera through all this.) Others, the justification is flimsy at best (Quarentine and Blair Witch both justified the camera's presence by using it as a light source.)
Marble Hornets justifies the shakeycam's presence by making it an element of the overall theme; paranoia. The main character is keeping himself constantly filmed because a) he's experiencing large gaps of time where he remembers nothing, and wants to catch one of these gabs on video. And b) he's feeling constantly watched, and wants to capture his stalker on video.
If I was trying to make a point here, I think I forgot it somewhere down the line. Anywho, would you happen to know any other movies with a similar vein? I think to date Marble Hornets has pulled it off better than anyone.
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Good points all around, we've pretty much covered it, so I can't really extrapolate without sounding redundant.
As far as movies, though? I don't know of many other "shaky cam" movies that use it to their advantage, rather than just gimmick. But in terms of interesting horror? I think Paranormal Activity did a good job of terrorizing the viewer, rather than just spooking them. There were a few spook moments, but I found that the majority of the movie had a real menacing feeling from the antagonistic entity in the movie. I like the way the movie addressed the motivation of the entity, it seemed refreshing even when it was described so simply in the movie. Dunno if you've seen it yet, but I thought it was great. Especially considering the first time I watched it was by myself doing a security shift in a soon-to-be retirement home.
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Not seen it yet, sadly. I'll have to do that.
Wonderful place to watch that kind of flick, though. Anything to ratchet the paranoia up a notch or twelve.
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Yeah, that place was fuckin eerie. Especially since I went ahead and turn all but the hallway hub lights off and did my rounds every 30 minutes or so and had to pause the movie = /
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Thanks for the feedback. Like I said earlier, I really don't like the pic. I drew it with a mouse pad, not an actual mouse, so it was a bit weird. I'm a lot better at paperwork, but I like the computer because I don't have to worry about smudges and such.
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I agree with you about paperwork, I do all of my pieces in pencil first, I find it's better for finer detail. That and I suck with both my tablet and mouse. Anyway, keep up the good work.
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