[sources: X / X ]

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"Incomplete Memories"

A digital collage made in GIMP with a stock image from Pexels.com and a picture of George Brehm's "Woman's Home Companion- September 1916" illustration (public domain in the US). Based on 'The Backrooms' series by Kane Pixels, esp on the character of Ivan Beck.

Additional thoughts below the cut:

Another piece inspired by Ivan Beck and The Backrooms. This one is kind of still a WIP, as I am not fully happy with it, but I wanted to post this stage nontheless.

The George Brehm painting appears in Found Footage 2 and is speculated to relate to Ivan Beck in some way. It fit *incredibly* well into the stock image, and even adding some light effects and shadows worked out very well imo.

Might be I will return to this piece in the future. We'll see.

"The Hanged Man (Ending)"

[sources: x / x ]

Two variations of a digital collage made in GIMP with a picture from pexels.com and a tarot art motive from wikimedia commons (public domain), representing the Hanged Man ending from the videogame "Who's Lila?" by Garage Heathen. I used the dithering option in GIMP to get the ditherpunk effect.

Further thoughts below the cut:

This one really felt like being hit over the head with inspiration; I saw the picture of what is the background in this piece and was immediately like "Hanged Man Ending!" and then found the Hanged Man tarot art and they just - fit. So well.

It took a couple tries and iterations to get it exactly how I wanted it to be, but I am really happy about how this piece turned out.

Fun fact, I tried to use the 'Tomiho' color palette for the first version of the pic. As a treat for the fans of the game.

[sources: x / x / x / x / x / x ]

"Annihilation" - aesthetic/moodboard (based on a mix of movie and book version)

An aesthetic/moodboard made in GIMP based on the Southern Reach books and movie by Jeff Vandermeer. Made with free stock images from pexels.com.

Further thoughts below the cut:

One of the earliest aesthetics/moodboards I made when I got back into GIMP, and before I even really got back into 'Annihilation' again, going purely off of memory to make this one. Not the best I have made imo, but still part of my art journey, so I am posting it.

Also, I kinda like simplicity, how 'ordinary' everything looks, while the book and movie themselves contain weird and uncanny imagery.

Either way, I liked making this, which is the most important thing. And it sparked my attempts to make creature collages later on, like the dolphin with the human eye.

[picture sources: x / x / x ]

"Ivan", alt title "The Beholder"

Digital collage made in GIMP with stock photos from pexels.com. Inspired by the character of Ivan Beck from Kane Pixels' The Backrooms series (on youtube) and the OST/its cover art for the series (also on youtube). The eye sketch was done by me.

Some additional thoughts below the cut:

I am so happy with how this piece turned out, in part because I did not expect it would look so close to how imagined it. The look of the colors and the overlays give me a lot of joy.

I wanted to recreate the 'feel' of the more abstract Backrooms videos (Overflow etc.) as well as the cover art for the songs. One major inspiration was an instagram story which can be found in this reddit post. I also wanted to incorporate a couple of themes/motifs that I noticed (green light, eye imagery, sun imagery, the sea, time and space, the eight 'arms' of the prototype etc).

Only time will tell how 'canon accurate' this is, but for the time being, I quite like it.

[sources: x / x ]

"Almost Familiar" (Annihilation)

Digital collage made in GIMP with stock images from Pexels.com. Based on a scene in the book "Annihilation", part of the "Southern Reach" triology-soon-to-be-tetralogy by Jeff Vandermeer.

I was kinda thrilled that making collages enabled me to re-create this specific scene from the book, even if this piece looks and feels just as eerie to me as reading the scene did. This was more of a quick one, but I still like it very much.

I have made a few other collages that dip into the same uncanny metamorphosis-type entities and imagery as this one that I will hopefully post soon as well.

[sources: x / x / x / x / x / x ]

"Untitled Album/Song Cover Art #2"

Digital album/playlist cover made in GIMP with a stock image as well as various stock images converted into textures from pexels.com.

Most of the sources listed are pics from pexels.com that I turned into textures. They made creating this piece a lot of fun. This was mainly just me trying out stuff and then building onto the result of that experimentation, so this was a great piece to make purely for learning purposes.