I was looking through my older sketchbooks today and found some things that had taken me back to those nostalgic days. I feel somewhat overwhelmed at the thought of revisiting the past, and also, about scanning everything in from old sketchbooks, so I decided to pick these two vampire thingies out of them all. According to the sketchbook cover, it was dated way back in 1997. I'm not sure if this is right because we were doing sheridan college back in those days, so I'm thinking maybe around 2000 instead.
Anyways, I figure I wanted to show these because in a way, it would be like exorcising my personal demons by releasing them so I can let go of it (blockages and all) and move on. I didn't get around to doing anything worthwhile with this project for whatever reason(s) and so, it almost feels like a missed window of opportunity that presented itself at the time. If we don't do them, then someone else surely will! So then, it feels like I have lifted a Non-Disclosure Agreement in allowing it to be shown for the first (or second time with the following link at the end of this page).
Speaking of Non-Disclosure Agreements, how many of our personal projects have NDA-like policy written all over them? I know I have a couple of others that I want to keep secret for now but in time they will be shown. There are some already shown in public anyways, just not shown in all its entireity. Hopefully I don't let it fester long enough. How many have slipped by unnoticed over the years without showing them to the world, with only a select few privy to look at them? Maybe It's just another one of those fears that if we release these ideas out too soon, then someone's bound to steal them or do them quicker than we can and cash in on them. Or maybe keeping them secret really does give it some sort of motive power and releasing them to the world prematurely kills that drive to have it created in the first place. At any rate, they are fears that motivate us afterall, and even if they do get imitated or stolen or in whatever way you imagined them manifesting itself, then why should that matter anyways? We do what we do because we love to do them, otherwise we wouldn't be doing them.
Ah well, it's nothing new under the sun, adding a new twist to an old idea that became so overly cliche. So I don't really feel bad about it. At the same time I don't really want to judge it.
The way I look at it, all of these ideas are up there like floating around freely for anyone to pick up. It's probably part of the collective unconsiousness and they do get individually channelled from time to time.
About the drawings.
These drawings were based off a strange dream that I had. Vampires were a common occurrence in dreams as well as harpies and ninjas during that time. Sometimes they still are but they're not so common nowadays compared to back then. These were interesting dreams because it had nothing to do with me. It was like I took a backseat, grabbed some popcorn and watched a movie being played out in dream-time, and in this case, it was about a character who had shapeshifting powers, mostly of a jelly-like octupus of sorts so that he could ooze his way through crevices, ducts and tight spots that are otherwise impossible for humans to go through. He was an infiltrator by trade, dressed up like a ninja with a wet-suit of sorts stealing state-side secrets and things of that nature.
The setting takes place in an alternate dimension in a world war 2 era with vampires as the nazis. It then takes me to an area just outside a mansion owned by the villain of the dream, inside a forest near a cliff, with greenhouses nearby orderly lined up, (more like props to mislead surveillance) which leads to hangars underground with military jets with wings that curl up/folded up in tow. The hangars had loading docks that were more like the insides of a gun barrel that shoot out these jets that were fastened onto roller-coaster like tracks and levies. Their exit point is at the end of the cliff.
The object that the infiltrator planned on stealing in this dream is a living bio-book, paper and living material fused together to create some kind of sentient thinking machine. Inside it had all the secrets to the dark arts. The cover had a disturbing visage. As the infiltrator was stealing the book and putting it inside his backpack, it seemed to animate in a writhing-like way about its skin, sorta lip-syncing the words. It was saying something but I cannot hear what it was saying, as it was emitting a low frequency noise that only the main villain of the dream could hear, who is a vampire but more bat-like than man. It was his personal sounding alarm. I guess bat-like vampires could hear this sort of frequency, a form of echolation perhaps. He notices it and summons his vampire guards to go to his room to have it checked out. The infiltrator's backpack is also, for some reason, a living sentient thing which resembled a baby-fetus with its elastic-like skin able to accomodate objects inside it, or absorb it completely on some quantum level and convert it somehow, and for it to stretch out to wrap its arms around the host. It talks to the host, perhaps guiding him with the layout of the place as if its some personal GPS device..
Eventually amidst all the chaos and the action, the infiltrator makes his way through to one of the greenhouses and steals a jet to escape. The escape infuriates the villian so he summons his team of succubuses who are like trackers of some sort, and orders them to go after his book. They smile and their eyes light up, and the dream fades to black.
Another one of these drawings can be found
HERE.
