Tuesday 14 May 2013

A Private Asylum Detainee - Latest Developments: An Update

Many apologies if you've written to me recently by email and not yet received a reply; I'm slowly but surly catching up on my emails and I'm sure I'll be getting to yours soon.
The problem has partly been various family obligations cropping up, but also because I have been burying myself to such an extent in the production of mine and Angela Fox's joint comic book project, loosely based around certain ideas originally developed within my INSTITUTIONALISED series.  As you probably know, Angela Fox originally produced a series of computer generated 3D images based around INSTITUTIONALISED Volume 3 with the idea of jointly producing an illustrated version.  That idea was stillborn for one reason or another, but I'd kept the artwork and later began annotating, adapting and adding speech bubbles, partly as a natural development which grew from the need to add a few words of explanation while publishing some of the images on Deviant Art and also my new website (Beyond The Barred Window - link available in the right hand sidebar).

More recently Angela Fox and I have again been collaborating on a whole new fresh approach, involving the production of several sets of brand new images, which I am presently working my way through, adding various embellishments, cropping and recombining, in addition to annotating and adding speech and thought bubbles and filling with text.  Some early attempts you'll have already seen in these pages, based on my adaptations of sections taken from those earlier images, but today I thought some of you might appreciate a little teaser based around a couple of Angela's more recent creations.  These are taken from the centre of a particular set and hopefully give a taste of the story direction without giving too much of the game away.  The first actually consists of sections taken from no less than three different Angela Fox originals, along with a couple of elements pinched off the web, which I have put together and to which I have then added all manner of shadow and lighting effects etc.  The second follows straight on from the first image and consists of an annotated cropped section taken from another of Angela's creations, the full sized version of which is used elsewhere in the sequence, suitably annotated.  I must say, I totally underestimated the work involved in story telling through speech bubbles!!!  But I'm having a ball - and I think Angela is too!!!  (Angela Fox also writes books and novels in her own right and a link to her work can be found over in the sidebar on the right).

4 comments:

Greenwellies said...

We all realize you are quite enamoured of Angela. However, it is your imagination, concepts and stories that we all like. If her art embellishes your content -- great. But you are our primary source of inspiration.

Toyntanen said...

Hi Mike! Well it is my basic ideas that are the inspiration for Angela's 3D art. But she then interprets those ideas in various ways which sometimes sends the story line down unexpected avenues.

This current set - THE DIRTY ROOM - is a case in point. True, I wanted a time-worn institutional background, but the concept of a 'dirty room' intentionally left in the state it had been found when reopening the old disused Victorian asylum section, was Angela's. And I love it - and so I've run with it, to see where it will lead.

Today's offering Angela made for me based on changes I'd made to some of her earlier images. I have added a second padlock (at the rear of the straitjacket, cobwebs, and of course the think bubbles and all the text.

I can honestly say I have never actually met Angela Fox, by the way (although I HAVE met somebody who knows her rather well!).

Orage said...

How about giving us a direct link to your Deviant Art images?

Toyntanen said...

Hi Orage! Yep, I've been negligent there - guilty as charged! I hadn't bothered, coz it is so simple to find (and also I doubt there's much there that hasn't appeared here - it just reaches out to a different audience. But here is a link (just copy and paste in to your browser) and I'll also set up a permanent link in the sidebar in due course.

http://toyntanen.deviantart.com/