Category: artists

something about our artists

Posted on

Euro Monster Smash from Frankfurt, Germany for DAY 13

Screen Shot 2015-10-13 at 12.29.21 AM Screen Shot 2015-10-13 at 12.27.51 AM

Hold onto your eyeballs, it’s DAY 13 with the Chambers!

Not all that far from Stuttgart is Frankfurt, but wow is Frankfurt far from Gothtober Headquarters in Los Angeles! We’re so excited to offer MORE work from distant lands, a Gothtober family in Germany! We love the internet because it lets art travel here from outer space! Bridging the gap from bratwurst to hot dogs is the miracle of online perseverance, a true international collaboration, we couldn’t be prouder of our International participants!!!

Here is where the Chambers family is sending their art from, it’s out there! Someday we hope to visit!

There are many monsters from mythology you do not want to meet, but we must insist that you meet these. Thought up by the young Nigel and then brought to life with his parents, Christy and Brian, here we have quite a gruesome gallery of beautifully illustrated creatures thoughtfully caged behind your computer screen so that you don’t have to worry about safety. It’s a mixed media treasure trove of droll entertainment.

The Chambers are like the Frankensteins, but instead of using human remains and lightening, they’ve paper puppets and stop motion magic to breathe life into thirteen creations. It’s alive… IT’S ALIVE!!!! 

Posted on

Drankin’ with Del Norte Presents! DAY 12

Screen Shot 2015-10-12 at 11.30.05 PM Screen Shot 2015-10-12 at 11.31.06 PM

Are you feelin’ lucky, my friend? Are you ready to rumble? Are you a Gothtober party animal? How many rounds can you go? Well it’s Gothtober DAY 12 so let’s just count out the shots and see where the night takes us.

Your horse is headless, your witch is brewed, you are three… four… thirteen ghost sheets to the wind! That is, if you take a romp to the cave of spirits with Del Norte Presents!

They are here, they are back, they are pouring themselves and you some cocktails for the witching hour. It’s always been well known that if you imbibe enough beverages, you will either meet or become something other than is expected. You could meet a blue fairy, you could become Elvis, you could wander into a night scape of incomprehensible zombie sing-a-longs! BRAIIINNNNZZZZZZ!!!!

We suspect that this might be the MOST fun anyone’s ever had making a Gothtober piece, at least, where revelry is concerned. Watch it, but also watch out, it seems a little haunted, did you see that bartender? I didn’t! It’s a joyous celebration, possibly a wee woozy outcome. It’s nothing a little alka-seltzer, low lighting, aspirin and an ice pack on the head can’t solve in the morning.

Also: Something kind of spooky… the day before on Gothtober, is Dianne Chadwick’s 13 creepy cocktail recipes for Day 11, and then for Day 12 we have these fearless carousers from Del Norte Presents getting absolutely soused with spirits! These Gothtober artists, to my mind, have never met. They just came up with these shenanigans and it was put together so serendipitously to make a Double Whammy hootch-a-rama on the Gothtober calendar this year, a one two (spiked) punch!

Posted on

Spooky Spirit Recipes for DAY 11

chadwick_spirits

Click on Gothtober DAY 11 and receive a delicious and ghastly presentation from Dianne Chadwick, drink vampiress extraordinaire! If you’ve been stumped at what to serve at your Halloween cocktail party, fear no more, here we have thirteen wonderful recipes to knock people’s heads off… literally. From the “Corpse Reviver” to the “Bitter Pumpkin” there’s plenty to add to your boiling cauldron this month that will impress all of your ghoulie guests.

Serve these drinks in themed glasses, if you have the option. If you can find garnishes that call to mind things like severed fingers or bloody eyeballs (or you know, in a pinch, the real thing is even better.)

Nothing builds friendship and good times like wormy ice cubes and plastic spiders. 

We’re considering trying each and every one of these before October is done, we’re very goal oriented around here.

Posted on

DAY 10: Shipo’s Halloween Day!

Screen Shot 2015-10-10 at 1.27.22 PM

So who is this Shipo, anyway? It’s all very cat-centric, you see.

Watch this great story by 8-year-old Sienna from Little Green Dog! Little Green Dog has been a Gothtober staple for many years, and often, Sienna and her cats were the inspiration for some of the great work put together by Sienna’s parents, who run Little Green Dog. But this year is different, because this family production team, for the first time, features Sienna behind the camera as writer, illustrator and narrator! She also plays some of the piano in this video!

See how the drawings come to life in this adventure about Halloween, and friendship. It’s even better if you’re eating candy while watching the show. 

Posted on

DAY 9: TAKE OUT

abstraction

Click on DAY 9 on www.gothtober.com

From the depths of pipe cleaner nihilism arrives a one minute film called Take Out.

Though a brief foray into the avant-garde, it is everything, and it is nothing.

You might say it’s viscerally alive. You could say it was designed by the inventor of Tetris.

One might say it’s jalapeños in your pancakes.

It can be experienced as a smörgåsbord of sight and sound.

Refreshingly free of narrative, the joy of this film exists in it’s complete abandonment of constraints and a whole-hearted embracing of raw, spontaneous energy.

Take this journey, go on a one minute musing of whatever you will, whatever you have. What’s going on? Only the disco ball knows for sure.

 

Posted on

DAY 8 – Fall Ideals: Los Angeles River

Today is a short film by Julianna Parr (me) about water, pumpkins, and one of LA’s secret havens: The Los Angeles River.

What you can see is pumpkins and the LA River. What you can’t see is the perilous task that is pumpkin wrangling IN the LA River.

It’s slippery, even if you have tread-laden shoes. But it’s beautiful, and it’s our river, and it was great fun slogging about, setting up shots with orange orbs in the middle of the day. One woman asked us if we were scared.

I’m not sure what she meant. Did she mean being in the LA water? Did she mean being scared of the urban environment? Was she inherently uneasy at the site of pumpkins not analogous to the surrounding landscape? I assured her that we were not scared. Maybe she meant flash floods? Flash floods are scary, and I made sure to check the forecast for any rain that would be happening up in Valencia or other places that could send a deluge of water our way, but the coast was clear.

It was sunny, breezy, clear and serene at the river. Pigeons were very curious about the project.

Posted on

Master of Disguises, Michael Gump for DAY 6

Ten years ago, for Gothtober 2005, Michael Gump, the not-s0-secret-agent of wonderful artistic works, showed himself in a plethora of clever disguises. Here’s the original (see above.) Now it’s 10 years later, and Michael decided that for 2015, he’d do a different disguise for 365 days, it’s a work in progress, and you can check out some of his favorites on DAY 6 of Gothtober, and then, to keep up with past and future efforts, follow him on Instagram as Bobbugs. Lucky friends of Michael sometimes get to help him with his project. In one frame, he is covered with “Mom love notes” made by an awesome Mom we know who would give them to her daughter every day. In another daily photo, someone is spilling glitter on him. There is one where Gump is covered in human  hands!

Michael asked me to paint him last month! I’ve always wanted to paint an ear blue, and now I can say that I have. It was a luminous and rewarding experience. – Julianna Parr, Gothtober’s Head Candy Corn 


The piece this year has gathered many fans, a fellow named Jaraveda is working on a coloring book of Michael and his works! Here are two preview images, copies should be available for ordering soon.

 

Posted on

All of DAY 5 All the Way from an Island in the Mediterranean

makeup

www.gothtober.com click on DAY 5

Mallorca [maˈʎorka])[2] is the largest island in the Balearic Islands archipelago, which are part of Spain and located in the Mediterranean Sea.

And from the middle of all that arrives a film with creatures, temptation, water, concrete, sand, searching, and singing! The director sent some comments and some behind the scenes photos. The director said that she’s:

… interested in the power of metaphor in the visual arts, thus the mouthless meets the eyeless. How do they communicate?

How does the ignorant and the powerless become the conscious and the active participant. blabla if you want to get into the mind wanking aspect.

Locations for this film include the beaches of Es Trenc, and a mixture of old and new structures in the city of Palma. The big round wheel-like sculptures they filmed in were by Catalan artist Josep Guinovart, dated 1986 and are supposed to represent windmills! Each piece can be seen here.

It took a lot of convincing the french teenagers to get weird…

When asked how the eyes and mouths disappeared in the film, Sisyphus’s twin sister said “I wanted to do silicone but we were rushed and it took too damn long so we just used adhesive stretchy bandages and coverup.”

People in Spain are so used to weird foreigners that not a single person stopped to watch the shoot.

We hope you enjoy today’s film experience, and may your communication impossibilities make a wonderful family.

Posted on

DAY 3 is Super Stankee

stankee_belly_button

Lurch Creaky started Stankee Candle Co. back in 1864 when he stuck a wick into some rendered sheep fat and gave it to his Grandmother on a crisp Autumn day. A corpse smelled the homemade candle and crawled out of their crypt offering to buy it.

This was the beginning of an American tradition of selling horrible smelling candles across the nation. Master fragrance smellers spend hour upon hour in the dank musty lab developing optimal performance in every candle sold.

Our stenches are the standard to which all other home reeks are judged.

Our scents span a range of categories, including specific molds and spores, rotting specimens of what was formerly living, messy and putrid types and festive fetid smells that enhance the holiday season.

Lurch couldn’t be happier to be launching the Fall line of wonderful stenches that will fill your home with authentic and compelling odors. Our cherished legacy of making gross candles is the hallmark of excellence for quality and selection. Buy one for yourself and a friend today.

Posted on

Gothtober 2015 Debuts with “The Luckiest Woman in the World”

Welcome to Gothtober where every day is Friday the 13th. Today’s film is brought to you by Cristin Pescosolido, it’s called “The Luckiest Woman in the World” or is she? Watch carefully as “Jen” gambles with old-time superstitions.

This film uses SPECIAL EFFECTS! I know for a fact that the cat, Charlie, in the film is a grey cat, but Cristin managed to change his appearance in one of the shots! Here’s a little show and tell that gives you a peek into 21st century movie magic.

old_mac_shot
A shot of the render time on Cristin’s poor abused old macintosh.
nuke_shot
Here is the nuke script used to turn the modern HD footage in to something you might see from an old film. Grain, dirt, scratches were taken from old film footage that was scanned. Multiple layers of dirt, lift, scratches were added, camera shake was added, and some blooming on all the hilights as one might see in nitrate film stock.
cristin_title
Here’s a still frame of the titlecard, showing how all the lovely treatments trash a perfect black and white image.