Okay, so, much as I'm pleased that you've drilled into the hyperborean bit of your challenge and accessed some Eskimo folklore, now, you've lost sight of your bloomin' demon bit! Suddenly your secret lair is a ... regular-sized teepee and the hero prop is a kayak? Heidi - you keep suffering from terrible bouts of literalism; first, your got 'Demon' and you looked at the most literal version of that - the religious, falling from heaven kind - then you looked at Hyperborean and went 'Ice' - and now you've looked at Eskimos - great! - you've lost all the 'secret lair-ness' and fantastical element from your challenge. You were encouraged to go beyond both your first conventional readings of your 2 words - which you have - but the reason for looking, for example at Eskimo legends is to help you derive an original visual concept, not so you could produce a like-for-like illustration of an existing legend. Consider this, you take the idea of your bewitched female demon of Eskimo legend, and yes, you put her in the forest, but you consider creating her lair in a more imaginative way; perhaps combining snow and ice blocks plus fallen trees, or ice and show inside the trunk of huge hollow tree or... the point is, you use your new-found knowledge to inform your design; you don't use it to cap or inhibit your design - which I think is happening now. In terms of the hero prop, the Kayak is too passive (it's use is over) - I think you should consider an invented element - that draws on your reference - but relates to your demon. The idea of your demon being this forelorn possessed little girl can't help but put me in mind of Sadako Yamamura from the Ringu films - check them out - very creepy. You see, this is what I really like about this new research - that it's given you a 'hyperborean demon' that is actually a young girl - which begs the production design question: what kind of secret lair would an eskimo demon create for itself if once it had been a young girl too?
OGR 08/11/2013
ReplyDeleteEvening Heidi,
Thanks for your patience :)
Okay, so, much as I'm pleased that you've drilled into the hyperborean bit of your challenge and accessed some Eskimo folklore, now, you've lost sight of your bloomin' demon bit! Suddenly your secret lair is a ... regular-sized teepee and the hero prop is a kayak? Heidi - you keep suffering from terrible bouts of literalism; first, your got 'Demon' and you looked at the most literal version of that - the religious, falling from heaven kind - then you looked at Hyperborean and went 'Ice' - and now you've looked at Eskimos - great! - you've lost all the 'secret lair-ness' and fantastical element from your challenge. You were encouraged to go beyond both your first conventional readings of your 2 words - which you have - but the reason for looking, for example at Eskimo legends is to help you derive an original visual concept, not so you could produce a like-for-like illustration of an existing legend. Consider this, you take the idea of your bewitched female demon of Eskimo legend, and yes, you put her in the forest, but you consider creating her lair in a more imaginative way; perhaps combining snow and ice blocks plus fallen trees, or ice and show inside the trunk of huge hollow tree or... the point is, you use your new-found knowledge to inform your design; you don't use it to cap or inhibit your design - which I think is happening now. In terms of the hero prop, the Kayak is too passive (it's use is over) - I think you should consider an invented element - that draws on your reference - but relates to your demon. The idea of your demon being this forelorn possessed little girl can't help but put me in mind of Sadako Yamamura from the Ringu films - check them out - very creepy. You see, this is what I really like about this new research - that it's given you a 'hyperborean demon' that is actually a young girl - which begs the production design question: what kind of secret lair would an eskimo demon create for itself if once it had been a young girl too?