Emma Alvarez Blog: October 2008

Helloween (Halloween)
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Lovecraft, The Most Influential Horror And Sci-fi Writer
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Howard Phillip Lovecraft (1890-1937) is one of the most important authors of the horror genre. The way he mixed terror with science fiction (extra-terrestrials, travels to other times and dimensions) turned him into one of the most influential writers of this genre, and he's one of the most read and quoted during generations.

His life was always filled with misfortune. He was born on August 20th, 1890 in Providence (Rhode Island). When Lovecraft was 3 years old, his father, Winfield Scott Lovecraft, was interned in a psychiatric hospital, where he was confined until he died.
So Howard was educated by his mother, 2 of his aunts, and his grandfather.

Lovecraft's mother put all her frustrations on his son. She was a very neurotic woman, and very possessive, that put strange ideas in her son's mind, telling that he was very ugly, that the others will hurt him, and that the best that he could do was to not get too far from her to avoid those problems. She also transmitted him racist ideas. And she turned him into a lonely, fearful, and introverted boy, and over all that, with a strong dependence from his mother.

But Lovecraft was a brilliant being. When he was 2 years old, he recited poetry, and at 3 he already know how to read. At 7, he started to write his first stories.

The book that impressed him most in his first years was "One Thousand And One Nights" (that was also the favorite book of Lord Byron). He read it when he was five. Under the influence of this book, during his first years he used a pseudonym "Abdul Alhazred", the same that he used years later for the character of the Necronomicon.
As a curiosity, Alhazred is an anagram: "All has read".

The first work of Lovecraft that has arrived till our days is "The Poem of Ulysses", that he wrote when he was seven years old.

Soon, he was captivated by the fiction genre. His grandfather told him stories of Gothic horror, and Lovecraft soon felt trapped by this genre.

Lovecraft was a very sickly child, so he went very little to school, always being mainly self-taught. When he was 8 years old, he mastered science, specially chemistry and astronomy.
At 9, he already was a writer in an amateur magazine, and also in the astronomy magazine of Rhode Island.

In his studies in Rhode Island, he wrote a monthly column of astronomy in a newspaper, and did many journalism works.

In 1904 his grandfather died and the familiar economy worsened. They moved from their luxurious Victorian mansion to a much more modest new home. This depressed Lovecraft very much, specially leaving far away the old library where he passed all his childhood. He even thought in committing suicide.

Four years later he suffered a nervous breakdown. His difficulties with maths prevented him from going to the University of Brown and becoming an astronomer. This, that may seem a minor problem, supposed a constant humiliation in his mind for all his life. He couldn't ever go to pick up his graduation diploma.

During this phase of his life in which he was dominated by depression, he rarely went out of his house, and lived confined, more and more subdued to his mother.

But there was a happening that broke this confinement. When he was reading a magazine ("Argosy"), he found a love story written by Fred Jackson, and decided to make a letter with a poem attacking Jackson. A big controversy arose between detractors and defenders of Jackson.
Finally, Lovecraft ended becoming member of the "United Amateur Press Association", an association of amateur writers that published their own works. And published 13 numbers of his own amateur magazine.
Lovecraft managed to become the President of the National Amateur Press Association. And with a new optimism he recovered his love for writing fiction.

In 1923, he appeared in the popular magazine "Weird Tales". He contacted with many other collaborators, writers that had a constant communication by mail that left more than 80,000 letters written. One of his friends was Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan The Barbarian.

His mother fell ill, and was interned in a psychiatric hospital, the same one that saw the last days of Lovecraft's father. After a operation, she died. Lovecraft was 31 years old.

Lovecraft was ruined, so he started to work as a copy editor for other writers. In a journalists meeting, he met the woman that was his future wife: Sonia Greene.
Sonia was a merchant that had a hat shot, and worked in the United Amateur Press Association.

But her health started to be worse and lost her hats shop. Lovecraft did not find any job. She moved to Cleveland trying to improve their situation, and Lovecraft stayed in Brooklyn, and soon asked her to divorce.

He returned to Providence, and wrote incessantly. From this stage, he left us works like "The Call Of Cthulhu". He also promoted the works of other writers, and was interested in Politics. One of his aunts dies and he moves to the house of his other aunt.

Their economical problems continued. He fell ill of cancer and died. He was buried in the family vault of his grandfather.

Lovecraft died without seeing any of his books published. His stories were scattered all over an endless list of magazines, and lived without knowing the enormous success that he had years after his own death. And without knowing that he will become one of the most influential science fiction and terror authors in History.

Halloween Wallpaper Tutorial
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Final Image Preview:
In this tutorial you will learn how to make a Halloween wallpaper, and how to unify elements from different kinds using layers, create spectral glows with a basic brush...

For downloading the wallpaper click the image

Open a new document in Photoshop with this size: 1280x1024, and a resolution of 72.

Paint the background layer in black, and add noise (menu Filter/Noise/Add Noise) with these settings: amount 8,79%, gaussian, monochromatic.

Select the brush number 4 of my Tree Photoshop Brushes. Adjust the brush size to 1290 and apply it over a new layer, using white color. Create a new layer, and use the Magic Wand Tool to select the space below the trees.

Fill it with white too, and move the layer that contains the trees a bit down until they merge.
Now, add noise to the ground layer and the trees layer with the same settings than before (8,79%, gaussian, monochromatic).

Create another layer and add a moon. Use my Planets Brushes. In this example, the brush "Europa" was used.

The wallpaper has gained a mystery atmosphere. Now use an image that you like. It can be a witch, a pumpkin, or a zombie, like in this case. I have used this image by Sewzi-stock. You can see her work in her gallery of Deviant Art.

Open the image in Photoshop and select using the menu Select/Color Range, and picking the most interesting pixels. For this image, I used a Fuzziness of 148. Copy and paste the selected pixels inside a new layer of the wallpaper.
Turn it to black and white with the menu Image/Adjustments/Desaturate.

Use a soft round brush from the Basic Brushes (that come with Photoshop) to place 2 or 3 red points near the eyes.

Use Filter/Blur/Motion Blur several times. Here I used an angle of 27 degrees and 262 pixels. Move the layer with this glow on top of all the others.

To integrate the different layers better, create a new layer, fill it in black, and add noise (menu Filter/Noise/Add Noise) with these settings: amount 88,08%, gaussian, monochromatic. Use Filter/Blur/Motion Blur to turn it into inclined lines.

In the Layers tab, change this layer mode to "Soft Light", and move it to place this layer just below the layer with the eyes glow.

Through the menu Image/Adjustments/Hue-Saturation turn it red with these settings: +4 +61 +0.

Some final adjustments make the eyes glow layer look better. For example, setting the Opacity to 71%.

To make the title use color #601717 and font Isabella. Rasterize the text, so you can manipulate it (Layer/Rasterize/Type). Apply the filters: Distort/Ripple, Texture/Craquelure, and Brush Strokes/Spatter.
Then, double-click this layer and apply the effects Inner Shadow and Satin.

For downloading the wallpaper click the image

The Flight Before Christmas On DVD
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Curiosities And Origins Of Halloween
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The celebration of Halloween is of Celtic origins, and has more than 2,500 years. It's original name was Samhain, and was celebrated, like nowadays, in October 31th, the last day of the harvest time and the beginning of winter.

The Christian tradition joined the celebration of Samhain with November 1st, the day of All Saints, and the name of Halloween was born ("All Hallows' Eve").

The night of Samhain was considered as the most magical night. The Druids lit numerous fires, and made sacrifices both of animals as human sacrifices. These sacrifices were done in honor of the God of Sun and the God of Death. The people wore terrifying customes made with animal skins, willing to be mistaken with the evil spirits that came to the world of the living in this ceremony.

In that day, divination was practiced, and people jumped through a bonfire, and danced around it to frighten away the evil spirits.

The use of masks was not only practiced in these date. Masks were also used each time that some natural disaster happened, or a flooding or drought, with the will to scare the evil spirits.

The Celts believed that the dead returned in that day to visit their families and come back to their homes where they had lived. This was the day in which the world of the dead joined with the world of the living.

To avoid that the dead ones could disturb their familiars, a candle was lit in each window. A candle for each one of the deceased persons in the family.

October 31 is one of the 4 big rituals of witchcraft of the year. The first one is on February 2nd (Imbolc), that is the day of the healing, of wisdom and of lore.
The second one is on 1st of May (Beltane), when some rituals to stimulate the growing of the harvest were done.
The third is Lughnasa, in August. The festival of Lugus, the God-King, when the matrimony of Lugus with the Earth was celebrated.

Albeit nowadays one of the most representative elements of Halloween is the pumpkin, it's not a symbol of the ancient Samhain. The Irish did not had knowledge of the existence of pumpkins until the first colonizers arrived to America. The pumpkin is an element that belongs to an ancient Irish legend.
The legend says that a man called Jack couldn't go to Heaven when he died but not to Hell either. So Jack started to lurk though the land with no direction. He put a burning charcoal inside a turnip to be able to walk at night. He was called Jack of the Lantern (Jack O'Lantern).
Some time later, it was a candle inside a pumpkin, and symbolizes the souls of those damned to lurk without direction.

The candies have a very ancient origin. The Celts put food and candies to keep the spirits away from the houses. It was a kind of treat ("trick or treat") with the spirits: food in exchange of not frightening the mortals with their presence.

The consumption of apples in this date is also very ancient. Apples were the symbol of good fortune. Apple peelings were used for centuries for divination. There's a game that consists in getting to take an apple with the teeth, and who gets that, it is said that will be very fortunate in love with the person that he/she chooses.
Hazelnuts were also used for divination methods for romance issues.

Other symbols of Halloween are:

The owl, that is said to scare the powers of darkness with its sound. Its image is the symbol of good luck.
Bats, that were supposed to be able to communicate with the dead.
The half-moon, symbol of the magic. To know more about the moon, read this article.
The brooms, that symbolize the liberation of energies.
Black cats. They were worshiped as gods in the ancient pagan cultures. But later, they were used in black magic.
Witches: they're the most "modern" depiction of the ancient druids. A nexus of the union of the magical and the mundane.
The pentagram with a circle around it. It is a symbol of protection that was used in magical rituals as a secure place that marks the limit between the world of Magic and the world of the living.

But although many symbols have arrived to our days, they have little to do with the ancient celebration of the magical day when the circle of the living and the dead opens. Only a day of fun remains, where people make jokes with the paranormal and laugh about all that frightens them, or they simply ignore.

Images (in order): Masks, by Tallkev; Alleycat Bonfire, by Britt Selvitelle; spooOOooky Halloween, by Striatic; Halloween, by Kasia/flickr.

How To Make A Horror Movie DVD Cover
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Final Image Preview:
In this tutorial you will learn how to make a horror or sci-fic movie DVD cover. Beginning with a photo, it will be altered adding elements to create the desired effect.

Click to enlarge

In this case I used a photo of xtwizx-Stock. You can see his work in his gallery of Deviant Art. I'll also use Photoshop, but you can do this tutorial in your favorite application (Gimp, Paint Shop Pro...), following similar steps.

First, select the image of the model using the Magnetic Lasso Tool. If something is left out, use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to add it to the selection.

Create a new document of 369x524 pixels. Remember that if this is for printing it must have a resolution of 200, but as in this case this image will be seen on the web, its resolution is 72.
Next, pass the image of the model to this document dragging with the Move tool.

Select the hood using the Magic Wand Tool, and add or remove pixels that may have not been selected using the Polygonal Lasso Tool. Then, adjust the Color Balance to make the hood more brown, for example using +72 +24 +6. This will make the cloak similar to a priest's.
Adjust Hue/Saturation to 0 -21 -26 to make the tunic darker.

Now, select the face of the model inverting the selection (Select/Inverse) and using the Magic Wand Tool to remove the white background from the selection, so only the face remains selected.

Change the color of the face using Image/Adjust/Hue-Saturation with these values: -165 +9 -16.

Select the eyes of the model using the lasso tools, and copy and paste them into another new layer. Then, use Image/Adjust/Invert to get this effect:

Use a layer effect to add depth to the eyes: double click the layer in the Layers tab, and in the Layer Style dialog select Inner Shadow.

Now, change the Color Balance of the layer that contains the eyes to +100 -1 +2 to turn the eyes red.

Use one of my free sparkle star photoshop brushes and place a start in the pupils to make them brighter. You can also use the same brushes but with black color to add darkness around the eyes.

Add an adjustment layer (Layer/New Adjustment Layer/Levels). Double click this layer to open the Layer Style dialog, and select Satin.

Use another of the sparkle star brushes (Star28) using 4 px as size to paint in the adjustment layer.

Add marks to the face following the facial and muscle features, so it looks this way:

Now create the background of the image. For that, create a new layer and paint it black. Then, apply a Filter/Render/Fibers. Modify the color of the background fibers by using Image/Adjustment/Hue-Saturation with these values: +198 +36 -18 and check the case Colorize.

Apply a new filter on this background: Filter/Render/Lightning Effects, and in Style choose Flashlight from the drop-down menu. This is what you get:

Now only lasts to place the titles. Remember that red is a very interesting color for an horror movie. Other colors for such a cover may be white, purple, or orange. Another option is to use the colors picked from the images of the cover. That is always a good option.

This is the final result: (click to enlarge)

10 Influential Horror Movies & Their Curiosities
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The horror genre is probably the most classical genre of cinema. Lumiere brothers (inventors of cinema) filmed in their first recording,"L'arrivee d'un train", the movement of a train that seemed to hit the watcher. The first people that saw this went out of the auditorium terrified.

Horror films appeal to our most elemental fears, to the unknown, to the monstrous... It provokes us a strong adrenaline surge, and takes us closer to the darkest side of human nature.

Following, I have selected 10 of the most influential movies in the terror genre. All of them are sagas, as a good terror movie never ends at the end of the film.

Tell your favorite horror movie and its plot on the comments

The Exorcist, Based on a novel by William Peter Blatty. The movie won 2 Oscars. It is based on a real event, an exorcism that happened in Washington and that was even studied in the University of Georgetown. Actually, it happened to a boy that was 13 years old.

It is one of the so called damned movies, filled with strange happenings. For example, the starring actress, Mary Ure, died in the night in which the theater version of this film was shown. Her death was explained as a suicide, but it was never clear. During the filming, many actors of the movie suffered serious injuries, and even more, 9 people from the filming crew died in strange circumstances.

The plot of this movie is the following: the daughter of an actress suffers from strange symptoms, that can't be explained by medicine. She tries to cure her by all possible ways, but everything fails. Albeit she's not religious, she asks the help of a priest. The strange events that happen terrify all those around the little girl Megan.

The Omen, It won an Oscar and was starred by Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, and David Warner amongst others.

The Omen is another one of the damned movies. During the filming, its director Richard Donner was persecuted by a guru called Anton La Vey, that was the founder of a Church of Satan. He begged the director to stop the filming, because it would bring many deaths. Richard Donner lost his father, a brother, and his younger daughter in the same month.
The plane in which the scriptwriter of the movie was traveling, was hit by a lighting and this also happened to another airplane in which Gregory Peck was. In one of the scenes appears a zoo in which one of the actors died after being attacked by a lion.

The plot is the following: in an important and wealthy family, grows a sinister child that is always surrounded by strange circumstances. This child is the reincarnation of the Antichrist.

Halloween, In 1978, John Carpenter did a movie that was starred by Jamie Lee Curtis and Donal Pleasance. The film will turn into a classical of terror cinema. A psychopathic assassin starts to kill since he was a child. His obsession is to kill all the members of his family, specially his sister that is played by Jamie Lee Curtis. To know more about the Halloween movies series, read this article: Michael Myers Halloween Movies Special.

Scream, It was directed by Wes Craven, and starred by David Arquette, Neve Campbel, Courtney Cox and Drew Barrymore.
A serial killer is obsessed with terror movies and hides his face behind a mask that becomes the signature of his crimes. His first crime begins with the phone call of a stranger. It seems a joke, but it's not.

A Nightmare On Elm Street, The first movie was shown for first time in 1984, and was starred by Robert Englund, Johnny Depp, Heather Largenkamp...
The most elemental fear is that your nightmares can become real. A group of friends have the same dream with a frightening man with burned face and blades as fingers. Reality turns into a nightmare and the nightmare becomes real. Now, their biggest problem is to avoid falling asleep.

Poltergeist, Steven Spielberg produced and wrote the script of this movie. There were many problems between his director Tobe Hooper and Spielberg himself. Spielberg conceived this movie with a more subtle touch of terror, while Hooper preferred a more bloody movie. Not in vain, Tobe had just finished filming the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The blond little girl that starred this movie died before reaching twelve; the girl that played the role of her sister died strangled by her boyfriend. Both of them are buried in the same cemetery in Los Angeles. In the second part of Poltergeist, 2 actors died: the one that did the role of the sect chief, from a stomach cancer, and Will Sampson, a Native American actor, had a sudden heart disease and died when he was only 53 years old.

The plot is the following: an American family lives in an idyllic neighborhood. Strange paranormal phenomena begin to happen, and their younger daughter disappears. Their perfect lives turn into a real hell, but the love between the members of this family is able to overcome that all.

Psycho, The brilliant director Alfred Hitchcock did this movie that is based on a novel by Robert Bloch. It is considered as one of the masterpieces of the terror genre, and the scene of the shower that was played by Janet Leigh is maybe one of the most repeated scenes of the history of cinema.
The plot: a young secretary commits a robbery and flees to a distant hotel. There, she is welcomed by a very shy boy called Norman that has many secrets to hide.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Directed by Tobe Hooper. Five teenagers decide to visit the tomb of the grandfather of one of them. What was going to be a calm summer evening, turns into the worst of their nightmares. They face a bloodthirsty family.
This movie was censored in many countries. It was filmed in Texas, where it caused a big shock because the people thought that many of the facts in which the movie was based happened in this state.

It is said that the character of Leatherface, that weared a dead skin mask, is based on Ed Gein, a serial killer. If you want to know more about the similarities and differences between them, read this.

Friday The 13th, Directed by Sean S. Cunningham. Starred by Betsy Palmer, Kevin Bacon, Hart Crosby... A group of friends spend their holidays on a summer camp. In this camp, there's the black legend of a boy that died downed in the lagoon.
This is the first movie of the series of Jason the assassin, that always appears with this face covered by a hockey mask.

As a curiosity, this first movie was filmed in a real camp in Blairstown (New Jersey, USA), where there is a plaque that says "Friday the 13th", in memory of the filming of this movie.

Hellraiser, Directed by Clive Barker, which is also a well known horror writer and has made the plot of famous computer games as Undying.

The plot is: Frank Cotton is an unscrupulous man that acquires a strange box. This box has small doors that are the access to other dimensions. He thinks he can dominate the powers of the box, and the powerful beings that inhabit those worlds, but he can't. Twenty years later, his brother and his wife live in the house of Frank, and their problems begin.

Horror Photoshop Brushes For Halloween
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Interview: Gogue, The International Caricaturist
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Gogue is a Spanish caricaturist. Many of you may already know him, as he's the creator of Carlotta Cohen, from New York Movies Magazine. He also makes the banner of The Blush Blade, newspaper that is published in Alaska.
He has collaborated with a long list of publications in USA, like Clever Magazine, American Politics Journal...
He has also done many works related with cinema, for example the logo of Hollywood Shorts Film Festival, caricatures for the worldwide presentation of Terminator 3 in Internet, and different works for American actors and movies.

One of his latests works has been creating all the illustrations, caricatures and Flash animations for Jim Ward, dubbing actor, and radio presenter of one of the most important radio stations of Hollywood (http://www.apocryphalbuttrue.com/).
As a curiosity, the creator of this page is Lisa Coburn, daughter of the legendary actor James Coburn.

It's an honor for me to interview Gogue.

- Gogue, how did you become a caricaturist?

- Since I was a child, it has been easy for me to draw, and since then, I was always doing caricatures.

- When you make a caricature, what do you value most: the facial features, or the personality of the character?

- Both things are important, but when you don't know that person, you must work on the facial features. Because of this, it is always easier to draw someone famous, because you're always seeing them on TV and in the press.

- Did someone enrage against you because he didn't like his caricature? Tell us some anecdote.

- Oh yes, it was a woman. It was exactly this week. It was a work for a business present, and
like always, they send you photos that are a little older and without good resolution. I did it with all my good intention, but this lady and her friends said that she looked too ugly, that she had not such a big double chin... and as you may suppose, I just lose my money but preferred to stop worrying.

- Don't you think that it is harder to make laugh compared to make cry? Why do you think that, in some way, humor is undervalued?

- Sure, it's much harder to make laugh, and imagining myself during 20 years trying to make the readers of my comic strip laugh... I think that we are not valued as much as we're worth; for many people, the creators of humor, comic, cartoons, and caricatures are like daubers, as I am called since some time ago by a publisher of some media. How hard is to make a caricature (Artwork), deform it and make it carry the implicit personality of the person, and that at the same time it matches their appearance perfectly!!!

- Do you have some favorite character?

- Groucho Marx, Alfred Hitchcock, my grandfather Emiliano, etc. etc. I think it is unjust to name someone as favorite, because many people are left without mention. And if we speak of fiction, Batman, of course. I have a Batman figure in my bookcase, that was a present from my son Anxo 2 years ago.

- What is your main source of inspiration?

- The atmosphere that you can breath in my study, surrounded by my creations, my books, my caricatures, my characters in paper, etc, etc.

- What's the best thing of working for Hollywood projects?

- That they value what you do, and your country they DON'T. It's hard to believe, but I am more known and more awarded in USA than here.

- What other drawers inspired you to create your own style?

- You can learn things, tricks, from everyone, but my style is my own and I created it at my will. I just have a doubt: WHY DO THEY CHOOSE ME TO MAKE THE COVER OF ONE OF THE BEST BASEBALL PLAYERS OF AMERICA: "RYAN HOWARD THE KING OF THE SWING" in 2007, when there are thousands and thousands of caricaturists in the world?

- What caricatures do you prefer to do: your own characters, politicians, actors...? And why?

- I have to adapt myself to what the different media in which I work ask me to do, but I'm a fanatic of cinema. I prefer the world of cinema.

- Finally, thank you for giving me this interview, and a final question... what other projects do you have for the future?

- I have many projects, but my dream is to take my characters to animation movies. It seems that it will be the way to go... and in some days I'll be publishing my second cover for the Eastside Sun Magazine, whose head offices in Seattle and is published in all the West Coast of the United States.

All the caricatures were courtesy of Gogue (www.goguetoons.com), except the first one that is by Robert Sundini.