I‘ve long been obsessed with the bizarrely over-the-top cover art for 1950s men’s “adventure” magazines, in which muscular, often shirtless men face off against an assortment of unlikely animal enemies — from armies of “giant turtles” to squads of flying squirrels. (You can find an assortment of notable covers here.)
More recently, I’ve become obsessed with Google’s Deep Dream software, which can turn any picture you toss at it into a creepy acid nightmare filled with strange Dogslug creatures and a strange surplus of eyes.
And now that I’ve found a handy web interface for the Deep Dream software, I decided to combine these two obsessions into one. The results were, well, interesting.
@Pandapool
Woodring is so ridiculously talented that his shaded charcoal pieces and paintings, both oils and water colors, are amazing even though his main focus is his ink pen comic work. His inked originals are gorgeous, the quality of his line work is off the charts and comparable to the godlike Moebius, aka Jean Giraud. (Again, I’m a slobbering super fan.)
http://www.jimwoodring.com/artwork/gallery/
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UJ4BEG8tPqw/Ti-B3y8-VdI/AAAAAAAAABk/Gd3g6d7u58I/s1600/Weathercraft+Jim+Woodring+Art.jpg
The charcoal works remind me of that piece from Monkey Bone…which is likely intentional since his wiki page mentions dreams being a central theme of his.
I seriously need my room papered in this shit. This needs to be the first and last thing I see in the morning and night always.
Yeah, looking more and more at his work, you can definitely see he influenced the art of Monkeybone. Which I probably already knew but forgot because I haven’t watched the commentary or looked at any of the special features of Monkeybone for a long time.
@Pandapool
I’ve never seen Monkeybone but I’m happy to turn you on to the awesomeness of Woodring. He’s one of the greats.
Dogs and eyeballs.
Dogs…and eyeballs.
Dogs and eyeballs…EVERYWHERE!
@brooked
Monkeybone is an underrated movie that came out in 2001 and a victim of bad editing choices. It’s a comedy about a comatose man that has a combination of practical effects, puppetry and stop-motion animation with mild CGI. It stars Brendan Fraser and was directed by Henry Selick, who also directed Coraline, James and the Giant Peach and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
It has very mixed reviews but it’s one of my favorite movies. The pacing is messed up and some parts don’t make sense, but looking at all the deleted scenes, you can definitely see it had a more coherent plot before someone cut it all up to save ten minutes.
There’s some potty, sex and iffy humor which aren’t the highest point of the movie. The highests points would be the parts in Downtown and near the end with some pretty darkly humorous chase scene.
I recommend it, especially if you’re a big fan of surrealist settings, puppetry and practical effects.
Also that painting I was talking about was actually Mark Ryden inspired or one of his actual paintings.
@brooked and @pandapool
When I was 15 or so I was really into Woodring and my dad ordered some stuff directly from him for my birthday; Woodring threw in some free stuff and added a hand-drawn card made out to me. So, there you go: gifted, visionary artist AND really nice guy.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/colbert-jaw-drop.gif
WHY DO THEY PUT DOGS EVERYWHERE
Cause I didn’t need to sleep tonight. Huddling under a blanket in the fetal position is sooooooo much more restful. ????
So couple of days ago I was thinking… Deep Dream uses an image database to create these fever dreams, right? (Which is why there are so much dogginess.)
What if I made a local install, and gave it an image database of my own?
…I confess that the first thought was to outdo Giger himself when it comes to umm peniscapes.
“Slutty women are destroying our society! We need to inflict our morality on those evil hussies!”
“____is where you can find the best sluts!”
“Those “other” people are doing these perverted evil things. We condemn them…so do you wanna hear titillating fanfiction about it?””
All in the same magazine!
My god, this is the evolutionary ancestor of the PUA and PUAhate feud.
This is pre manosphere schism.
I feel like an archaeologist finding a temple dedicated to shit. Shit everywhere.
Well, that’s one way to get people especially kids away from drugs.
I occasionally wonder if this is gonna end up the way of BLIT.
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm
(Drat, sorry about the rapid-post — I forgot to add that the story deals with racial hatred as well, just a heads-up.)
Dog bites mandelbrot?
Katz, use the link in this post; the site I’m using gets results back to you in 10-30 seconds, and you can use your choice of filters. (On all mine, I ran the images through several different filters, often more than once per filter.)
Pandapool, I’m also a fan of Monkeybone. It has problems, obviously, but the good stuff in it is great. Chris Kattan is hilarious.
skiriki, yes, you can do all of that. See Reddit’s deep dream subreddit for instructions on how to install on your system. My brother (Alpha von Carousel) has been doing some using his own image databases.
I will trust whatever movie you recommend to watch, David. This is one of the most intimate things someone can do with another. Treasure this trust.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/dr-evil-crying1.gif
So what happens if you put one of Arcimboldo’s paintings (this, for instance: http://www.abcgallery.com/A/arcimboldo/arcimboldo8.html) through Deep Dream?
David,
I found a couple of very offensive sites if you want to look at them.
http://www.donotlink.com/fx8z
http://www.donotlink.com/b10l
Jb-http://www.donotlink.com/framed?43259
And here are new avfm memes
http://www.donotlink.com/fx98
Jb
http://www.donotlink.com/framed?43259
There we go.
The one thing I don’t like about Do Not Link is that it doesn’t show what the original URL is in the links. I am curious but afraid.
@Rabid Rabbit
Omigod, I LOVE Giuseppe Arcimboldo! He’s considered the first ever surrealist. And he has such GOOD SHADING. I AM A SUCKER FOR GOOD SHADING.
It’s like a window straight into the id…of idiocy.
But I do kind of like the way it all comes out dogs and eyeballs with the help of this software…because really, the best way to view it all IS through a surrealist/absurdist lens.