My independent study is completely finished. Regarding one of my pieces, my professor suggested I write a paragraph about it, in order to fully grasp what I did and what I want to communicate with it. I decided it may be a good idea to do it for all 5 of the pieces, especially since they're so remarkably different from one another. So, um, here goes nothing.

In the beginning, I just said "I want to do some mixed media, weird, biomechanical stuff." Which was really way off, when I look at what I created. What I should've said is something more along the lines of mashing technology with the human form, a study of how it effects us now and how it possibly will in the future. Or I could've just said "I want to rip off Videodrome and other sci fi body horror films." I don't know.

Sci fi. Body horror. Flesh meeting circuits. Things like that. A vague, weak basis, I should've put more thought into it, but it's too late for that. Here we go.

HIS SCREAMS TURNED TO RUST

This was the very first piece I did, and I churned it out pretty quickly. Primary influences? A self-portrait by my friend Simon Royalty and Tetsuo the Iron Man. This is a self-portrait, but I feel no personal connection with it. It's a man undergoing a hallucinogenic transformation, his body rebelling against him and changing. Circuitry through his skin, rust in his hair. The source? God, I don't know. Nanobots? Drugs? Videodrome? That's not the point. The point here is the emotional response to what's happening, real or not.

THE BURDEN OF ATLAS

Taking a turn for the mythological here. Atlas holds the Earth, as we all know, but Earth changes over time, and therefore so does Atlas. It's not a very pretty change, either. Atlas himself is hand-painted, acrylic paint on canvas, and everything else was done with Photoshop. That alone makes up a part of what this is about, organic versus the inorganic. Also, the idea of technology as more of a burden than anything else on us. I've also wanted to depict a guy with cables and stuff protruding from his stomach for a LONG time. Yes.

THE PRICE OF PLEASURE

...Is not a very good title, but I couldn't really think of another that served a dual purpose. Definitely the most extreme of all of these, erotic and disturbing at once. Aside from that, it's an exploration of what lengths people will go through, what they'll do to their bodies, in order to experience pleasure of any kind. And maybe a comment on body modification fanatics. Those people terrify me.

"I WANT MY SON BACK."

You know how Astro Boy was created by Dr. Tenma to replace his dead son? Same idea that I HAD to make evident in the title, only instead of building a robot, we're growing a new one. Harder, better, faster, stronger. We have the technolo- oh, forget it, you get the idea. Cyborg fetus.

THE GOOD DOCTOR

Originally my second piece, and a rather different one at that. But that one sucked, so I revised it into this in a pretty short span of time. I've been looking at a lot of work by Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, the French comics artist who helped launch Heavy Metal magazine. His work is strange and ambiguous under most circumstances, so that's precisely what I went for here. Something's going on, you're not sure what, and title is just a minor clue. And the background is heavily inspired by the city in Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

And there you have it. My independent study work. My brain is fried now, but there's more to do. FINALS ARE NEXT WEEK.

[Brett]