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thomastapir In reply to Boverisuchus [2012-08-08 08:53:47 +0000 UTC]

You know, it's a damn good question, and something I've often pondered myself...To me it seems an issue of elucidating the "essence" of something, what makes it attractive or appealing at the most reductionist, mimimalist level--defining those specific elements or attributes, and then multiplying or exaggerating or accentuating them to concentrate or compound that appeal, if that makes sense. So looking back at the drawing here and what makes it "masculine," I'd guess you are responding to the sort of ropy, knotted, hyptertrophied muscle elements, and how they mesh and integrate in an angular way. I mean, to me that would be the essence of "the masculine," as opposed to the sort of soft, voluptuous, voluminous, bulbous, "blubbly" curvilinear forms that appeal to me (sexually, at least) as the essence of "the feminine." But I think this also raises issues of, How far can you reduce or refine something like that before it loses its appeal, its "sex appeal" in this case? And how far can you exaggerate it before it becomes grotesque...? I'm sure myriad psychological studies have been done on this kind of thing, but it still fascinates me. And obviously different people have different liminal threshholds for "attractive" versus "repulsive," as well--our own personal "uncanny valleys," I guess.

AND THEN WE HAVE TEH FURRIES.


Seriously though, have you checked out Jason Hopkins?
[link]
I think his stuff touches on a lot of these same issues...I'd be curious to hear how you respond to it on an aesthetic/emotional level.

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Boverisuchus In reply to thomastapir [2012-08-08 09:41:03 +0000 UTC]

For me, the artist you linked to really tends to strike the uncanny-valley, or perhaps even beyond it, where the forms become almost wholly new entities, the material being flesh, but the being happening to be something not-so-human, perhaps moreso mechanical or architectural.

As to the masculine, my view tends to be alpha-male vs beta-male, as far as the ultimate sexual ideal. I have afew fetishes which only aggravate this. Larger muscles and other masculine parts tend to be the ideal as far as I go, and certainly, the angular nature of musculature is a big part of the appeal. You pretty much hit the nail on the head when you said about knotted musculature and such things, that does make it very masculine. I look at photomanipulations of athletes and models sometimes, created for a fetishistic purpose, and there seems to be a line that separates the ideal from the grotesque. Big muscles and physiques, but not "too big", if it gets disproportionate too much, it loses its appeal. It doesnt even have to be a modified image, I look at some bodybuilders and I have no attraction, because they appear way too pumped and vascular, but others hit the nail on the head, so to speak.

On-top of this, I have a fetish/disrder known as "macrophilia" which involves attraction to the impossible scale differences of giants etc. The best I can put as a media example, for straight people of this persuasion anyhow, is films like "Attack of the 50ft Woman". So, this kind of exacerbates the whole situation, everything is already very statuesqe and hypermasculine anyhow, then with all this, it becomes, probably, rather grotesque to any other observer. The result is very sort of alpha-male meets godzilla, it's all very strange. I don't really expect others to understand. Needless to say, I get frustrated by the fact that speculative/fantasy giants seem to not resonate with these feelings at all, the hulk, or grendel, or any remotely feasible giant is far too wide and chunky, more equally gorilla and sumo-wrestler, as well as bodybuilder. That is really where it crosses overt into unnatrcativeness for me. The closest I have seen in fiction to my ideal would be HG WELLS' "Food of the Gods", where everything is larger in proportion, you could even say, handsome. My typical ideal as far as all that goes is essentially any well-made male model, simply scaled beyond all reasonable sizes.

Sorry if this is too much to stomach, but explaining what I find sexually "ideal" is rather complicated...

Subsequently, I'm happy to hear, frpom what you said, that you like women with abit of "volume", and not the dreadful stick-insect type-women that todays stereotypical straight-male seems to idolise. When I was studying drawing in college, all our female models were generously proportioned, fitting the classical mould rather nicely.

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thomastapir In reply to Boverisuchus [2012-08-09 06:50:59 +0000 UTC]

Quoting at length here:

...there seems to be a line that separates the ideal from the grotesque. Big muscles and physiques, but not "too big", if it gets disproportionate too much, it loses its appeal. It doesn't even have to be a modified image, I look at some bodybuilders and I have no attraction, because they appear way too pumped and vascular...

This seems to be a very common reaction, in my experience...I'm sure there are (straight) women out there who just wet their pants over those really hypertrophied bodybuilders, for example, but I have yet to meet one. Most women I've talked with about it have expressed frank disgust for some of the really over-the-top stuff you see in weightlifting mags. For me I think there's a certain aesthetic appeal in it up to a point, more because of my "aesthetic fetishism" for extremes of human body form as related to high gravity environments ([link] )--but even if I were attracted to men sexually I still don't think I would find that kind of thing "erotic." For me there's a kind of crucial aesthetic balance between the accentuation or exaggeration of mass and the...hmm, the defining aesthetics of the human form, the elegance of the human form whether it's male or female, and now that I think about it, of animal forms as well (like just having a purely aesthetic preference for the lean, angular "Greg Paul" dinos versus the really "buff," muscular dinos). In those bodybuilder doods for example, I think for me it's the point where there's a loss of functional mobility due to the really hypertrophied somatoform--the old SNL joke about "Hans and Franz." Perhaps even the loss of the angularity aspect, the transition into nothing but rounded muscular forms. That, to me, disrupts the aesthetic appeal.

From a heterosexual perspective, or from the POV of sex appeal, I think I have a similar response to some of the really exaggerated stuff you see done with female forms in a lot of this fetishist manga art--the chicks with GIGANTIC distended stomachs, the giant boobs, etc. Again, deforming that sort of "bell curve" balance of exaggerated secondary sex characteristics versus grace, elegance, functionality and mobility. It's interesting to me in light of what you noted about the lack of heterosexual appeal in "stick insect" women (which sends me in all kinds of creative directions btw, lol!)--it's a trend I find mystifying (the attraction to or idealization of that kind of form) in the sense that the secondary sex characteristics are eliminated, so where's the sex appeal...? In that case I have to put it down more to a sociocultural construct, something that people are psychologically and socially indoctrinated into rather than a genuine "hardwired" response. But I guess that opens up the whole debate about nature versus nurture and cultural and personal conditioning in those kinds of responses.

On-top of this, I have a fetish/disorder known as "macrophilia" which involves attraction to the impossible scale differences of giants etc.

Huh, that's interesting...You know, it seems a little harsh to me to characterize that as a "disorder"--I mean, I guess I think of a disorder as something that causes harm to others or impacts one's own quality of life. If it's just a fetish I guess it is what it is, is how I look at it. But it does make me curious about the origin or nature of fixations like that, I mean in the literal clinical sense of what kind of native urge that attraction emerges from, what "button" it "pushes" so to speak. It's interesting to me here that even in your fetish for gigantism/giantism, the skewed proportions still turn you off. So it's something about the proportional but exaggerated scale...Hm hm hm. Fascinating stuff...Zentran/Meltran! XD

Gah, I wish I'd responded to this earlier, what I wanted to say was much more coherent last night but I didn't get to bed until 5 AM as it was and had to be up at 9 and I didn't have time for a lengthier response at work. So apologies for that, I hope the above response makes some kind of sense! : p

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Boverisuchus In reply to thomastapir [2012-08-09 07:38:41 +0000 UTC]

I guess, attraction or lack-of towards overly large physiques may have a biological or instinctual root. I mean, a well proportioned muscular male would be equally good at running, throwing, grappling, but overly muscular, as far as I've heard, cannot run as well as a more typical physique.

You're right, it's not neccessarily a "disorder", I just heard one person use that word in a lecture. You hit the nail on the head with the whole Zentraedi thing, I bought the dvd set of that show for the mian reason that it has giants as part of its theme. But yes, it has to be proportional, you could put it, in photoshop terms, as using the "scale" option while holding the shift key, no distortion other than scale. I have read in one place, that macrophilia is typified by the person having feelings of inadequacy and lack of confidence, that this somehow reflects upon the fetish, diminution in imagined size of the person due to diminished sucess or confidence in the real world.

Interestingly, there is one guy who has his own blog and website, who has made it his goal to condition the human race to develop towards a stature of 50 cm, in order to prevent overpopulation and ecological disaster. This is very interesting of course, and he references lots of shrink and giant related media. But for me, this isnt the ideal situation, everybody being the same size, as there would be no scale differences. Still, it's fascinating stuff, he goes on about how a chicken would equal an ostritch, to a 50cm tall man, and thusly a rabbit or guinea pig would equal a cow. My worry would be how at the mercy of nature such a small human would be, dogs and cats and monkeys would be our physical better, scary.

Also, when you said stick-insect women and spec-zoology, all I could think were praying-mantis femme fatales, and spousal cannibalism.

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thomastapir In reply to The-Mirrorball-Man [2011-03-09 02:38:55 +0000 UTC]

Thanks very much, Julien, that means a lot to me.

OH!--I wanted to ask you, when can we expect a new Life in Flux?? The last three strips or so may be my favorite you've ever done...Gah, I'm experiencing withdrawal symptoms!!

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The-Mirrorball-Man In reply to thomastapir [2011-03-09 03:56:16 +0000 UTC]

Hehe. It's very flattering. Flux is back next monday. I just needed to try something different for a while.

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thomastapir In reply to The-Mirrorball-Man [2011-03-09 05:26:23 +0000 UTC]

Oh good! I'll mark it on my calendar.

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thomastapir In reply to Sparklelord [2011-03-09 01:13:19 +0000 UTC]

Never played it! I was afraid the title would make people think of Battletech ([link] ).

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thomastapir In reply to Rob-Cavanna [2011-03-06 02:01:46 +0000 UTC]

Oh, I just know you'll enjoy it! Yeah, it's packed to the gills (sometimes literally!) with all kinds of squirmy biotech craziness.

Hah, I tend to post a lot of rough 'n sketchy stuff to my Scrapbook! Those were all Scrapped drawings, so that might be why you missed them.

Thanks, Rob!

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Rob-Cavanna In reply to thomastapir [2011-03-07 00:54:03 +0000 UTC]

Scrap viewing toggle... ON!!! Jeez, I hate forgetting to do that.

Finished that Alita LO #13. Wow. It was very very... squishy. And lazery and bio-phantasmagoric. And very, uh... SPACE KARATEEEEEEE -TORADO KICK!!!
There were times I wanted to laugh out loud. My favorite was the wolf guy in a moment of high pitched drama howling to heaven the oh so poignant line: "I CAN"T EAT HER!"

There were some great footnotes concerning the bio-babble tho. Cone snails? Pretty cool.

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thomastapir In reply to Rob-Cavanna [2011-03-08 03:10:31 +0000 UTC]

re: My favorite was the wolf guy in a moment of high pitched drama howling to heaven the oh so poignant line: "I CAN"T EAT HER!"

Yeah, dontcha hate it when that happens?!

re: There were some great footnotes concerning the bio-babble tho. Cone snails? Pretty cool.

No doubt! I think he hit just about every single one of my favorite "evolutionary arms race" adaptations, with the possible exception of bombardier beetle steam.

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thomastapir In reply to BjornFeuer [2011-03-06 01:59:31 +0000 UTC]

WHOAH, now THAT's a cool idea! Yeah, that's a great image, and consistent with the "Deathworlder" feel of this guy...I love it! Maybe that's what these bodies are designed for, to serve as payload lifters or ordnance loaders on high-gravity worlds, or even as pack mules to move weapons and materiele overland into otherwise inaccessible areas. An alternative to (mechanically) powered exoskeletons, perhaps...Definitely fits with my image of a "myometric' rather than "cybernetic" technology.

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thomastapir In reply to DSil [2011-03-05 21:36:05 +0000 UTC]

It very well could be! The original idea (derived from a dream) was that the arm IS a gun. The hunchback "bulge" was actually going to be a capacitor bank charged from electric-fish-style current-generating cells...These would power the arm's biological laser or flechette gun. I just couldn't get the gun part to work when I was drawing this up, so I decided to go with another old idea, that of the scything asymmetrical mantis arm.

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DSil In reply to thomastapir [2011-03-07 20:50:18 +0000 UTC]

Far out, man.

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thomastapir In reply to whalewithlegs [2011-03-05 19:36:27 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, that actually fits perfectly, I think! There's a certain "vibe" I sometimes find in electronic music--I think it's going too far to call it a "genre" or a "movement," and I haven't really seen anybody else define it as such--that I really like, and which I think of as "tropical techno." It's something I associate with the combination of exotic environments and high technology inherent in this kind of science fiction. [link] would be a good example of what I'm talking about, and that taelx piece also works perfectly.

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whalewithlegs In reply to thomastapir [2011-03-06 03:10:45 +0000 UTC]

You know, Tom, I think I might have a partial answer for you: listening to these two songs together, it sounds to me like they both contain a lot of synthetic sounds. I say that especially because the sample you sent me strikes me as 'early' electronic music, and trying to figure out why that was, I realized that the sound belongs to a very specific category of what I think of as 'space documentary music' or maybe earlier Dr. Who sound music [link]

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thomastapir In reply to whalewithlegs [2011-03-09 06:36:24 +0000 UTC]

--Also, VIDEO GAME MUSIC:
Keyboard rendition of the C64 Boulder Dash theme:
[link]
The crazy pseudo-beatbox intro music for the C64 version of Arkanoid (did I ever mention that C64 had an 8-octave range?!):
[link]
Risky Woods, Stage 8, Sega Genesis:
[link]

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whalewithlegs In reply to thomastapir [2011-03-13 13:04:01 +0000 UTC]

Hmm, listening to these, it seems kind of like you;re thinking of something that's a mix between calypso and electronica ...

I think it's a little too beat-driven, but Streets of Rage? [link] [link]

I think, last comment, when I was talking about a high pitch I meant something like a Trumpet or French Horn call ... there's a bit of an electronic theme that could be otherwise played by a french horn, or maybe like the flute in Jethro Tull, sometimes [link]

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thomastapir In reply to whalewithlegs [2011-03-08 06:04:22 +0000 UTC]

Oh man, you NAILED it....That's it, EXACTLY. It's actually a massive reassurance, validation almost, to hear you define it in those terms, because that was my own suspicion, but I'm so ignorant about this kind of music that I wasn't sure my intuition was on target here. Yeah, it's that primitive electronic stuff I like, but it's a very specific aspect of it that appeals to me, and I've found it well nigh impossible to pin down. The best way I can describe it is these weird sort of arpeggiated electronic keyboard sounds, almost like Mannheim Steamroller--but not exactly. And I'm not sure where that falls into the whole electronic/techno genre as a specific subset (if it does). I'm haunted by stuff I heard when I was growing up, and still hear on the radio every once in a great while, like

Harold Faltermeyer, Axel F: [link]
Herbie Hancock, Rock It: [link]

--But even more than that, fragments of songs...These are the best examples I can pin down, for whatever they're worth:

The Styx, Fooling Yourself - The whole damn song, really!, but intro/recurring arpeggio motif plus 3:10 - 3:50 especially:
[link]
The Who, Teenage Wasteland - Again, the whole song, but especially the instrumental (organ) part from 3:30 onward:
[link]
Blue Oyster Cult, Black Blade (all about Elric, with lyrics by Michael Moorcock!) - 4:50 onward (you have to listen close to hear the keyboard ostinato here, or maybe it's just my crappy speakers):
[link]

--In terms of that link I sent you earlier, the one that started this whole discussion ([link] ), it would be 1:15 - 2:20 or so, and thence onward up to 3:25 or so (though I love, beyond belief, everything after that!). Again, that layered, chorus-y, arpeggiated stuff--that's what really snags me in the gut.

Here's another one:
[link]
This one isn't exact fit, but in terms of the primitive electronic arpeggios paired with that tribal beat, THAT's exactly what I'm looking for. It makes me feel like I'm in some posthuman version of Dubai's Palm Island, or a Eugene Tsui painting! This kind of music, or this particular motif therein, is something that grabs me at a visceral, almost archetypal level in the same way that metal does, though obviously in a different way.

Man, probably went overboard with this one...Anyway, I certainly don't expect you to resolve this problem or mystery for me, but any insight or suggestions you might have would be greatly appreciated!

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whalewithlegs In reply to thomastapir [2011-03-13 12:47:26 +0000 UTC]

I forgot to mention it when I replied first, but that was another thing about this music: it seems like it's all made on the synthesizer, that most ancient of Japanese instruments

Actually, what made me think of this in the first place was remembering a 'Making of' segment from a Ghost in the Shell DVD I had seen years back .... I remembered one of the guys saying that they cad created some totally synthetic sounds for the movie, sounds generated by the computer. I wish I could find a link to it, so you could hear what I'm talking about!

Man, I know what you mean about a lot of this kind of music ... there's a certain kind of noise that I think of as 'space noise' that I've heard a lot as a kid. One feature I think common to the sound is a lack of bass ... another is that the pitch tends to rise very fast, or just the presence of a really high pitch frequently.

Here, go to ~taelmx's (Kazuna) website: [link] ---> click on music and listen to 'Square Enix Demo 3' ... it's again not exactly what I think fits. But tell me if you think anything in it matches what you're thinking of, or if it's not really a good fit.

Also, you might ask Kazuna to look at this question for you ... she might be able to pinpoint a genre or sound that you're thinking of!

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thomastapir In reply to commander-salamander [2011-03-05 19:03:11 +0000 UTC]

It would certainly revolutionize the slasher-and-tentacle-porn film industry!
[link]
Geisha dance...Geisha wild...GEISHA CHAINSAW!!

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commander-salamander In reply to thomastapir [2011-03-06 05:56:05 +0000 UTC]

I have heard of that engineers one actually. Are they not deliciously mad? I think its the awesomely weird mythology.

FRIED SHRIMP!

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thomastapir In reply to M0AI [2011-03-05 19:58:40 +0000 UTC]

Thanks man, I really appreciate that! I've tried to avoid leaning on you too much in an artistic sense because I know how busy you are and I suspect that you probably have a lot of people looking to you for advice and mentoring. But since you've been kind enough to make the offer, I may very well take you up on it in the future. Right now I'm just trying to pin down the techniques or mechanisms that trigger the cognitive shift into the right "mode" where I'm able to draw successfully. Focusing on gesture and rhythm is a big factor, and recently I've been working on integrating those elements with an attention to mass and volume.

That theme of "downloaded consciousness" is something I've seen many different places, and I always find it fascinating! Probably my favorite fictional take on it was in the book Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. A brutally, even gratuitously violent novel, but filled with compelling ideas and imagery.

Yeah, Tetsuo, totally! This particular design was also heavily derived from a GE soldier seen in a dream, where I was fascinated as much by the modified clothing he wore to accommodate his distorted anatomy as I was by the "soldier" himself. The bulky, asymmetric upper body anatomy was probably inspired at least partially by some of Koba's cyborgs ([link] ), as well as the Elmendine from Dragon's Heaven ([link] ), the "Phantoms" from Final Fantasy: Spirits Within ([link] ), and, you know, pretty much every grotesquely mutated monstrosity ever seen in anime bio-porn. (I think I may have coined a new term there, woo-hoo!)

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