Tag Archives: weird art

Longdogs and Other Tripods We Have Known

November 24, 2015 greydogtales 2 Comments

For your mid-week pictorial pleasure, dear listeners, we have a beautiful three-legged longdog, John Christopher‘s The Tripods trilogy, H G Wells and an Edwardian artist from Brazil. All good things come in threes, except possibly ravening metal war-machines from Mars. They can be annoying.

Last week we were talking about rescue centres and Lurcher SOS, which reminded me of my plan for a gallery to show off these magnificent beasts. I was pottering on the Lurcher Link forum a while ago, and a member there, Michaela, kindly sent us some marvellous pictures of her three-legged Nicky, a saluki x greyhound and thus a true longdog. Proof that you don’t need four legs to be a wild rover. Here’s just a few shots of Nicky…

Three-legged lurchers and longdogs surprise some people with their ability to match any four-legs, and you’d be amazed at their speed and agility. Thanks again for those, Michaela.

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Tripods don’t end there. It seemed wasteful to show off Nicky and not to use the opportunity to go weird. We needed two other, far stranger (and less licky) examples of tripods to complete the article. As we’re generally being arty at the moment, our second focus is on the artist Henrique Alvim Correa.

Correa was born in Brazil in 1876, but his family moved to France when he was a teenager, and he eventually settled in Belgium. His relevance to greydogtales, apart from being a neat artist, is that he illustrated the 1906 Belgian edition of H G Wells‘ War of the Worlds. Despite the various re-imaginings of Wells’ tripods, and the filmed versions, Correa’s pictures should be the iconic ones, capturing the feel of the age so well just nine years after the book’s publication.

(On a personal note, I found some of the acting in the 2005 Spielberg film too annoying to enjoy the images and special effects fully. I had to re-watch the 1953 version with Gene Barry to cheer myself up again.)

Apparently Correa himself initiated the idea after reading War of the Worlds, and came to the UK with his drawings to show to H G Wells. Wells loved them and Correa was asked to illustrate the special illustrated edition being planned by Vandamme, the Belgian publishers, which he did. Sadly Correa had tuberculosis and died only four years later, in 1910.

Here are a few of the brilliant Correa illustrations to enjoy:

As soon as I’d written the above, as usually happens, I discovered the monsterbrains site which has loads more Correa art on display. Aeron Alfrey of monsterbrains also creates his own unique imagery inspired by the macabre, grotesque and monstrous. It’s well worth a visit to browse the other weird art there:

correa at monsterbrains

I was going to resist, but it proved impossible not to mention Jeff Wayne‘s War of the Worlds musical/narrative version after looking at the Correa drawing of the Thunderchild. That song always sends shivers up my spine (and I prefer this to Spielberg’s, as well. Sorry, Steve).

The third piece today had to be a mention of the late John Christopher and The Tripods. And it’s a trilogy. Three time three times three. That’s practically nine, the number of worlds in Norse mythology, and a lucky number in Chinese associated with the dragon. Where am I? This isn’t my arm…

John Christopher. Or Samuel Youd, actually, and he only died three years ago. Author of The Death of Grass (1956) and The World in Winter (1962), two excellent early post-apocalyptic novels from when the Brits did that kind of thing rather well. We’re not here for the writing today, though, but a brief mention of the artistic interpretations.

I loved The Tripods when I was young. The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire. My editions are, predictably, the 1967 Knight publications from the UK, not any of these modern fancy ones. Not quite sure what the artist was on.

The most notable graphic adaptation of The Tripods is in Boys’ Life magazine, which serialized all three books in the eighties. The artist was Frank Bolle, an American who drew decades worth of comic strips for young people, did book covers and a whole lot more.

And thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you can find a large graphic resource of Bolle’s Tripods work by following the link below to The Haunted Closet blog:

the haunted closet: boys life

In 1985, just before the Bolle version of the three novels for Boy’s Life finished, the BBC produced comic strip versions of their own. These were not direct adaptations, though, and had the protagonists veering off on other adventures which were not in the original books. The artists this time was John Burns, but there was no resolution because in the end the BBC dropped the Junior Television Magazine in which they were appearing.

Hmm, doughboy Masters? Anyway, for many older listeners, their thought will be of the televised Tripods from the BBC and the Australian Seven Network. They only managed to adapt the first two books, in 1984 and 1985, but it was a good try – and they did have proper tripods, the Masters, rather than men in rubber suits.

If you check out this video link, you can skip to about minute 6 to see the tripods themselves.

And there you have it – three tripods. Lots more could be said, but we’re out of time again.

More longdogs and lurchers, weird art and artist interviews coming up, and we’ll be joined by a couple of great authors in December. Plus the nice people at the M R James Appreciation Group have suggested some excellent ideas for neglected supernatural/strange authors to cover over the next couple of months – E Nesbit, A N L Munby, Fitz-James O’Brien, H Russell Wakefield… oh dear. Work to do, then.

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Mansfield Dark & Hans Christian Andersen: The Shadow out of Denmark

November 15, 2015 greydogtales Leave a comment

or Who Cut up My Newspaper into Scary Things

It’s weird art time again, so the burning questions of the day are quite obvious: Who was Etienne de Silhouette? What has he to do with Hans Christian Andersen, and why are we interviewing those excellent scary film-makers Mansfield Dark at the same time?

I’d better start at the beginning. Old Etienne de Silhouette was an 18th century finance manager in France. Being a bit of a cheapskate, things done as inexpensively as possible became known as a la silhouette. And because cutting little profiles and shapes out of paper was also inexpensive, they became known as etiennettes. No, I’m lying again. Obviously they were called silhouettes.

Scherenschnitte, the German art of scissor cutting, was an accomplishment of the 19th century Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. The 1952 film with Danny Kaye is – cough – not about the real Andersen. He was a rather odd fellow who had hopeless, interminably long love affairs with men and women, mostly unconsummated, and drove Dickens mad after overstaying his welcome in London. In between writing books, poems and fairy tales, Anderson hacked away producing cut-outs and… silhouettes (see?).

We can’t recommend de Silhouette book-keeping ledgers as a good read, but we did enjoy Tiina Nunnally‘s 2005 translation of the fairy tales. This collection also includes some of Andersen’s later and darker tales, plus a detailed biography and many examples of his paper-cutting.

fairy tales (trans. nunnally)

But this is greydogtales, obsessed with hounds, and so our favourite Andersen tale is The Tinderbox, with the three dogs who have eyes as big as tea cups, then mill wheels, then round towers. We have long meant to do a feature on the darkness of early fairy tales – as a quick example, we should point out that even in Andersen’s story, the soldier is about to be hanged when he summons the three dogs, who help him against the judge and council by “flinging them high into the air so they fell back down and were crushed to bits.” Not a happy ending for some.

Rather curiously, while picking out the illo for this bit, we found out that John Coulthart, an artist we’ll be featuring later in our weird art run, also wrote a piece on The Tinderbox some time ago, with some more classic illustrations:

feuilleton: the tinderbox

Which leads us to Mansfield Dark, with their silhouette animation and puppetry films. Richard and Daniel Mansfield are two guys who produce a wide range of short films, from out-and-out horror, through creepy fairytales and onwards into mad live-action spoofs.

Rather than a long-winded greydogtales commentary, we are delighted to have an exclusive interview with Richard Mansfield.

greydog: Welcome! We were particularly keen to have your participation in our weird art series because of your unusual range of films, which may not be familiar to many of our listeners.

richard: Thank you for having me, it’s a pleasure!

greydog: The obvious connection to our abiding interest in classic horror is your recent adaptation of Count Magnus. Tell us something about the reason for choosing that particular M R James story.

richard: I had adapted two classic ghost stories into shadow films and I always had my eye on an M R James adaptation. I got in touch with the M R James Appreciation Society on Facebook and asked what story they would like to see adapted and Count Magnus was top of the list. It wasn’t a story I was familiar with so it was great to get to know it better and see the potential for an engaging film. All of the Count’s backstory is fantastic and lends itself perfectly to shadows and the phantasmagorical effects that are possible with silhouettes.

greydog: We would have to describe your range as eclectic, given your use of live-action madness, romance, puppetry and animation. Was this deliberately planned to produce a diverse portfolio, or do you just wake up and go for whatever springs to mind?

richard: I’ve had no great plan in mind other than to be free to make whatever I feel like. A lot of my early work was about teaching myself how to make films. I’ve never wanted to limit myself to one particular thing but I can see themes that have been present in my work since the beginning. I saw Daniel making his live-action films and I wanted to do it myself and I made ‘The Mothman Curse’. I’ve recently started making shadow films again and an E F Benson cartoon ghost story animated on an iPad. It’s been lovely to return to making shorts after a few years of features.

greydog: We know that Mansfield Dark is primarily a two-man show. Is the work divided equally between you as it comes, or does each of you have a specific creative or production role?

richard: Daniel and I both share a love of film and TV. We’ve both made numerous short and feature films but we rarely collaborate. We work better that way. Ultimately one of us is in charge on our own films and the other will help out. Daniel has filmed all his features as have I with mine. Daniel has done voiceover work on my shadow films as well as puppeteering. I’ve filled in a couple of minor live-action roles in a few of his films too and we’ve both made the sandwiches and been each other’s runners! Daniel is currently working on a photography project.

greydog: Silhouette animation seems to have started around the start of the last century, but it’s not common nowadays. We’d love to know what inspired you to revive this unusual approach.

richard: I had a small shadow theatre with a couple of friends and we did cabaret shows, we then ended up collaborating with band Little Sparta on a music and shadows project that we managed to get some development funding for. I really realised the scope that the shadows had. In the past I had had to build all the 3D scenery and props which was very time consuming and took up a lot of space. With shadows you can create whole worlds and sets and it’s all cut out of card. The effort goes a lot further with silhouettes and I’ve had a lot of great feedback from audiences. There’s something very interesting about the use of light and dark. We all have a shadow and I think we’re hard-wired to see the hidden detail in the shadows.

greydog: Oddly enough, Mansfield Brewery produces a Mansfield Dark Ale. It’s described as slightly sweet, but with a touch of bitterness at the finish. What sort of flavour and finish would you say your work has?

richard: I’ll have to try it. There is a sweetness to some of my work but always with a touch of darkness or a splash of blood. I love ghost stories and the mystery of other worlds that we could come across at any point. All my live-action films have been about hauntings and strange figures glimpsed or dreamt about. Oh and death.

greydog: Which is where we came in, but whilst you’re here, we also wanted to ask you if your LGBT work is political, personal or just for fun.

richard: 2013 was the year Daniel and I both decided to make our LGBT films. I made period-drama romance horror ‘The Secret Path’ and Daniel made erotic vampire thriller ‘Drink Me’. I think we were both feeling frustrated with gay cinema. There seemed to be very few releases with something different to say. Personally I wanted to make a film where the couple were secure and happy with themselves. I wanted to show a snap-shot in the lives of two men that had found a place to be themselves. It almost feels like found footage and both actors were fearless and passionate about bringing the characters to life. Lots of gay cinema deals with self-loathing or homophobia but I wanted any negative influence to be external and I love genre films. With ‘Drink Me’ Daniel looked at an affluent middle-class couple torn apart by a desire for the dangerous. There can be expectations to aspire to be heteronormative and ‘Drink Me’ is satirising that. It questions whether we really want to follow society’s norms or forge our own path. I’d love to see more gay horror, sci-fi and thrillers but there is virtually no support to filmmakers. You pretty much have to self/crowd fund and make it off your own back and hope a distributor will take it on. This is why we’ve never spent more than we could afford to lose. Things are changing rapidly and we’re experimenting with different forms of self-distribution. We both had a lot of fun making both films and The Secret Path was our first film to get a commercial release with a distributor so it’s been a real eye opener from start to finish.

greydog: And finally, we have to ask about the Jane Austen connection. We’re great fans of hers here. Is the name of your company just a rather neat pun, or does it reflect an actual interest in Austen?

richard: I’ve probably enjoyed film adaptations of her work more than I’ve read it but her influence is there in the period dramas. It’s a pun really, rolls off the tongue easily and sounds familiar. Plus it’s a perfect name for our output of films and art.

greydog: Thank you, Richard Mansfield. Coming out next from Mansfield Dark is Daniel’s spoof-comedy ‘Showgirls: London Calling’ Daniel’s love letter to the camp classic ‘Showgirls‘ and Richard’s horror feature ‘Video Killer’ about a demon stalking his victims through a series of haunted VHS tapes. In production is an animated adaptation of E F Benson’s ‘The Room in the Tower’ and a new M R James shadow film ‘The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance’. To find out more about Richard and Daniel’s work, click here:

mansfield dark

And if you fancy grabbing a copy of their Count Magnus film, click here:

count magnus

Do remember, dear listeners, that greydogtales does not recommend running with scissors, especially if you’re cutting out silhouettes at the same time…

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Weird Art and More

November 5, 2015 greydogtales Leave a comment

As you know, dear listeners, greydogtales is all about the strange, from the mysterious world of longdogs and lurchers to the often less surprising world of weird art and fiction. In the run up to the Winter Solstice, we will have something for everyone (except extremely timid cat owners, perhaps).

Weird art will feature heavily in the next month or two, though fear not, lurchers and writers will not be forgotten. Descending to the “I” that is J Linseed Grant for a moment, I am delighted to open today with this highly appropriate illustration by Robyn Molyneaux. Robyn is a talented young Australian artist, and I hope to have more of her work to display in due course:

Having a planned programme is always a disastrous move, but over the next six or seven weeks we (that’s the entire greydogtales staff, including Django) hope to have illustrated main features on the following artists/creators, in a rather random order:

John Coulthart. John has been producing the most amazingly detailed illustrative work for some years, including Lovecraftian pieces such as those in his book, the redesigned The Haunter of the Dark. He tells us that he will soon be working on an illustrated edition of The House on the Borderland.

Raphael Ordonez. Raphael is both a writer and an artist with whom we came into contact over his interest in William Hope Hodgson. He says that some of his fiction is influenced by Hodgson, and his artistic work includes both unsettling paintings and naturalistic images.

M Wayne Miller. Wayne is well known in weird fiction circles for the striking illustrations which adorn many novels and collections, including his cover art for Willie Meikle, interviewed by greydogtales a couple of weeks ago.

Mansfield Dark, also known as Richard and Daniel Mansfield, is a UK team which produces disturbing short films and images, including some fascinating shadow puppetry and silhouette animation. Recent work includes a version of the M R James story Count Magnus.

Sebastian Cabrol. This talented Argentinian artist and illustrator is already familiar to greydogtales followers for his work illustrating editions of The Night Land and The House on the Borderland. We also have a commentary from Diego Arandojo, comic writer, film-maker and editor, on working with Sebastian.

We will be keeping it varied with more longdog posts, such as a feature on Lurcher SOS Sighthound Rescue, a centre in the South (we can’t all be perfect) of England, to show the sort of work which is needed. If you didn’t know, every one of our own dogs has been a rescue dog since 1982. See, we were young once!

And amongst other goodies, we hope to have an interview with the author James Stoddard, mentioned in the Hodgson tribute month as the author of The Night Land: A Story Retold, but also the author of fantasy books such as The High House and The False House.

Finally, a snippet which is too good to miss, given its title. You might remember a post a month or so ago, Game of Groans and Clanking Chains, which introduced some ghostly Yorkshire dogs.

Game of Groans & Clanking Chains

This August Nick Stone, a photographer from Norfolk, started a Public Archaeology Project called Black Dog Tales: Mapping the Grim and Other Stories. His website includes a wealth of information about the various incarnations of demon and spirit dogs, and is highly recommended. Nick and others write about many aspects of the grim, and new material is still being added – and welcomed, we understand. His site can be found here:

Mapping the Grim