Representing creative will, resourcefulness, and inspired action, but also uncertainty and greedy manipulation. With his own two hands and infinite potential within, The Magician has all the tools needed to bring their vision to life, and the skill to use them. But is the world ready for such things to become? Only the Magician can decide.
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Patreon reward for Sigfried Pinzer of a Victorian-era cyborg lady bearing a gatling gun for an arm.
If you’d like a free sketch like this, or even an inked and/or colored piece, click here to support my art! The more support you give, the greater your reward.
If you’re not already supporting my Patreon, you’re missing out! Not only do you get free art, discounts on all my commissions, and month-early access to all my art, you also get to see Patreon-exclusive sketches every Wednesday, I.E. Midweek Moleskines!
In recent years I’ve found myself to be more productive art-wise when I have a clear goal in mind for drawing: Commissions, Inkvember, the Serving Six series, and so on. Thus I started Midweek Moleskines.
Midweek Moleskines are sketches I’ll be posting every midweek, typically on a Tuesday or Wednesday. I will post at least three of them, and they will be Patreon-exclusive for $10.00 patrons and over- though depending on how you like them, they just might become full-fledged drawings of their own for all to see!
Here’s a few examples from the last three weeks of what you’re missing if you’re not already a patron:
Sidenote: though they are called “Midweek Moleskines”, they are not necessarily all going to be done in my moleskine journal; I chose that title strictly for the alliteration.
So, if you’d like to see all this and more, please consider giving my Patreon a spin!
If you’re not already supporting my Patreon, you’re missing out! Not only do you get free art, discounts on all my commissions, and month-early access to all my art, you also get to see Patreon-exclusive sketches every Wednesday, I.E. Midweek Moleskines!
In recent years I've found myself to be more productive art-wise when I have a clear goal in mind for drawing: Commissions, Inkvember, the Serving Six series, and so on. Thus I started Midweek Moleskines.
Midweek Moleskines are sketches I'll be posting every midweek, typically on a Tuesday or Wednesday. I will post at least three of them, and they will be Patreon-exclusive for $10.00 patrons and over- though depending on how you like them, they just might become full-fledged drawings of their own for all to see!
Here’s a few examples from the last three weeks of what you’re missing if you’re not already a patron:
Sidenote: though they are called "Midweek Moleskines", they are not necessarily all going to be done in my moleskine journal; I chose that title strictly for the alliteration.
So, if you’d like to see all this and more, please consider giving my Patreon a spin!
Something that I've been wondering recently about steampunk worlds and fashion within those worlds, particularly regarding gears and clockwork. Almost every costume and character I've seen in the steampunk style wear clothes and accessories with gear motifs, outlines, and styles. It looks awesome, I will admit, but if you consider it from the character's point of view, why is their world so obsessed with clockwork aesthetics? Sure, that's how every machine operates in their fictional universe, but is everyone obsessed with putting gear teeth along the edges of every dress, or painting cogs on the sides of their airships? Like, imagine if we decorated all our stuff with pictures of transistors or gasoline engines.
Citizens of New Monia
For the last couple years I’ve had this idea floating around in my head of a pseudo-deiselpunk-y, noir-ish, industrial-era-like world called “New Monia”, a dark and goofy world of toxic factories, urban sprawl, and haphazard cybernetics. Never had any plans to actually do anything with it, mostly it just serves as a platform upon which to cook up a bunch of doodles that I come up with when I’m bored and my mind wanders to thoughts of cyborgs and trenchcoats.
Ain't it kinda weird how everyone in the steampunk universe decorates everything with gears and gear motifs? Yeah everything in that setting operates via gears but is literally everyone obsessed with clockwork aesthetics? I mean, imagine if all of our stuff was decorated with electrical transistors.
So I just watched Frankenstein’s army, and I have to say, I loved it. This film’s cover sold me the second I saw it on the shelves of my local Family Video, and it was worth every penny. (minor spoilers ahead)
This independent horror film is set during WWII, and tells the tender tale of a small group of Soviet soldiers who unwittingly stumble upon the secret base of Dr. Frankenstein, and go toe-to-toe with a ragtag rabble of ravenous robo-zombies. There’s not much to the plot, but with a title and cover like that, the story pretty much tells itself.
The film is shot found-footage style with what is supposed to be a 16mm camera, not unlike those shown in History Channel documentaries, but even if you’re not familiar with film it’s pretty obvious that it’s actually shot via a modern camera with a digital filter applied to make the film look more authentic. Not only that, but the film is rather schizophrenic about the whole “found footage” bit, with no title indicating when, where, or how the film was found, and countless cinematic shots like jump cuts that make you wonder “why would a combat cameraman do something like that? And how?”. But this is only a minor flaw in the film. What really shine are the characters.
Wait, do you think I’m talking about the Soviets? Nah, they’re mostly a bunch of no-name dickheads, who start the film off by raiding a bunch of defenseless farmers of their goods, and continue to be violent and unpleasant to each other and everyone they meet throughout the movie. There are a couple characters that are more endearing than the rest, but even they have their moments of douchebaggery. No, I’m talking about the Army of Frankenstein himself, also known as the “Zombots”.
Simply put: the Zombots are adorable. I know that sounds weird considering they look like the bastard children of a Big Daddy and Pyramid Head, but you have to watch them in action to see what I mean. They were built to be weapons of war, but they’re obviously not very good at it. They’re slow, lumbering mounds of metal and muscle, blindly swinging their bladed limbs at anything in reach. Sure, they’re scary as hell and don’t go down easily, but they only manage to get one or two kills because the soviets were in cramped, closed quarters most of the time. I don’t think any of the zombots even had a gun. But dammit, they try so hard to be good monsters!
It’s hard to pick which monster is my favorite (mainly because it’s hard to find any good pictures from this movie), but this guy here is the most memorable. When we finally meet Frankenstein himself, he’s being followed around by this unnamed helper monster, a cauldron-shaped assistant who waddles around on a pair of human legs. It’s the goofiest-looking thing ever and it’s awesome. I want one! I would name him “Klaus” and have him carry drinks and sandwiches to house guests. Probably want to lose the Swastika though; that’d be a real mood-killer.
Not only are the Zombots designed beautifully, with freakish dieselpunk-esqe machinery on lumbering Nazi ghoul-bodies (all practical effects, no less!), the film actually allows you to drink in the details and get a good, long look at what the Zombots actually look like. While I do appreciate the “less is more” approach to horror and understand that visual effects can’t carry a film by themselves, sometimes I’ll only watch a film because of how beautiful the artwork is. Hellboy II: The Golden Army may have been a mediocre mess that threw all the original character’s personalities in the garbage, but I must have watched the Troll Market scene at least a million times.
I’ll end this review with a few warnings regarding content. Even if you’re not squeamish, there are a number of scenes that I know would put a lot of people off: a rabbit getting smacked to death against a table, a guy getting his finger cut off, child death (you can’t see anything, but it’s obvious), two people getting their heads cut open and their brains pulled out, a nurse getting beaten and manhandled, and a dying man loudly begging to be killed. Fun times!
All in all, if you like steampunk/dieselpunk cyborgs, pseudo-found-footage film, mad Nazi science and zombie armies, than grab some popcorn and give this film a go. It’s definitely worth a watch, if only for the sheer beauty of the monsters.
