Tag: strange fiction

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Airships and Tentacles – my new 140-Page Art Book

Over the past months I have been tapping away at keys, collecting scans of artworks old and new and even a lot of forgotten works, in order to make a very intensive book of my works to date.

At first, it was only going to be the Airships and Tentacles series, but I began to use “lost” artworks for section endings, and decided I should include old paintings from before the series, as well as all of those pieces I have worked on during the series as album covers, book covers, commissions, illustrations, or things I did during the series just to clear my head and work on something different. It even includes a few samplings from my-yet-to-be-published literary works, and some pieces I’ve done relating to the works of others (Voltaire, Clive Barker, Dexter Palmer, Bethalynne Bajema, and others), and collections of doodles and sketches to decorate text pages (such as the Table of Contents, Words from the Artist and other sections)

The book has a cover specially designed by Bethalynne Bajema from my existing artwork, and I *love* what she did with it. Click the image or link below to view as a PDF online, or right click (recommended) to download and view in 2-page side by side book format.

This book is available NOW as a preorder, shipping August 5th. Click here to buy.

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The Sweet Smell of Recovery

I am back online. I’ve finished fixing the images in the store, and got a lot of the more recent blog enties (though I still have ten years more worth to go).

The timing for the server going down couldn’t have been worse – as during those 4 days, I not only got featured by Internet Jesus, Warren Ellis, but I finally got one of the Daily Deviation thingers on Deviant Art – sending anyone who searched for me by name or tried clicking my homepage link to a dead page.

… I hate to even think of the dead page casualty count there… 1200 faves on that image in one day, says that number would be approximately …”a lot”.

Today, Browsing Warren Ellis’ blog, I found my good friend, Eric Adams: Moon Zombies
and also my fiancee Bethalynne Bajema: Cthulhu Maestro. It seems like the internet gods are smiling upon our little cluster of artists this week.

In other news, I’ve added three new artworks to my stock – prints of two new engravings (here and here) and prints of one new painting (here). I’ve also made a single page about prints, print quality, and print types (here). The new painting, as all my paintings from this series, was sold before the last brush stroke was done – if you are interested in either of the two engravings they are currently listed on Etsy (here).

Pollen
Pollen - a weird art engraving not necessarily from my Airships and Tentacles series
See Monkeys
See Monkeys - a weird art semi-steampunk engraving of ocean depths, man-made contraptions, and ancient beings.
Red Queen - A fast and rough spatter painting in acrylic on birch panel
Red Queen - A fast and rough spatter painting in acrylic on birch panel
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Of Books and Other Things

I’m getting closer to being done with this series, and finished with the book… well, the art book anyway.

The shirts and bandanas will likely be available months before the book – They will be decorated by the cover image, but not the cover text, and are pretty amazing. I’ll be screen printing all of these on my own this time around – hopefully that will make them extra special, at least to to some people.

Airships and Tentacles
Airships and Tentacles

I was going to wrap the book up with some pencil and pen and ink work, some watercolors and gouache, but I’ve received a book cover commission from an artist I could not stand to have turned down, and that author wanted something similar to what I’ve been doing. I’ve also been asked to do some similar-themed interior illustrations for another author as well. So, this book will be delayed by a hair, but will also be several pages thicker when released.

Anyway, this post has knocked down the post for the November Sale, so I am just going to remind you here that through November 1st through November 31st of every year, my prices are their very, very lowest (because I don’t want to be buried in shipments the week before the Gift-Giving Season). You might want to take a look around my store (if not the entire store, look at the November Sale Section).

Here are some items which are coming soon, though maybe not in time for Christmas. The shirt is now available – though the tonal striped tees I wanted originally are no longer being made by the manufacturer… bummer:

One-Color Four Corners Airships and Tentacles Bandana
One-Color Four Corners Airships and Tentacles Bandana
Two-Color Forehead decoration Airships and Tentacles Bandan
Two-Color Forehead decoration Airships and Tentacles Bandan
One-Color Airships and Tentacles Dusty-Brown Tee
One-Color Airships and Tentacles Dusty-Brown Tee
Two-Color Airships and Tentacles Dusty-Brown Tee
Two-Color Airships and Tentacles Dusty-Brown Tee
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The Dark and Spooky Automated World of Thomas Kuntz

Death and Resurrection: One of many amazing clockwork pieces by Thomas Kuntz to be featured in the Archive.

Thomas Kuntz, a professional artist for over 20 years, began as a sculptor of Commercial Toys, but later gained notoriety circa ’89-98 as a pioneer in the making of model kits based on old silent films like Nosferatu, The Man Who Laughs, Vampira, and others.

After a period of time Kuntz found that merely sculpting his dark creations was not nearly enough for him, and that he wanted to give life to his creations through mechanical, perhaps supernatural means… This change in method resulted in some of the darkest and most interesting automations known to man, and not nearly as many fatalities and disappearances as may be rumored…

[Read the rest of this article, view images, watch more films at the Miskatonic Archive]

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Cephalopod Attacks in Fiction, and in the News!

You may already know about “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, written by Seth Grahame-Smith, who is rumored to have recently signed a deal to write “Abraham Lincoln, vampire hunter”. “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters”, written by Jane Austin and Ben Winters continues this soon to be trend of making strange fiction of classic fiction.

The trailer (found via The Daily Kraken) is so brilliantly and perfectly executed that, though I cannot wait to read the book, I must admit have an even greater desire to see the movie.

I am however somewhat pleased to see the news picking up where the trailer has left off…

Today, I found via Cephalopod Tea Party that Humbolt Squid have finally begun to heed my requests, and are now beginning larger and more organized attacks on mankind and cameramen.

Unfortunately, I cannot share the video here because even on youTube, ABC news has it too heavily locked down (they suck), but you can and should view it here.

You can also see the full cover for this book, and read more about this book and books like it at the original article from The Daily Kraken – a great source of interesting things and other stuff.

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Behold!

Just a few projects I am picking away at. If you want some step by step images on these, you can go to my flickr account (flickr.com/mykeamend)

1) Book with embedded faux bone seal/cameo. Materials: Brass, wood, polymer clay. I want to fill this with writings and drawings on skin, to give it a really eerie, creepy, “kids would be up all night for weeks if they ever entered the room they weren’t supposed to” feel. Human skin is out of the question, legalities and all – vellum will have to do, but such is out of my price range for the moment. I guess this will have to wait to be filled up.

2) Box with embedded faux bone seal/cameo. Materials: Brass, wood, polymer clay. To be filled with pulp metaphysical accouterments. This will hopefully be a very high end cabinet of curiousities piece or set of movie props when done.

3) Spring-shocked Goggles. Materials: Brass. Leather padding and straps to be added. Lenses to be added if/when I ever get myself to the optometrist.

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Adventure Mission Generator V.2.0

The new Adventure Mission Generator is now online and running.

I added this mission generator last year to the Miskatonic Archive in order to make my days a bit more interesting, keep the ideas fresh, or at least somewhat random. It was still in its beta stage back then.

Apologies to those who were damaged or killed in the mechanical breakdowns and malfunctions caused September 8, 2008, I do hope you are feeling better for this glorious day of unveiling.

Adventure Mission Generator
Adventure Mission Generator

New to this mission generator:

1) Lots
2) A static image with text in the image, instead of text upon a background, this makes it compatible with most everything – no more stylesheets in LJ throwing it off, no more codemuching in myspace to throw it off.
3) A different mission per each name per each day of the year. No more having to type different names to get better missions… just come back tomorrow, if you survive.
4) The image generated is permanent, in other words, it is not going to change on your profile the next day. Yes, this means you must come back to get another one, but it saves you from proudly displaying a neat mission, and looking silly when another less flattering one replaces it.
5) It is an excellent merging of various types of server-side and client side code – since I am amazing, I thought it would be fun to make something of my wide assortment of skills and languages.
6) I really do not get to say that often about myself. If there is one thing I am incredibly adept at, it is anything algorithmic – which there was a lot of in this exercise. No randoms – same mission per name per day. Test results posted on your pages remain the same, even if I reprogram everything here. Yay. I am happy with it.

Adventure Mission Generator copyright © 2008, 2009 Myke Amend

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Free WallPaper: Thanks for the Ether (Antarctic Experiment in sepia)

New Steampunk Wallpaper: “The Antarctic Experiment” (Sepia antiqued variant of the original image), 1280 x 1024, from the series “Airships and Tentacles” – a Jules Verne and Hp Lovecraft Inspired series of explorers in dirigibles in precarious situations.

Click image below to download or view:

A color version of this, in 1280×1024 and in 1600×1200 is available at Ettadiem.com

Antarctic Experiment in Sepia (Thanks for the Ether)
Antarctic Experiment in Sepia (Thanks for the Ether)
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New Limited Edition Giclees

New for summer is an extensive collection of engravings as limited edition giclees on Hahnemuhle fine-art rag paper format.

Each giclee has rough straight-torn edges and a border of 2.5 to 3 inches of this beautiful rag paper, making for an additional 5 to 6 inches in each direction – meaning more wall coverage.

Each these bold limited edition giclees are enlargements of the original highly detailed engravings, showcasing the fine linework and detail within each piece, and making for a wonderful block-print appearance.

Cute Thulhu Against Shiny Gold Stars
Cute Thulhu Against Shiny Gold Stars

To go straight to the prints from engravings, simply choose prints(engravings) in the catalogue listing (right), or click here.

*Also: for those who like to collect mini prints and small prints for scrapbooking purposes, those are next to come… an entire line of every artwork from this site (and some not yet here) will all be available in sizes of 5×7 or smaller.

There are many items now added to the now-better-organized store, and many more items to follow. Please continue to check in this next 7 days.