Random Word(s) @duckwitgrapes - Tumblr Blog

raineyweather1997

Well at least it’s in character

kaysdenofchaos

TMNT Multiverse: Crossover

Lmao finally finished this poster design

Hopefully the posters get shipped in time wah,,,,,

klapollo

at planned parenthood and they're playing regular show

klapollo

cutecipher

"dude if you don't get this abortion benson is gonna fire us"

monkey-who-rocks

Gave Kris the soul as a pet in Tomodachi Life and they immediately tried to throw that shit away 😭😭

difrntusername

jade-of-mourning

hauntings

jade-of-mourning

hauntings

its-too-many-fandoms

Holy shit I love this art, its actually brilliant. The framing and the composition of it all is stunning and I want to analyze it because there's so much here.

The first piece is brilliant, and I think the perfect opener to the whole series. The Krang mech is far away from him, It wasn't even the first thing I noticed when I first looked at it. I noticed the land scape and the architecture in front of Leo. But when I saw It I couldn't see anything else. It's just there in the background looming like a mountain. But it's not consuming the whole piece. He can move here, there's space to run and hide if he's really in danger. he's not cornered and because of that I think Leo would be able to easily ignore It if he tried.

The second piece is where I think the feelings starts to creep in. Because now Leo has less options. He can't exactly hide here in what I'm interpreting as scaffolding in New York City. The mech is perched in here too, but still a long distance away from him and he can run if he needs to. But he focused balancing on these beams, and I think it's distracting enough that he cand put the krang out of mind.

There is no way that he could do that in the third piece. They're in the sewers now and the mech is huge. It's taking up the whole tunnel, filling the darkness Leo might've once found comfort in with the ominous red glow of it's eye. It's undeniably watching him, and Leo is left with only one escape, a glowing ladder that'll take him to the rest of his family. It's practically his last defense, his only shield that he must carry to keep form being overwhelmed.

The final piece rips that shield away from him, because now he's alone in his train car, and the mech is standing over him. Leo's sitting on his bed, and looking up at what he's running from. We can only see his shell, but we can see he's defenseless and defeated. There's nowhere left to go, nowhere to hide, nothing left to do but accept what's coming. The mech practically is the room, It's red eye coloring the walls and the windows to match. It's here, and it's not leaving.

But there was something else that I noticed in the series. There isn't a single moment where we actually see the Krang in the mech and we never see Leo's face. And that made me think that this wasn't about the krang. At first I was thinking trauma, but it didn't quite fit with the all the images. If it was about that, then why wasn't the mech closer in the first image? Why was It never reaching towards him, or invading his space? It couldn't be about anxiety, because while the pieces are anxiety inducing as they progress, it's not at the center of these pieces because the focus is always on Leo. Then I reread the title: hauntings.

Like a ghost, what the art is about isn't actually in the frame, but just outside of it. I need to look at the work more to figure it out. I started looking where our tortured turtle and mech were. And I saw that throughout the pieces, both start on the outer edges of the picture and move to the middle, where they become one silhouette. In the final piece, Leo sits before the Mech unguarded, framed in the place where Krang Prime would sit and oh. It hits me.

Its about guilt.

In the first image he's distanced and distracted, the second he focused and putting off, the third he's running away, and in the fourth he's consumed by It. Haunted.

jade-of-mourning

oh man i think that this reblog might've gotten eaten by tumblr reblog section of this post? not sure. ANYWAY i love this analysis sososo much; i went looking for this post when i saw that you had tagged my brief text follow up on the art with the belief that you had interpreted the piece wrong, to which i say that it was only what i was thinking of while drawing, but it is certainly not the only way to read it! i'm almost more convinced by your interpretation than i am by my own intents as the artist LOL. if you'll allow me to blab for a minute --

i love how you broke down each of the four drawings! to touch on them, for the first image, the kraang is absolutely pulled into the somewhat beautified background to the point that you can almost ignore it, even if once you notice it, you can't unsee it. i appreciate that you pointed out the use of space in the framing and distance to convey the degree to which leo is cornered and how much navigable space remains for leo to try to move away from it... if he's willing to, that is. for the second in the scaffolding/construction, i like that you noted the balancing beam; it's honestly not something that i thought of when i but i think it's a very interesting concept of how it can double as a distraction and i think that it works a Lot towards your interpretation (positive). in the third one, yesyesyes the claustrophobia that the mech's relative size occupies! the ambiguity of the ladder & the light & which direction leo is headed didn't even occur to me while i was drawing, but now that you point it out, i think it really builds the bulk of the path for where your interpretation differs. and the fourth one, the extent to which the mech's light floods not only the immediate room but also the exterior of the train car is definitely reflective of how all-consuming and inevitable its presence has become.

i love your thoughts on the choice to exclude the kraang's body and leo's face so much. i was going more for the angle of removing the humanity and clarity offered in expression for the kraang and leo, but refocusing the ambiguity and disconnect allowed by this kind of visual dehumanization (i guess?) to guilt instead is soo interesting. you pointed out the capacity for distraction that the earlier two landscapes offer to leo compared to the focus forced on by the more claustrophobia of the second landscapes, and reading that as a distraction from the Guilt is. gnaws on that. the convergence of silhouettes of the two is aligned with my intent but how you read that convergence is so good. you also were way more analytical about the title of hauntings from a figurative sense than i was when it comes to reading outside the lines to what is not actually on the page, interpreting specifically the disconnect allowed by the kraang/leo's facelessness. the secret full title of the pieces is "hauntings (it just keeps happening)" but i cut it back for the sake of brevity and the opportunity for other interpretations like you just offered <3 (which i really really do adore and appreciate so much -- i don't think i thanked you yet. it means like a lot a lot that someone would be interested enough in my art to write a brief meta on it!!!!) this is also the same reason that i deliberately put my little blurb in a completely different reblog because i thought there was going to be a lot of room for different readings and i was successfully rewarded by getting to read your reblog here!

in general, i don't think that your interpretation to my interpretation need to be mutually exclusive; the kraang as a manifestation of the guilt that haunts leo can still be something that he tries to escape by move his way across the frame closer towards home and the family that didn't die, but the guilt still readily shrinks into the claustrophobic spaces that define his home in the geometry of the earth. the guilt is attached to the family that lives inside the home -- the family that he wanted to see to alleviate the guilt, because they Lived -- but with the hurt they harbor, it only became a reminder. so leo has to come to understand that the guilt for his actions lives comfortably inside his home, inevitable and consuming, never actively attacking (never enough to truly inhibit), but just a Presence. leo learns to resign himself to the guilt the same way that he resigns himself to the way that the kraang has reoriented the axis of how he understands the world; they both destroy the comfort that was once found in home space, and they are both inescapable to the point that you learn to live with it even if you intend to take it to the grave. distractions and open space that differs from That Day can only get you so far. i focused on the proportional shrinking of the kraang in the pieces (because it starts off much larger ends much smaller than it actually is in the movie) in tandem with the proportional shrinking of the physical space, and i think that considering that relationship of creature-to-space, combined with the nature of the lighting, you can still consider that the guilt is still ballooning outward and being increasingly consumptive.

i'm just really pleased about this analysis that you offered! i had a really fun time working around my own initial conception of the piece to account for the possibilities that your reading offered because i do think that they absolutely can coexist in a way that elevates it further :) my brain is highkey fried right now so i apologize in advance if this is incomprehensible and way too long. i might come back and try to refine some of how i worked your interpretation of guilt into my interpretation.