Category Archives: Lovecraftian arts

News from France

01 Thursday Sep 2022

Posted by in Lovecraft as character, Lovecraftian arts, New books, Scholarly works

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My thanks to Gregory for letting me know that the French magazine Actuality: The Universe of Books has a new article “Lovecraft, Cthulhu and the Old Ones enter the Pleiades”. Here “Pleiades” is a play on the name of the famous French publishing house, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade. Who have now revealed (I translate)…

We are currently preparing an edition of the works of H.P. Lovecraft”, confirms La Pleiade. … “The work is in progress”.

This is not to be confused with the sumptious Mnemos multi-volume edition of Lovecraft now emerging…

Mnemos will soon publish the 4th volume of a gigantic translation, at the end of September [2022] … accompanied by the required scholarly apparatus.

The final third of the article turns into a short interview with the main translator for Mnemos, David Pathe-Camus…

I challenge you to read a text such as “Nyarlathotep” and not think about our own time. It reads like it was written just for us. Lovecraft had a keen awareness of the human condition. [In a way, his work] foreshadows the currents that will come after it — such as existentialism or the absurd.

The same article also notes A Bestiary of the Twilight (Le Bestiaire du Crepuscule, June 2022), a French ‘BD’ (i.e. oversized graphic novel, often in hardcover) which…

takes HPL as the main character

Update: Le Bestiaire du Crepuscule has been re-titled as The Monstrous Dreams of Mr. Providence for the English edition, and since summer 2022 can now be enjoyed by English readers.

Forthcoming Dunsany documentary

29 Monday Aug 2022

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S.T. Joshi’s blog has updated. He’s been doing a lot of travelling, and eventually reached Providence where he reports that in a studio there…

Christopher Nightingale, a young Englishman is working on what promises to be a superb documentary on Lord Dunsany

S.T. spent three hours there being interviewed on Dunsany. If this is the same “Christopher Nightingale”, the award-winning “Composer, Orchestrator & Musical Supervisor”, then the film’s music should be a treat.

Stable Diffusion released in a Web version

25 Thursday Aug 2022

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The open-source AI-powered art-generator ‘Stable Diffusion’ is now available on the Web, as DreamStudio. Not to be confused with the existing Dream by WOMBO.

Working and tested. Log in, generate pictures by typing text with a couple of names or descriptive concepts. You get about 100 goes, before the paywall come up. Then it’s $12 for 1,000 prompts.

H.P. Lovecraft views a fiery sunset in the city of Providence…

The new DreamStudio AI also gave me this, among many mis-fires. Too much of a “Buster Keaton blend”, but not bad all the same. It would probably fool those who had no idea who Buster Keaton was.

Such AI’s tend to have great problems with human hands, feet, and to an extent hair. Often one leg or arm is missing or far longer than the other. Eyes often don’t match. As you can see above, one eye is bulging more than the other. There’s also often a general tell-tale “gloopiness”, and circles are often distorted.

New book: The Illustrated History of Warren Comics

23 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books, Scholarly works

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Illustrators Quarterly Special #14: The Illustrated History of Warren Comics. 144 pages.

A searcher for “Illustrators Quarterly” special would get results indicating that Amazon UK doesn’t carry the “Special” versions, other than #1. But it is there, awkwardly titled as “The Illustrated History of Warren Magazines: illustrators Special 14″. On Amazon the Specials go under the title of “illustrators Special” for some reason.

What a wonder a Euro companion volume might be: The Illustrated History of the Toutain Magazines, though obviously far more difficult to research.

Meshbox HPL makover

21 Sunday Aug 2022

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This is about as good as I can get the Meshbox 3D HPL for Poser, with some SSS on the skin and quite a bit of Photoshop. I’m not a skin expert in such matters. I’ve gone for the paler skin look, rather than shrimp-pink n’ healthy. The skin shader is my tweak of the generic Ghostship SSS, rather than EZskin 3 which lacks a profile. Rendered in Poser’s SuperFly (aka Blender’s Cycles, same thing).

After some retro-i-fication…

Early 132nd Birthday news

20 Saturday Aug 2022

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.

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It’s only noon over in the USA, and I guess many are only just emerging in search of breakfast. But a quick tickle of the search tools at 6pm in the UK brings some early 132nd Birthday news…

* Dark Adventure Radio Theatre, “Bad Medicine” compilation. Containing their olde time radio version of “Cool Air” and others. Free to download for HPL’s birthday. Also “Dark Adventure Radio Theatre episode downloads on a buy-one-get-one-free” basis.

* Some podcast activity already detectable via search. A lecture on “Lovecraft & the Occult – historical & literary influences on the Cthulhu mythos”. No idea what it’s like, but I like the look of the presenter and studio. He makes an effort. Nerds RPG Variety Cast did a podcast to celebrate H.P. Lovecraft’s birthday by discussing Lovecraftian films. Some story readings on YouTube, several in Spanish, some still to be broadcast later today.

* A curious coffin-shaped magazine posted on eBay. Not sure if it’s a birthday thing. Apparently only 10 have been made.

Cabinet of Curiosities

16 Tuesday Aug 2022

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Guillermo del Toro’s forthcoming TV show Cabinet of Curiosities has revealed the episode titles. Sadly we do not get a diesel-punkish “Cool Air” adaptation, as I had surmised we might might due to the relative ease and cheapness of filming it. They seem to be going more for monsters, thus “Dreams in the Witch House” and “Pickman’s Model” are the actual Lovecraft items on the slate. This is according to the TV trade-press.

Welcome to Arkham

05 Friday Aug 2022

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No ‘Picture Postals’ this week, but an anonymous contributor kindly sends the Web link Welcome to Arkham — the (HO) Model City. This is a website giving a grand tour of a HO scale-model railway enthusiast’s marvellous re-creation of vintage Arkham. An amazing piece of work, that also has a “night mode” with lighting.

Such a pity that Providence never had the courage for a vast Lovecraft Museum, which might today have a spare wing to house this in for public viewing. But there are ample views on the lovingly crafted website.

“Arkham records my impressions of an old, grimy eastern Massachusetts city. Everything’s dirty with coal smoke and weathered by harsh winters. There are plenty of pinnacles, spires, finials, towers, and steeples … I tried to not let more than one or two buildings go by without at least some reference to the Lovecraft canon — or, if not Lovecraft, the classic fantasy and horror fiction from his era.”

There are also interiors, and amusing incidents of street drama.

Part of the deeply researched Miskatonic Railroad project, which reveals a circular track that also takes in Dunwich.

This is so faithful and research-filled that I’m also tagging it as a ‘scholarly work’.