Week 33 (16th May)

Viva prep! If I’m organised I should’ve printed this blog entry before updating it so we will never know how this week truly went.

Week 32 (9th May)

Finished the second comic. Finished the czech hedgehog and cast the aluminium crucifixes. Bullets are so far failing.

Week 31 (2nd May)

Spent this week making the series of objects that I want to accompany the comics. Made a prototype for the stake czech hedgehog and a goblet out of clay. Working on making garlic bullets to shoot out of the tank. Made a steel crucifix. Hopefully will be able to make one out of solid aluminium.

Week 30 (25th April)

Drawn the first comic. Took a LOT longer than expected. Wrote the second one. Hope the second one doesn't take as long.

NOTE : I am uploading to the blog less as I have started a paper trail sketchbook for all my final outcomes. 

Week 29 (18th April)

Wrote first comic inspired by the article “The Guardian”

Read some online comics, including America’s favourite Monsters. Itchy Peterson “Just born Lucky, I guess”

Explored Eastern European cartoon styles to draw the comic in. I am Russian and I want this comic to be a continuation of Russian artists often tiptoeing around the lie of merging current political events and fiction.

Week 28 (11th April)

Decided the comics should show the western take and I should do a series of objects to highlight the overlap and significance of vampire symbolism throughout this project. The symbolism and significance of materials within this war.

Week 27 (4th April)

Political cartoon research

Trying to read articles to pick what event I should do within the current conflict but I am finding it very emotionally taxing.

Read Maus

Read chunks of Persepolis

Week 26 (28th March)

Had an idea to do a comic about the current situation. (Explain more)

Week 25 (21st March)

I spent quite a lot of this week working on an idea where I would use an AI generator to generate images by inputting auto generated messages from women on mail-order-bride.net. The idea would be to have a play set in a hyper-fantastical space that would allow the woman to be living within the code and internet generated space she is currently in. The fiction of the space duplicates and generates the fiction the woman is selling as she changes the way she speaks, looks and presentation on the site to reflect what she perceives the ideal male fantasy to be in order to attract clients. She is playing into layers of fiction that remove us from humanity.

Week 24 (14th March)

Mail order brides- riffing

Drawing maps of their house

Trying to form a character out of the real version of these women

Brides? Bots? Should i design wedding props or jewellery to lean into this aspect of it.

Week 23 (7th March)

A trip to Whitby! Oh, this was what I needed. I decided that in order to determine the direction of my project I should ground myself within the origins of what originally inspired me; Dracula, and the bizarre mix total commodication and bastardisation of a character once feared and the twisted mix of fiction and reality as the character and the novel reflects the negative reaction to waves of Eastern European immigration in the late 1800s. I wanted to ground myself within the origins of what was the origins of my project. My trip to Whitby, home and place of residence of Bram Stoker when writing his iconic novel Dracula, was a wondrous and weird mix of genuinely frightening moments, such as being completely lost, a few miles away into fields in the pitch black of night that arose at 7pm, followed later by sleep paralysis, to indulging in the tacky and often terrible stimulated horror of “The Dracula Experience” and a ghost walk. I spent all my money on terrible Dracula souvenirs, such as salt and pepper shakers, lighters, key chains, fang shapes sweets, sweets that turn your saliva red, rock, t shirts, notebooks and a Dracula toy theatre, to act out the novel myself.

Week 22 (28th February)

Feeling pretty spun out and unsure how to progress in my project. It feels inappropriate to try to establish a connection with the women who use mail order bride websites when I know the circumstances they are in.

Spent some time printing and binding for the WIPS

WIPS- all my werk on the table

The tutors also seem a little stuck on the trajectory of my project. I feel hesitant to abandon the mail order bride topic but I don't want to combine it with the invasion of Ukraine. It is hard to tell whether the references to the invasion are made by genuine women or bots exploiting the situation. I feel this is tricky to navigate and complicates my project unnecessarily. I think I will likely have to pursue either the conflict or the mail order brides, but not both together. For now I think I will explore the mail order brides.

Week 21 (21st February)

Expanded my vampire makeup collection.

Project standstill. Mail order brides are all talking about Ukraine being invaded by Russia

Used mail order bride info I had previously collected to create a new script- merging it with lines from Dracula. The lines from Dracula I used are from the letters between the characters, intertwined with “Dear___…” template opening messages from scam bride sites.

Week 20 (14th February)

Dissertation over. Had a day break where I played gameboy games and SimValley SimsBustinOut has a great vampire plot in the game. You cure vampirism by feeding the vampire a heavy chocolatey treat.

I stumbled across vampire killing boxes in my research. Very cool. Would love to incorporate this into my project somehow.

Work- made comic using mail order bride images from mail-order-bride.net and te AI generated text.

Week 19 (part 2 diss influences)

Week 19 (7th February)

Finishing dissertation. Spent a lot of time doing slavic inspired illustrated borders for all my dissertation pages.

Embroidered my dissertation cover. This was nice and fun.

Experimented with AI dracula text, running it through a text generated program to get a new script. I used “the female vampire turned to me and said..” as my text prompt to generate material that matches my gender project trajectory.

Week 18 (31st January)

Thinking about how Mail order Brides scammers are related to vampire scammers. I ran into some vampire scammers in the comment section of this vampire blog. I sent them an email from a fake account and they said this.

Read vampires, race and transnational hollywoods.