#Psychonauts fan comic | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

art · 1 year

Photo

Creator Spotlight: @scottlava

Scott Campbell has illustrated numerous children’s books, including SKULLS!, Sleepy the Goodnight Buddy, and Zombie In Love. He was author/illustrator of the much-loved HUG MACHINE. He enjoyed a long career in video games, where he art directed the critically acclaimed game Psychonauts and Brutal Legend for Double Fine Productions. Great Showdowns is his ongoing online series. Scott’s work has appeared in galleries and publications around the world. You can see more of his work at ScottC.com.

Check out our interview with Scott below!

How did you get your start in art, and more specifically, with Great Showdowns?

I went to art school in San Francisco and have been painting, making comics, and designing video games ever since with Double Fine Productions. The Great Showdowns began at the first Crazy 4 Cult exhibition at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles back in 2007, an exhibition of artwork inspired by the cult classics of cinema. The first 10 little paintings were intended to be snack-sized pieces for people to easily collect. They began with perhaps the most iconic of wild west showdowns from A Fistful of Dollars with Clint Eastwood. I pulled some of my favorite moments from films like Ghostbusters, Predator, Exorcist, and Planet of the Apes and placed them all in simple little dust-colored squares as if they were in the dirt streets of a wild west town. They began as good versus evil but grew to all kinds of showdowns between people and objects and often moments of great love between people. I started a tumblr for them a few years later, and I have been posting them ever since. We have published three Great Showdown books and have had 3 solo exhibitions along with worldwide scavenger hunts. There are over a thousand of them up on the site by now, and i do not plan on stopping any time soon.

Which 3 famous artists (dead or alive) would you invite to your dinner party?

I would like to gather Jim Henson, Walt Disney, and Richard Scarry together for dinner and chats. They have all created my favorite and most joyful worlds. I think we would have some of the most delightful chats.

What is a medium that you have always been intrigued by but would never use yourself?

I love collage, but every time I try it, I get frustrated and just quit. Someday I will get into it when my kids are old enough to really mess around with various mediums. I plan to have boxes of textiles and magazines for them to just annihilate.

What does your work set up look like?

Oh, it’s just a table with an old mug for water and an old plate for my watercolors and not much else. I share a studio with a bunch of very inspiring people who make wonderful things, from fabricated creatures to VR experiences and films. I have probably the simplest little area in the space. I do have an old oak flat file that I love to look at.

Advice you would give to an aspiring creator?

The biggest thing I would push upon everyone would be to not fret about one’s visual style. The style will grow and present itself as you experiment with mediums and expose yourself to various cultural delights. Just have fun and try all kinds of things.

What is one interaction you had from a fan of yours that has stuck with you over the years?

I gave a game design presentation many years back on a game I had art directed at the time called Brutal Legend at a game conference in Leeds. The game followed a roadie to the age of metal in the land of metal, with demons and chrome volcanoes and hot rods growing from the ground, and rivers of happy and cheering fans. After the talk, I spoke with someone whose work I had seen in earlier portfolio reviews at the conference. She was very shy but incredibly talented. She came up to me after the talk feeling pretty emotional and inspired to the point of tears and sobbing. It was probably the most extreme reaction I have ever gotten from someone, and it touched me deep down in my guts. That’s why we make things! To bring on the tears!

From video games, to illustrations, and children's books, you've worked on many projects. What was the most challenging, yet rewarding one?

Video games take an enormous amount of work over a long period of time and rely on the skills and talent of many like-minded people. It is sometimes difficult to corral such an effort, but it is incredibly rewarding to see it all come together to create such epic worlds. That said, though, children’s books are very enjoyable in a cozy way. It’s just me right there working on a world and all the pressure is on me. I cannot rely on all the talented people around me to make it look great.

Who on Tumblr inspires you and why?

I love perusing old fashion and film blogs and artists like Bob Jinx and Neil Sanders and collections like Its Colossal.

Thanks for stopping by, Scott! Be sure to check out the Great Showdowns over at @scottlava!

#creator spotlight #artists on tumblr #scott campbell #great showdowns

1K notes · View notes

welcometothejianghu · 2 months

Text

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 心宅猎人/Psych-Hunter.

Psych-Hunter is a 2020 drama about a hot young amnesiac who, accompanied by a rich psychiatrist with major daddy issues and a rich girl who cosplays as a cop, uses his Inception-style psychic powers to solve crimes that are part of a shadowy conspiracy orchestrated by a mysterious figure.

True story: Once I couldn't remember the English name of the drama, so I called it "House Haunters," and now my brain insists that's the real English title. If only!

Do not, under any circumstances, labor under the impression that this show is good. It's not. It's incoherent. The writing is bad. The villain is absurd. The vibe is comically melodramatic. People make inexplicable and out-of-character decisions all the time. Countless complex mysteries get set up with no way to resolve them. There's a thin lampshade hanging over it that blurs the line between bad decisions made on accident and bad decisions made on purpose, but the net result is largely the same. This is the show that first inspired my wife to declare something dumb as a guinea pig in a roller skate.

But it's fun. It's a sea of colorful chaos with brilliant pieces that shine through like strange gems. It knows how to work an atmosphere and does so to create some legitimately creepy moments. It spins a wild yarn filled with bizarre and loveable characters. And it has some twists that truly have to be seen to be believed. In the mood for some beautiful nonsense? Here's five reasons that despite everything I warned you about in the previous paragraph, I think this one's worth watching.

1. Psychonauts for Jazz Age homosexuals

Honestly, that phrase alone should let you know if this is the thing for you. But just in case, let me explain the basic premise of the show:

Jiang Shuo, a man who has lost his memory and been adopted by circus folk, is capable of jingling his keys and diving full-body into someone else's subconscious, represented by lovely and thematic dreamscapes. He does this to solve crimes. Sometimes he takes along a handsome doctor who seems like he might know more than he's letting on, by literally tying their hands together with a red string.

Also, when they do this, they get gorgeous steampunk magical girl costume changes, complete with the cutest little pony nub you've ever seen.

This show can be stunningly beautiful. It knows how to manifest dream logic eerily well. Most of these cognitions are gorgeous, and many are done with primarily practical effects, like it's a stage play. ...And it's good it relies on that so much, because the CG it has is kinda cheap and terrible! So, yeah.

(Side note for the DMBJ fans: This is directed by the same guy who directed Sand Sea, which I assume is related to how this both is a visual treat and completely falls apart on the back end.)

The reason I'm a bit surprised that this hasn't taken off more among the creative set is what a great piece of worldbuilding this Psych-diving is. These boys (and, once, the girl) get to short-term manifest bodily in someone else's materialized mental state, where the person whose brain they’re in neither controls the experience nor remembers what happened after it’s done. Were you writing weird Arthur/Eames fic a decade ago? I got a new best thing for you. Can you say freaky dream sex? Because I can.

The base premise should be more than enough to get your gears going. Come ready to get weird with it. There's so much potential here, and so much of that potential is incredibly gay and wearing impeccably tailored suits.

2. Your friendly neighborhood circus family

As I mentioned before, Jiang Shuo lucks into the best possible fate that can befall an amnesiac: being picked up by carnies.

The troupe includes Ventriloquist Man, Really Big Dude, One-Eyed Acrobat, Other Acrobat, Cheerful Fat Girl, Boy Who Looks Like A Kid But Is Actually Played By An Adult So I'm Not Exactly Sure How Old The Character Himself Is Supposed To Be, and Silver Fox Circus Dad, who manages the whole crew. They're a ragtag bunch of performers who all live together in this cute little compound in some very nice slums, and sometimes they open the gates to their lavish compound and put on a circus show for all the common people!

Now: You know this is not going to be the wokest, most sensitive portrayal of body differences, because of course it isn't. But damn, it's pretty not-bad. The show treats all the circus members as valuable people worthy of affection, whose (occasionally exasperating) quirks are no more or less exhausting than those of the non-circus weirdos in the rest of the supporting cast.

I was half-expecting them to disappear after the first arc, but no! They’re a constant fixture through the show! They’re mostly there to support the show’s more comedic moments, but some of them get wrapped up in more emotional plotlines as well. And every now and then you get to see them actually do their circus shit, which is great.

I will admit that my fondness for them is related to how much I generally love fictional Freaks — you know, misfits who have banded together because society considers them unacceptably weird, but together their weirdnesses make them strong. When you find them, they’re usually the bad guys (e.g., the Gung-Ho Guns from Trigun, the Scorpion crew from Word of Honor) whose freak statuses make them formidable and occasionally sympathetic antagonists. But not so here! The Psych-Hunter Family Circus is good guy support all the way through to the final episode.

I know "found family" is a term that suffers from overuse, but that's the best way to describe what's happening here -- really, it's a family that's already found itself even before the show starts, and now they all live together as an unconventional collective of astonishingly flexible people. How did they find one another? Doesn't matter! What matters is that they all love and would do anything for their newest member, and they think it's great when he comes home with his attractive rich friends, who often arrive bringing snacks, which is really the best use for rich people, if you think about it.

3. Two hands, one ring

Now, if you've seen the series already, you know the moment I'm talking about. But if you haven't (and, statistically, you haven't), know that what I mean is the relationship between these two losers.

Together, Qin Yiheng and Jiang Shuo form the emotional core of the series. They're both drawn to one another because of mysterious circumstances that have started to align. Jiang Shuo's memory is missing, Qin Yiheng's dad has vanished, and all signs point to those absences as having something to do with one another.

Very early in the show, we see Qin Yiheng pull a "come with me if you want to live" on Jiang Shuo, giving the impression that he knows just what's going on in this crazy city. Except, no, he doesn't. Or does he? No, we're pretty sure he doesn't. Or he does, but he's forgotten what he knows, if he ever even knew it in the first place. Anyway, time to tie their hands together and jump into someone else's brain!

I'd say they're in love, but that's not quite it. Dr. Qin Yiheng, high-class homosexual, is in love with Jiang Shuo to the point where he's about to murder someone (possibly Jiang Shuo himself) out of frustration about it. Jiang Shuo, on the other hand, is much more sticking his fingers in his ears and going LA LA LA YOU CAN'T CATCH ME GAY THOUGHTS while trying get a girlfriend in an effort to pretend that all the shit they get up to together isn't tremendously romantic.

That is, until the scene that leads to the which-hand ring guessing game, at which point the burden of their relationship falls on Jiang Shuo (and the Inception parallels get unignorable) for exactly as long as the show will allow it to, before it freaks out and has to add another girl love interest just to make sure all the homos got no'd.

It's not textually gay, because seriously, have you met Chinese television? But it's pretty gay. Or, rather, I think Liu Dongqin (Qin Yiheng) is playing his character as a dedicated homosexual on purpose, and Hou Minghao (Jiang Shuo) is just ... kinda like that? I mean, everything I’ve seen him in, he gets real dreamy-eyed around strong men who pay close attention to him. Maybe it's just his thing as an actor. I'm not judging.

However, the main cast isn't just the two of them. One of the things that led me to this show was the promise of an OT3. And does it deliver on that promise?

Well ... sorta.

Qin Yiheng, Jiang Shuo, and Yuan Muqing are a pretty standard MFM not-love-triangle trio of Male Bestie, Main Guy, and Girlfriend (respectively). There's about five seconds at the beginning of the series where it looks like Yuan Muqing might be into Qin Yiheng, but no, that evaporates almost instantly and is never spoken of again -- and with it disappears most of their interactions with one another, period. So it's less an OT3, and more a case of bisexual cutiepie Jiang Shuo getting both a boyfriend and a girlfriend in a world where censorship will only let the latter relationship exist textually.

But damn if these boys aren't made for one another. Sure, there's a level of conscious comical queerbaiting to it -- I mean, there's straight-up an "only one bed" moment, so you know the show isn't stumbling into rainbow territory on accident. No matter how sexual or nonsexual or whatever you read it as, though, their dynamic is the spine that holds the story together. Really, it's almost sad how often the relationships are set parallel to one another, because when you do that, it becomes obvious how intense Jiang Shuo's bond with Qin Yiheng is, and how largely lackluster and comphet most of his canon romance with Yuan Muqing is by comparison.

Like so.

sidebar: The Girl

I am not going to go into a full-throated defense of The Girl this time, as I am wont to do, mostly because I think Yuan Muqing is full of potential in concept but so badly executed that there's really no hope for her. Her entire personality is whatever they need her to be in any particular scene. It's just that once in a while, what they need her to be is completely insane -- like, seeing-things-that-aren't-there insane -- and it's so great that it makes me mad! She could have been like this all the time! But noooooo

As it is, she has a perfunctory canonical romance with Jiang Shuo that's about as endgame as anything is capable of being (see point 5), and it actually gets pretty cute when it finally gets to the point where it's not just awkward obligation! But alas, it only does that so late in the series that it's not even worth it getting invested in it.

She is a creation of the show. She has no novel counterpart. Her entire function in the drama is to un-gay the dynamic between the boys. You can tell that she was initially supposed to have a different role -- to be the muscle of this trio -- but the narrative forgets pretty quickly that she's got that skill set, and she regresses to being The Girl. She makes dumb decisions that forward the plot. She gets put into danger whenever it's convenient. She demands Jiang Shuo do manly things for her because that’s what a girl is supposed to do, I guess? And then there are moments where she’s cool and crazy and it’s awesome! But they never last.

So if you are going to watch this, be prepared for the fact that the female lead is badly written to the point of frustration. I feel her actor is doing the absolutely best with what she's got; the problem is that what she's got is pretty crappy. Still, Muqing gets some pretty charming moments here and there, and I think it's worth hanging onto those and imagining the character she could have been, if the writers had cared just a little more, or even at all.

4. Powerfully surreal worldbuilding

I'm not even talking about the way people's psyches are structured according to dream logic -- the "normal" waking world is almost equally bizarre. The story takes place in sort of the real world c. 1930, except that a lot of things are off. For example, Japan and England are real locations, but China kinda isn't -- instead, the show takes place in a Shanghai-like city-state run by this moustachioed generalissimo with a faux Latin American dictator aesthetic. The place has its own flag and government and police force (where all the cops have coordinating surnames) and diplomatic relationships with other countries, so it’s clearly its own thing. But what that thing is? What it’s even called? Look, don’t worry about it. Nobody else is worried, so you shouldn’t be either.

You will, at every point in the series, be wondering if the show is trying to telegraph to you that Something's Not Quite Right Here, or if it's just making weird decisions for the sake of artsy weirdness. But don't worry -- there's absolutely no way to tell the difference between the two! Just roll with it.

There's a weird mix of universe rules happening throughout, where everything is mostly period-appropriate for a while, and then somebody builds a clock with levitating parts, or causes someone else to have very specific memory loss — or, again, swings some coins in front of a person’s face and gains the ability to treat their subconscious like a VR amusement park.

You can sort of reconstruct the evolution of this weirdness: The book has actual factual ghosts in it. Well, that’s fine for books, but TV isn’t allowed to have ghosts. But TV can have people who imagine ghosts, so long as it’s all in their heads. Okay, but you know jumping bodily into those imaginations isn’t actually a thing real people can do, right? Well, then let’s make it scientific. How can that be scientific? I don't know, it’s psychiatry. I don’t think that’s psychiatry. Look, it could be. Well, it’s definitely not psychiatry in 1930s Shanghai, and that’s the set we’re allowed to film on. Okay, what if it weren’t actually Shanghai? What if it weren’t actually 1930? What if all of this were at best a weird approximation of the period that adheres to no rules except the ones we want?

Once you’ve thought that, the sky’s the limit.

The show has a very inconsistent grasp on reality, and I am listing that as a pro instead of a con because I am choosing to embrace it as a deliberate choice rather than assume it’s the result of craven incompetence. There's something to be said, though, for how pervasively inconsistent it is. It'd be one thing if there were just a few plot holes here and there (and there are), but this is more along the lines of: We woke up in a mysterious boat and got taken to an island with a giant sea monster skeleton on the shore! What's that all about? Couldn't say! Was it real? Maybe! Moving on!

Let the number of "it's fine! who knows!" comments I've made throughout this rec indicate how much this is the kind of show you just have to roll with. If you are a nitpicker or someone who is troubled by unexplained nonsense, this is not the thing for you. If you love artistic magical realism and high strangeness, you will eat this up with a spoon.

And the lampshade that hangs over all of this worldbuilding is...

5. THE STUPIDEST POSSIBLE ENDING EVER

Okay, usually I am coy about when I think an ending has problems. I am going to drag this one out front and center: Psych-Hunter has an ending so jaw-droppingly, head-clutchingly stupid that I'm actually listing it as a selling point, because it has to be seen to be believed.

When I first watched it, I suspected the show ran out of time or money or something and just had to slap together the quickest possible ending ever. But no! This is the ending they meant! If you go back to the rest of the series, you can see that this is what they were (kinda) setting up the whole time! They just set it up so poorly and decided to make the twist hit at such a late point that not only is it complete nonsense, it actually renders moot the entire emotional stakes of the show! Absolutely incredible!

Now, as I've said before in other places, I don't begrudge the actual twist itself. I mean, it's stupid on its face, but I think they could have done something with it — if they'd had it happen halfway through the series, when the characters would have had time to adjust to the new knowledge. Instead, they slap it on at the last possible moment, when there's no time to have any reaction to it. It's just jarring and baffling, and then the whole thing's over.

I've seen lots of people say "season 2 when???" Season 2 never, friends. There was never going to be a season 2. The only reason you think this was an even remotely acceptable narrative move was that you were assuming that this would be the midpoint, not the end. You're having the same reaction I did, only I can tell this was always meant to be their spectacular dismount.

(To me, it's clear what happened: They J.J. Abramsed themselves into a cool premise for a mystery with no idea how to solve it, hoping they'd figure it out along the way. When they got to the end and still hadn't figured it out, they simply ... opted out of solving it.)

Now, if you want a normal viewing experience out of this show, watch to the end of the next-to-last episode, close your browser window, and have imagination adventures about how you think all the mysteries should resolve. But you're not going to. You are going to continue on to that last episode, and you are going to realize that nothing I could have said here could possibly have prepared you for this. And somewhere, I am going to feel the urge to cackle wickedly and not even know why. Except I'll know why. We'll both know why.

Want to watch this hot mess?

That baby's an iQiyi exclusive! But you can watch the first episode on YouTube, if you feel like getting a taste that way.

Look, I know I may have spoiled my pitch somewhat with that last selling point. After all, why would you bother watching a series if you know it has a shit ending?

I refute your objection thus: Knowing it has a shit ending changes the whole game, because it removes the feeling of betrayal that hits upon your discovering that the ending isn’t what you wanted. You know that already now, so there can be no betrayal. The ending goes from being an unpleasant surprise to being exactly the unexpected thing that you expected. With that in mind, you can dive right in (ha ha) knowing that you’ll never get the closure you crave, and therefore whatever you make up along the way is perfectly valid.

This is obviously a turnoff if you prefer shows that are like seeing someone start a magic trick, perform it without breaking a sweat, and walk off calmly, leaving you wondering how on earth they accomplished such an amazing thing. Think of this more as someone starting a magic trick, accidentally letting the rabbit fall out of their hat, saying “I meant to do that!” like thirty times, and suddenly vanishing through a trapdoor, leaving you wondering what the trick was even supposed to be in the first place — but they were really good-looking and well-dressed, so at least whatever they were doing was nice to look at while it was happening.

See? They're having fun.

#psych-hunter #心宅猎人 #house haunters #i made this #rec post #please watch this and then write more fic for it #I have a very selfish agenda here

28 notes · View notes