Dagon

I have found today this fantastic machinima. I absolutely recommend you to watch the best just on page god Vimeo.com in fullscreen mode, because this machinima is made in HD mode. Comment below is from machinima author Lainy Voom.

Dagon - HP Lovecraft from Lainy Voom on Vimeo.

This is a story adapted from Dagon by H.P. Lovecraft (1917).

Content credits are listed at the end of the film, with special mention to the pose creator, Del May. Poses can be found here.

A very big thanks to Carlos, the narrator, for being a great voice artist, and also the easiest person in the world to get along with!

The initial idea for this was to create a film in a noir/comic style using a digital novel format. However, as the film progressed, it took on a life of its own and became more of a traditional film. It is also not nearly as weird as I had initially imagined!

*At the moment, I think the weakest point of the film is the ending, I do like the crazy episode and the walking shots. I will probably go back and redo the end scene at some point, when I figure out what it needs.

Sound was designed from the freesoundproject.org (available under creative commons).
Attribution list here.

Texture credits and linkbacks: (will link when I can get deviant art to work for me again).

The original text for Dagon can be found here.

The Old Gate is open

The Sufi guidance says us to speak only after that, if our words went through three gates. At the firs gate we ask ourselves: “Are our words true?” If yes, we allow them go through. At the second gate we ask ourselves: “Are they necessary?” And at the last gate we ask ourselves: “Are they kind?”

This gate is only one it is old and half-open yet, only the proud towers loom over it. Nevertheless, it does not mean that we could not ask ourselves the same way or similarly as in above mentioned guidance. The shadows are becoming shorter and the gate opens a space, about which I have already written here in a contribution named “Oasis of silent and meditation”.

The sun is rising over the horizon and I am entering under the massive portal and between the massive leaves into Svarga. Struck dumb, I am look up at the sky, nothing has changed here. As if time has stopped here. Einstein’s relativity of time?

And if we remember Aristotle, then we find all his elements here. Earth is presented here in a land and in a rock massif, on which Svarga stands. Water is presented here in the sea, which surrounds Svarga. Water gushes form the fountains on the island, storms and falls in a waterfall and fills up a watering place for the small birds. Air is presented everywhere around and fire burns in the torches or only so free on the ground to light our way or to warm us.

The last element, aether, is difficult to handle. This divine substance, which according to Aristotle makes up the heavenly spheres and heavenly bodies, i.e. planets and stars, is virtual for somebody or real for other. Maybe the central tower makes a magic gate, through which eater enters and fills Svarga.

The sun is going down to the horizon and I have to leave slowly this place with that I will certainly come back sometimes.

Eye of the night.

(SLurl: Svarga)

Changes of time

When I today morning woke up, so my still cloud eyes had only narrowed one’s eyes through a window after my turning of the thin lamellas of the window blind. However, when I made the same procedure in our kitchen, then my look had sighted some big white plain outside. We have been so near to spring and Mother Nature moved it again some small piece back.

The first change has came.

In other time and at other place. Paris dusky due to just coming night hides hundreds and thousands of destinies and stories of the hundreds and thousands of the human beings. This is the story of one woman.

One of the trials of woman is the fear of being old maid. To escape this dreadful doom, young girls used to rush in matrimony with recklessness, which astonishes the beholder; never pausing to remember that the loss of liberty, happiness, and self-respect is poorly repaid by the barren honour of being called “Mrs” instead of “Miss”.

Chantal Harvey

The second change has came.

A mad world. Yes, so such real world seems look like to me. On the other hand, then it comes some nice change in some form of a meeting, some form of some art piece of work, some form of everyday common joys, which we give each other ourselves, or in some form of a glass filled with sun, which is concentrated into juice of the bunches of grapes harvested at some Moravian vineyard. No, the world cannot be mad.

The third change has came.

(Source: YouTube)

My Saturday in Second Life

Can be some interesting on Saturday in Second Life? Yes, maybe it can be. No, maybe it cannot be. My Saturday, 06.03.2010, was broadly boring. There was nothing in SL and thus I have aimlessly flew from a place to another place, till I have found this place, see the pictures below.

To my surprise, I did not know about this place. At the same time, I had it just directly before my nose. But one still walks only on the land and he/she flies to the uplands only that time, when one needs fast to move somewhere, etc.

This oasis of calm and silence has directly invited to some sitting and to meditate. An ecology works also even in Second Life. Actually, I do not know, if it could be realized in our real world.

Just a surprise, and great one, directly on home stage.

Islands of bliss.

Bohemia.

Spring Ball 2010

I am not some fun of the balls in the real world, but sometimes I like the balls in our Bohemia and I go there. It was also the same yesterday. There was cold and dark in our world, but there, there were a lot of beautiful people. I do not know even, maybe I have talked nonsense, but mainly I have danced. And that time NancySweet Kanto was my partner. Just I have had a good time.

Lascaux

Perhaps we painted on our own skin, with ochre and charcoal, long before we painted on stone. In any case, forty thousand years ago, we left painted handprints on the cave walls of Lascaux, Ardennes, Chauvet.

The black pigment used to pain the animals at Lascaux was made of manganese dioxide and ground quartz; and almost half the mixture was calcium phosphate. Calcium phosphate is produced by heating bone four hundred degrees Celsius, then grinding it.

We made our paints from the bones of the animals we painted.

No image forgets this origin.

The future casts its shadow on the past. In this way, first gestures contain everything; they are a kind of map. The first days of military occupation, the conception of a child, seeds and soil.

Grief is desire in its purest distillation. With the first grave – the first time a name was sown in the earth – the invention of memory.

No word forgets this origin.

(Anne Michaels: The Winter Vault)

I have begun to read this book today morning and just this introduction has put me in good mood. The recollections at my loved France have jumped out of my memory. I have not been there for so long time. I have to go there this year.

I have also remembered Lascaux. I was there, but no in this original one, because it is inaccessible for public due to paint damage by carbon dioxide from visitors breathing. In year 1983, a replica of Lascaux was created, so-called Lascaux II. Here, there are two replicas of cave halls from original Lascaux – The Great Hall of Bulls and Painted Gallery.

Even if they are accurate replicas, they look fully fascinating. One asks oneself, how could prehistoric men paint it? And what conditions like, lack of light, only under a shine of an oil lamp, which was found there too.

The picture, which I have attached, does not affect so monumentally as these ones in the cave, but at least you can make some vision about Lascaux. Second possibility is, of course, to visit France. And surprisingly, Lascaux does not miss even in Second Life.

(Source: Wikipedia)