Gothtober Day 21: Mike Rainey!

 
Visit www.gothtober.com and click on DAY 21 to watch a strange, fantastic and beautiful little film by Mike Rainey!
Listen to the strings ebb and flow as a mysterious individual carves a small jack o’ lantern. What was once a stationery and unmoving object is sent out into the world by its creator.
Here is a statement from the artist regarding this work:

“Many people face monsters every day, monsters who wear the faces of respectable, mainstream people. Monsters who diminish life, who steal joy and pollute existence because they feel entitled to take, without empathy or consideration.

Halloween is a time when we can take away the power of monsters by naming them, looking at them, mocking them. I hope this piece can in some small way help to diminish the power of monsters.”

Find out more about Mike Rainey  here! 

DIY Mobile of Madness • Nockels DAY 18

arachneNormally, to come in contact with the characters featured for Gothtober DAY 18, you’d have to do stuff like drown in some water, go climbing up snowy precipices, join a cult, or go wandering alone through vampiric-laden parts of Thailand. But Christine Nockels made it really easy for you, you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything. They’re all right here for you to download, color, cut and assemble into a mishmash of terrifying creatures who have probably never met each other until now!

One of these creatures is a mythical amphibious monster inhabiting inland waterways. Still another is a nocturnal female spirit of Southeast Asian folklore.

There are no less than EIGHT wonderfully drawn incarnations of beautifully creepy and odd beings in the collection.

If you are wondering “How can I make a mobile, I don’t understand!” It just so happens we’ve got just what you need right here on the good ol’ internet! Follow these instructions and you should have a pretty lovely terrifying mobile at the end of your efforts.

Carl C. Jung was one of the first psychologists to realize how beneficial coloring is for the human mind. Coloring is like a type of meditation, forcing you to hone your attention down to the task of filling in selected spaces with color, taking your mind off of lots of other things, including stressful things. We’re glad Christine chose a series of horrible legendary bloodthirsty beings for you to color, otherwise you might get TOO relaxed this Halloween, and we wouldn’t want that.

 

Euro Monster Smash from Frankfurt, Germany for DAY 13

Screen Shot 2015-10-13 at 12.29.21 AM Screen Shot 2015-10-13 at 12.27.51 AM

Hold onto your eyeballs, it’s DAY 13 with the Chambers!

Not all that far from Stuttgart is Frankfurt, but wow is Frankfurt far from Gothtober Headquarters in Los Angeles! We’re so excited to offer MORE work from distant lands, a Gothtober family in Germany! We love the internet because it lets art travel here from outer space! Bridging the gap from bratwurst to hot dogs is the miracle of online perseverance, a true international collaboration, we couldn’t be prouder of our International participants!!!

Here is where the Chambers family is sending their art from, it’s out there! Someday we hope to visit!

There are many monsters from mythology you do not want to meet, but we must insist that you meet these. Thought up by the young Nigel and then brought to life with his parents, Christy and Brian, here we have quite a gruesome gallery of beautifully illustrated creatures thoughtfully caged behind your computer screen so that you don’t have to worry about safety. It’s a mixed media treasure trove of droll entertainment.

The Chambers are like the Frankensteins, but instead of using human remains and lightening, they’ve paper puppets and stop motion magic to breathe life into thirteen creations. It’s alive… IT’S ALIVE!!!! 

The Most Dangerous Show on Earth: Gothtober Day 13

The Vampire Ringmaster of The Halloween Circus!

It’s death-defying, it’s stupefying, it’s THE MOST INCREDIBLE SHOW YOU’LL EVER SEE! And it’s all visible by clicking Gothtober Pumpkin #13!!! The Gump Family has done it again with a spectacle you’ll not want to miss this Spooky season!

Michael Gump of BananaBee Lab has wrangled the Gump household and friends into making a marvelous pageant of colorful Halloween Circus display.  You’ll see trained spiders! (I think they’re saying “yummy yummy” is that correct?) You’ll see the Strongest Monster,  you’ll see the funny clowns and SO MUCH MORE!

The master of ceremonies is voiced by the young and amazing Arrow Gump, and you can hear his (also quite amazing) younger sister Pixie in the background providing dynamic fanfare! Daddy Gump can be heard as various characters, and Mama Gump was doing a bit of puppetry here and there.

Joel and JJ Day Departments helped with the camera magic, and Grapejuice helped edit the thing into the fast-paced, action-packed showstopper that it is today.

Apparently, Arrow walked up to his Dad and said “Dad, we’re doing The Halloween Circus this year” and so the project began with all the making and doing that goes along with building a circus! Gotta put up the tents, water the um… crocodiles and get those skeletons and spiders in line! This family really knows how to put on a show.

I hear that Halloween circuses are especially challenging since half of the staff is nocturnal, which is also something that Gothtober has here at the headquarters, a succinct inability to regulate decent circadian rhythms, and such is the life of vampires.  Anyway, go see The Halloween Circus, it’s a rousing success, you can watch it over and over again and it just keeps getting more exciting!

The Gump Family during Halloween of 2011