Printing Pandemonium!

A clown that is a dog

HELLo all! Charismatic Mexi-CAN cartoonist extraordinaire GELADAA greets you amicably.

Hope this finds you well.

In this blog post I will show some of the results of my adventures getting into resin 3D printing, talk about the future of "IN HELL" and wax poetic about the concept of "breaking the mold" as an artist... or better yet, making one´s own (mold). The Satanic gesture par excellence.

(I find placing the word "mold" in parenthesis fun since the brackets look a bit like a mold around the word)

So.

I got into 3D modelling, and now, after purchasing a "Mars 5 Ultra" have been learning 3D resin printing as well. The printer is an amazing thing, quite cheap considering how fantastical what it does is: the definitive industrial principle it seems, an all-powerful factory for the future.

The piece I share in this blog-post is the product of a great nexus of techniques and technologies. The software and hardware involved, the materials... so much stuff! I mean the UV-hardening resin by itself is such a cool invention. Zbrush and Maya and other such programs are godly tools, but to produced the finished piece, you have to sand, you have to clean, you have to shake and stir and cut and snap and do so many many different things. I´ve have had to learn so much to get to the figure you see pasted above, on top, of course, of learning to draw, to sculpt, to read and think and develop a creative method. For me, an artist that started with pencil on paper, graduated to digital decades ago and relished the sense of "perfection" that the virtual realm affords... to bring my work back into physical, tangible reality is quite exhilarating, even if I´ve had to bang my head against the muck and mess that comes with the mundane. From thought to line to 3D shape to plastic, JUST... lovely.

A dog that is a god

Ahem.

There is often in people a pride linked to remaining "unimpressed" by things, unimpressed by the world... as if being awed, being moved represented always a defeat. I guess in a sense, it IS a defeat, in the same way being seduced represents a defeat. I think though, that perceiving, understanding, connecting to a sense of sincere wonder, is often no easy feat, doing all that is beyond the means of so many after all. You need a young heart for wonder, a spirit that remains curious and open to change. THAT, my friend, is a rare commodity nowadays. I think THAT is something to brag about.

The distinction between having/cultivating such a spirit and being an "impressionable chump" is perhaps somewhat subtle, but it´s an important distinction. The world really is an impressive and overwhelming spectacle, provided you have a brain able to perceive it.

So I try to be awed and moved by the power of the creative tools at my disposal and strive to be worthy of them.

I invite you to consider the beauty of these things: digital drawing, digital sculpting, digital printing, while looking at my first successful (there where many failures before it) 3D print... There is always room for improvement of course but I´m happy enough with these results:

Now to get to the "breaking the mold" idea I mentioned.

The text, the "secret text" under the figure is a "John Milton/Paradise Lost" quote of course. Readers of "IN HELL" might recognize it as the quote that goes along with Boogie´s momentous birth near the end of the first chapter.

There are many ideas and emotions within this little sculpture, this "netsuke" of mine, a piece I plan to make available to backers in the not too distant future, when the "IN HELL´s" second chapter is brought to Kickstarter... (earlynextyearearlynextyearsorrysorry)

Hopefully all the little production issues that remain will be ironed out completely by then. In any case, I won´t go into all the many ideas latent in the art-toy here, as It would take too long, but I will talk about the featured quote from "Paradise Lost" (for my money the greatest work of art mankind has ever crafted).

I´m going to need your attention in order to successfully explain this.

In the poem, Satan utters the lines while talking to his progeny (that would be "Sin", his daughter and "Death" his son). He is pretty happy with them at the time, I invite you to read the great work in its entirety to discover why:

Fair Daughter, and thou Son and Grandchild both,

High proof ye now have giv'n to be the Race

Of Satan (for I glorie in the name,

Antagonist of Heav'ns Almightie King)

You see, I always thought I might be the first to recognize a certain something in that passage that is profoundly beautiful, let me tell you about it.

The way the possessive, serpentine "S" is isolated in it just at the point of greatest friction between "ANTAGONIST OF HEAVEN" and "ALMIGHTIE KING".

Notice how Satan seems to slyly claim BOTH grand titles in a way, while also recognizing the curious, contradictory spaces he therefore comes to reside in. The prince of darkness STATES that he manages the impossible (to oppose the almighty/heaven´s king) and, in the same breath, claim the title of "almighty king" as his own. Satan is the antagonist of the heaven´s almighty king, and Satan is also the "ANTAGONIST OF HEAVEN" AND the "ALMIGHTY KING". This is a great example of Milton´s famous "many lines in one" dynamic, where there are many active layers in his text, many different things being said, poems within poems so to speak. You feel the English language blossom into a new, alien tongue when he wields it, doing things with it no other person (to my knowledge) has rivaled.

I´m sure you see what I mean. The possessive "´S " the serpent´s ideogram, a symbol that evokes the sound the reptile makes... is there as the very icon of the Satanic, the contentious balancing point of the impossible meaning-equation. Truly, for me, this is the height of culture, the highest point of the highest work. A glorious name if there ever was one. THAT name is the other "subtext" (literally and figuratively) of Boogie´s speech (the other, visible side being the asterisk symbol).

And now, I get to add a cherry on top of that.

You want to know something great? While yours truly no doubt received/inherited this incredible jewel of language from Milton, he, in a way, crafted said jewel thru his perception. You see, Milton, in 1667, published "Heav´ns" not "Heaven´s" in the English of the time. The "S" is crucially NOT isolated in the original, so It may very well be that Milton didn´t intend for the wondrous effect I described above to be part of his original work, or, if he did intend it (phonetically) he couldn´t because of the laws of English at the time, fully realize it (it could be there when spoke out-loud only). I read and recognized the amazing poetic feat described above thinking it was 100% Milton´s while, in fact, it may very well be entirely MINE.

So I included the excerpt in old English, adding an exclamation point, isolating the possessive "S" as one does when writing nowadays and using a bigger font to make my perception discernible to others. My version is a mix of the old and new English.

Language flows from an age to the next, a person to the next, so that I utter Milton´s words, Satan´s words... but HIS words also become mine and, yes, YOURS as well now, friend. Little by little, meaning is, in that way, distilled and transmuted. The serpent, the spiral, God´s active aspect, continues his rebellious movement thru ever shifting new vessels, upwards, upwards, downwards, downwards, crafting new skins for itself, breaking the mold whenever it feels stifled by it... towards ever greater mysteries and adventures.

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