While things have been a mess between the state of the world and personal life, I've still been spending as much free time between work as I could to finish the remaining scenes for my God Machine animation. I finished one of the more significant dialogue scenes for the film back in May. One of the many influences on the original plotline for The God Machine was old Japanese folk tales, most specifically how they were adapted in 60s horror films like Kwaidan and The Ghost of Yotsuya. That specific influence shows in the sequences involving the chancellor's priest henchman and the subsequent scenes of the chancellor experiencing paranoid hallucinations of the priest's ghost. In the 2021 Egregore workprint this sequence was just a few lines of text, now it's close to being fully sequenced. For more posts about the making of my animation: - My Twitter (where I sometimes give live updates on the film’s production) - Trailer - Violent Reincarnation - Atrocity Driver - The Putrified Ascetic - Cemetery Metamorphosis - March 2022 Production Log (Has a crap-ton of images from the film) - Atrocities of War Painting - Part-Time Death (Dialogue Scene) - Prologue Scene - Bits of the animation’s soundtrack

A recently finished painting for one of the video collage montages in my independent horror animation, The God Machine. This painting was made for the film's climactic atrocities of war montage sequence. Credit to noxaevum_ on Instagram for generously letting me use one of her photos as a reference in the painting. For more posts about the making of my animation: - Trailer - Violent Reincarnation - Atrocity Driver - The Putrified Ascetic - Cemetery Metamorphosis - March 2022 Production Log (Has a crap-ton of images from the film) - Part-Time Death (Dialogue Scene) - Prologue Scene - Bits of the animation’s soundtrack - My Twitter (where I sometimes give live updates on the film’s production)

Good morning, or evening, or whenever you read this. It’s March 13, 2022 and it’s a Sunday. David Lynch weather report impressions don’t quite read out in text form, this’ll just confuse anyone who reads this post in the future. Forget I just wrote that. Back throughout 2021 I’ve been posting a handful of production logs on here about this animation I’ve been working on called The God Machine. It’s basically a lot of the aesthetic junk I’m fascinated by clumped up into one large beast. If you found this blog through any of the horror-related posts I’ve done lately there is a high chance that what brought you here has been in some way or another either referenced or played some sort of direct inspiration in this animation. I originally started making it with the intent of it being a short, but over time it naturally grew until it finally hit its (as of writing this post) current hour-long run-time. And even then I still have a lot left to work on it. There’s not that much exciting stuff you can write out about the process of doing an animation by yourself. It’s a very monotonous process that builds up to really what’s best expressed in the art itself. Variants of this film were basically stirring in my creative stream for years and if there was any time to sink countless hours into a bit of art that requires total solitude to make it, it would be these past several years. Production has slowed down slightly the past month with inevitable burnout, but I’ve kept work on it going through other means like recording music queues for certain scenes and doing video collages for it. I’ll post the music later, but these are some of the more recent shots I’ve drawn for the film. I’m not quite sure what else to write here, it’s same-old for me but it’ll likely be a first impression of this film for many. The pressure! Linked below are a handful of posts with previously shared segments of my animation. If any of what you see here catches your interest please check out what I linked below and consider following my Twitter if you’re active on there: - Trailer - Violent Reincarnation - Atrocity Driver - The Putrified Ascetic - Cemetery Metamorphosis - Part-Time Death (Dialogue Scene) - Prologue Scene - My Twitter (where I sometimes give live updates on the film’s production)

(EPILEPSY WARNING - Contains flashing lights) A longer excerpt of one of the film's early dialogue scenes, further demonstrating the backmasked dialogue technique I use throughout the film. Many of the subjects discussed in the film are influenced by observations I made when watching various experimental films. The black sinew anomaly for example came from an observation I made while watching Hollis Frampton's "Magellan: At the Gates of Death, Part I: The Red Gate I, 0" where I noted the cadavers in the film resembled the texture of burnt wood. Image credit to @hermetictardigrade for a photo they got at an anatomy museum that I collaged in a later shot. - Trailer - Violent Reincarnation - Atrocity Driver - The Putrified Ascetic - Prologue Scene - My Twitter (where I sometimes give live updates on the film’s production)

While it seems that the film itself will no longer be permitted on YouTube, I decided that I would still upload The God Machine’s trailer to keep some representation for it on my channel. The God Machine is still an ongoing production, once it is finished I plan to upload it to Vimeo. While a more niche site, Vimeo is catered to artists and doesn't have the same glaring flaws in the user experience for independent filmmakers as YouTube does. The following text is my short synopsis of the movie: A mysterious biomechanical phantom washes ashore on the ruins of an island that doubles as a mining facility. Many of the workers are already dead, with only a few left surviving. The phantom possesses one of the already dead miners to take a humanoid form, setting out on a mission to find an equally enigmatic figure that it calls the God Machine, which it believes to be hiding somewhere in the island. A complex interlinking of themes related to Bataillian philosophy, Japanese body horror, cyberpunk, and Russian necrorealist film, The God Machine is an animation that explores the underlying theme in these seemingly unrelated subgenera of existential enlightenment being experienced through the destruction of mortal senses. Decaying ascetics, dictators haunted by the ghosts of past atrocities, bizarre bodily transformations into incomprehensible holy forms, and the enlightenment of death. Animated independently in solitude throughout 2020 into 2021, the film also reflects the social and political turmoils that its production coincided with, resulting in a gloom-riddled apocalyptic atmosphere. - Violent Reincarnation - Atrocity Driver - The Putrified Ascetic - Prologue Scene - My Twitter (where I sometimes give live updates on the film’s production)

(EPILEPSY WARNING - Contains flashing lights) A segment from the opening of The God Machine. It starts off upfront about the multi-media aspects of the film, digital animation that was originally drawn on paper mixed with physical sculpture and analog CRT video synth effects (filmed fresh off the TV screen). The sculpture was one I specially made for the film, using an old ashtray I found as a base where I built the rest of it around that, using the ashtray’s flipping lid as a way to animate the sculpture. With the process of covering it in plaster gauze and painting, it took around 3 days to make the sculpture.

- Violent Reincarnation - Atrocity Driver - The Putrified Ascetic - My Twitter (where I sometimes give live updates on the film’s production)

(EPILEPSY WARNING - Contains flashing lights) A short clip from my upcoming horror animation, The God Machine. This clip shows the unwilling resurrection of the film’s protagonist, Prometheus. Some other clips from the film can be found below:

- Atrocity Driver - The Putrified Ascetic - My Twitter (where I sometimes give live updates on the film’s production)

Incoming post with a shitton of images from The God Machine, my upcoming surrealist guro body horror animation thing that’s coming soonish to an internet near you. My original plan was to have the film completed by April of 2021. I set that completion date back in 2020 though and I forgot that I can be really picky when it comes to my own art. So I’m still going at finishing what’s left to be done of the film. I’m still aiming for a completion date that’s this year. Given all the art that has already been made and how the currently finished scenes have been paced, I’d hazard a guess to say that it’ll be roughly feature-length. Not much I can say on the production aside from the fact that the film will be a sort of mixed-media project, utilizing video synths and some live action footage. I might make a huge photo collage diagram for it soon that I’ll photograph for one of the scenes. Also, when I do have it completed, its release will coincide with me dumping all the original music I recorded for it on Bandcamp. In the meanwhile, I’ll get back to musing over the songs that I wish I could use in this film. Into The Light by JG Thirlwell was one I was eyeballing since I heard it in the adaption of The Atrocity Exhibition. Der Kuss from Einstürzende Neubauten’s Haus der Lüge was a more recent one that just came to my attention, and god is there one scene that would be perfect for the guitar section of that track. Unfortunately I can’t by any means Tarantino my way through this stuff since copyright is a thing. It’s foiled quite a plenty of great would-be film soundtracks. Preview clips of the animation: Atrocity Driver - https://eyeodyssey.tumblr.com/post/649104480966770688 The Putrified Ascetic - https://eyeodyssey.tumblr.com/post/640877556364705792 More info and production updates on the film can be found on my Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheEyeOdyssey

(EPILEPSY WARNING - Contains flashing lights) "Atrocity Driver" from my upcoming surrealist horror animation The God Machine. This is a sample of the film's more "infernal" scenes, the hellish vibe of parts like this being a representation of the dehumanizing nature of capitalism. The tone of the film is abrasive, with the violent visuals and morbid historic references. My intentions with the film aren't to shock or offend. They tie in with an underlining humanitarian anti-capitalist narrative and an homage to the surrealist origins of guro. I intend to write an essay down the line about the general concepts behind the film, both politically and in the context of surrealist philosophy. My intentions with The God Machine are basically to capture a certain period of political turmoil and distress in America with the dangerous slope to nationalism and fascism, to distill the mental state of constant fear and uncertainty. It’s a state of apocalypse, how dehumanization can lead to apocalypse.

A frame-by-frame demonstration of how I use distorted photography to bridge the drawings together. I did this effect by photographing the images through a glass wine flask. More info and production updates on the film can be found on my Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheEyeOdyssey

(EPILEPSY WARNING - Contains flashing lights) The Putrified Ascetic: An abridged version of one of the scenes from my upcoming animation, The God Machine. The film has English subtitles with the spoken dialogue being in a nonexistent language comprised of backmasked dialogue. This scene in the film is heavily inspired by the theory of the limit-experience, where enlightenment is likened to the destruction and transgression of the senses. In theory, death could be taken as a morbid form of enlightenment in that context. In The God Machine, the undead haunt the living as rotting ascetics who were corrupted by their enlightenment. The idea of the putrified ascetic itself came from an essay I heard a while back that compared Bataille's philosophy with the film Hellraiser. I forgot the exact context, but it was something like this: Limit-experiences are made possible through any potential overwhelming and transgression of the senses, no matter what that sort of transgression is. To that degree, the way ascetics deprive themselves and seek enlightenment through suffering can be likened to a limit-experience. More info and production updates on the film can be found on my Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheEyeOdyssey https://twitter.com/i/events/1312653220502810624 I will mirror additional production logs on here down the line.

YouTube - Letterboxd Happy to finally say that my new film, The Death Of A Home, is on YouTube! The Death Of A Home is an experimental documentary about our personal experiences with the gentrification of Atlanta. This documentary specifically concerns our second gentrification in a two-year span with the current rise of emptying out affordable apartments to reconfigure them as tourist Air BNBs and pricier condominiums. It was the second time we were gentrified in a two-year span. This documentary is built up of footage I captured of our daily life during that second gentrification. I've been working on this documentary in periods since late-2018. Most of that time was spent figuring out how exactly to contextualize and sequence all the footage, giving a mental and emotional sense of comprehensiveness that matches the events as they happened. It's odd feeling to post a movie this directly personal, but I've been told over the years that this was a film that had to be finished and released. Most of the documentaries in this style I would make are usually of more casual lives, like with Tree People, or positive events as respectful tributes, like Moonlight Tunnel and the Polymorph Bodyshop Documentary. This film is about as direct I could get when it comes to capturing capitalist alienation on film. The sense of being dehumanized and demoralized as a statistic or product. It's grim.

A selection of finalized stills from The God Machine. I would draw the dynamic poses of all the shots first and then animate around them. The longest part of it is finding just the right sort of visual compositions and layouts for each scene. The last drawing is a finalized design model sheet for one of the characters in the film.

It’s been a while since I posted here. Over a month actually. Things have been somewhat hectic lately, a lot of stuff has been happening in personal life. Some of it has been good, some of it has been 2020. Anyway, I’ve come back with a little sample of what I’ve been working on in the meantime with this segment from my guro animation The God Machine. The timing may be altered somewhat in the final product and there might be music to accompany the sound design, but overall this is pretty close to the finalized version. This clip demonstrates how I’ll use flashing images in the film. The flashes here act as subliminal reveals of the real identities of some of the characters, in the film some of the characters are parts of the titular God Machine possessing corpses, resurrecting them in the process to hide itself. I also snuck in a somewhat mangled version of a Beckett quote in one of the flashing images. It also has just around the end a little bit of one of my new techniques in filmmaking, video synths. Some video synths output pure signals while others take samples that are fed in (I.E. video signals from a camera, DVD player, VHS player, etc) and distort them. I’m using the latter. It’s a lot like noise music recording in that way, you have the simple bases and it’s on the manual end of the user to engineer and mix the visuals together. You can get a bit of an idea of what they’re like in full force with the music video for SPK’s Slogun, which involved the use of a really early video synth model from the 1970s. Some additional screencaps below are included of some other video synth shots.

Box Men and Winter Sports are publicly available again

In light of how the film festival scene has been affected by COVID-19, I’ve decided to make Box Men and Winter Sports available for public viewing again for an indefinite amount of time. Box Men: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vekSLuZOVYM - https://vimeo.com/372162379 - https://letterboxd.com/film/box-men/ Winter Sports: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmHAcjL5EiM - https://letterboxd.com/film/winter-sports-2020/ A playlist of nearly all my current films (short and featurette length) can be seen here: - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnlHE1xXwzCALW6QbofhMZTrF1QXCc598

The main reason I had these shorts private was so that they’d be eligible for festivals, but many festivals have delayed their deadlines and dates to 2021 and later due to the pandemic. I don’t want to keep the movies vaulted in that time, so it’s now possible to see them on YouTube and Vimeo again. I’ve realized that things had been somewhat frenetic on the availability of the films, being public and then private just to be made public again, etc. Apologies for any confusion. There’s been a lot of personal discussion lately on where things should go in regards to upcoming film productions and personal progression as a filmmaker, and the odds are shifting constantly with the pandemic. The version of Winter Sports I uploaded is like a director’s cut variant. The edit for film festivals has a public domain theater organ track while the linked edit has the original music the film was edited to, a song from Tom Waits’ The Black Rider. Music copyrights be damned, don’t tattle on me. The drone track following it was a really old ambient recording I made of an inactive online radio station, capturing the sound of raw data transmitting with nothing in it.

New music LP is out. YouTube - Bandcamp - RateYourMusic Recordings in isolation. Mostly field recordings with shortwave improvisation and some minimal synth keyboard sections. Track 11 is an industrial field recording reinterpretation of Frankie Teardrop by Suicide. The album art is an archival photo of a pop-up surrealist bathroom gallery. Tracklist and timestamps: 1. Leather Machine - 00:00 2. Decade - 04:34 3. Fractions - 10:00 4. Core - 11:20 5. Was It Screaming? -14:30 6. Reciever - 18:08 7. Air In Water - 22:10 8. Anatomy Of - 27:34 9. Last Mission of the Ultramarines - 29:34 10. Message - 33:56 11. Frankie Teardrop - 34:52

I spent most of the day painting and filming the opening titles for my quarantine film, Winter Sports. I wrote the screenplay of the film over the span of a morning earlier this month and started piecing stuff together in the meanwhile. It’ll be a short silent movie reminiscent absurdist dark comedy. The backgrounds were hand-painted canvases laid out on the floor while the titles themselves were painted onto a transparent plastic folder and held in front of the camera's lens. While I'll usually just superimpose the title in post-production, I felt like giving this short a more kind of primitive feeling to it. I intentionally bend the plastic folders while filming, emphasizing light refraction while also distorting the titles subtly. The placeholder music of the short is the song Russian Dance from the Tom Waits soundtrack to The Black Rider, to emphasize the bleak vaudeville-like tone of the movie. With the experimental films this particular short was inspired from, the filmmakers would graffiti the titles of their shorts onto the walls of abandoned concrete buildings. This wasn't just exclusive to the opening and closing titles, but also dialogue title cards (the films were largely silent shorts with one exception). Suppose i should mention in regards to the color photos: Outside of brushes I also used a carriage bolt and a lump of clay in the painting process. I used the bolt to scratch textures into the canvas while I used the clay to stamp certain color patterns into the ground and sky in the first painting.

March 14th - 2020 Reuploaded from my Instagram (eyeodyssey_kearns).