The Morbids
by BONZO, HSM Editor
Some new neighbors are moving into the Home neighborhood, and you’ll have a chance to be one of them with some amazing creepy costumes.
The Morbids are a new series of outfits for your avatars from nDreams, and if you know nDreams by now, you know they have something very off-the-wall in store for you. These outfits are very surreal and reminiscent of the creepy innocent design of Tim Burton, Brothers Quay, Mark Ryden, and a little Charles Adams.
There’s just something not right about these avatars. Many artists have taken the Victorian Gothic theme and other seemingly innocent concepts and skewed them to a sinister perspective, and — as the name states — make them a bit morbid. Among them you have a china doll, a sad clown, a plague doctor and a scarecrow. Sounds innocent enough, right? Well, think again.
The china doll looks anything but innocent. In a pale glossy finish to her skin, she appears as lifeless as an antique and tells a story of experience despite the muted lifelessness. Her face is cracked, she wears a ball mask and a Victorian party dress, but her expression is anything but festive. There is no smile on those lips, but the cracks which resemble scars stretch a false smile from ear to ear. The negative space hinted by the paleness of the skin, and the darkness of the mask and scars outline an optical illusion of a skull.
Plague doctors wore hollowed-out masks with a long beak, in which they placed herbs they believed (in the time of their limited medical expertise) to have curative benefits which would prevent them from being infected by the plague which wiped out a large portion of the European population. The creepy factor of the history behind it is enough to send chills down your spine, but the look itself is even more ominous. Imagine being treated by someone wearing that mask next time you get sick?
The clown looks innocent enough, at first. Until you see the hollowed-out sockets where eyes are meant to be. On closer inspection, this is another once-innocent bisque doll which has now been turned into some empty vessel for your avatar to take over. There is a subtler morbidness to the two female avatars, beyond the obvious anomalies. The figures themselves are mature, endowed, and yet they are draped in attire which makes them seem childlike. Much as adults wearing children’s clothing. That juxtaposition adds a different level of deviancy which heightens the eeriness of their aesthetics.
The scarecrow is a costume that is almost a staple of Halloween. And with good reason: Halloween itself is a harvest holiday. The practical approach of the scarecrow as a tool to dissuade vermin from ravaging the crops grew into it’s own evolving myth. Giving the lifeless dummy a history and an ever changing story that is not restrictive to a specific origin. The scarecrow itself can be both innocent and sinister, depending on who exactly gives the scarecrow life and for what reason.
The nDreams scarecrow is not the creepiest scarecrow I have ever seen designed, but it comes very close. This scarecrow ins’t just a straw head: the feet and hands are roots, giving this character an origin from beneath the Earth itself. The hat is unique, which resembles an Asian conical hat, often called a rice paddy hat. The straw hat is a staple nearly as old as the scarecrow itself, but I personally have never seen this design used before which gives the character an interesting non native twist, but not distinctly from anywhere specific. The hollowed eyes and stitched-smile mouth really give the sack head life, but not any innocence or benevolence.
The characters can stand on their own, and somehow fit together. They come in a few variations of colors, and in a very specific twist which is really quite brilliant in its simplicity. HSM’s Godzprototype just wrote a very interesting wishlist article about shadow companions — but nDreams makes you the shadow. The brilliance is you can be any of these characters yourself in your choice of lighter or darker color, or be their shadow in a silhouette form, completely blacked-out and unaffected by light. The effect it creates is that it makes you stand out more by visually making you a negative space in any surrounding, or nearly invisible in the darkest spaces.
The horror film genre has existed for nearly a century, and the scariest, most suspenseful moments were usually created by the unknown. The indiscernible shadows silhouetted in the walls from an unknown creature let your imagination try to figure out just what it was you were seeing. When I watched these horror films, even as a child I was more frightened by what I couldn’t see then I was when the creature was finally revealed. More often than not the creature ended up being a disappointment, because it grounded the creature into a real tangible form. When it is only a shadow, something you can’t quite see or grasp, it becomes more frightening.
The only thing which was a little more scary, or at least stayed with you after you saw it, were those things or creatures which changed how you looked at the innocent things you never distrusted. Stephen King has, for life, ruined clowns for me; I can never see clowns the same again. I am not a coulrophobe, but since I read It and subsequently watched the movie, I have not seen clowns the same. And while the creepy dolls thing has been done a lot, I am impressed with how well nDreams did with their take on them.
The Morbids are creepy. They left me with an eerie feeling, and as much as I like the designs of the textured versions of these characters, I am vastly more impressed with the simple blacked out silhouettes of these characters.
October 17th, 2012 by BONZO | 4 comments
BONZO is an editor and artist for HomeStation Magazine.
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Artistically, these look great. The China Doll outfit reminds me of a short animated French (I think) film called Alma for some reason, check it out here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=irbFBgI0jhM#
The silhouette idea is cool too, but probably ruined by having a big, colourful name tag above it. I know these aren’t officially part of nDreams Savage Manor, but I think machinimists will get a lot out of the two things when they stick em together.
Awesome! Yes I will be looking into what to do for sure. So far as the name tags go turn them off. Makes for a very interesting way of looking at Home. I haven’t had them on for a over a year now.
Yeah I’ve had mine off since I can remember, or do you mean EVERYONE’S name? Coz that would be weird, like playing GTA without the GPS compass on!
Well, I mean everyones name. You can see people you know in your XMB. So when you meet, you know who your with.
That is just easier for me to film and running through all that nonsense everytime you want to film, it just makes things tons easier.
When you want to meet someone you might turn them on then. But I see no ones name. Try it KrazyFace.