10 20 2004: you know, i never thought i’d see a single thing about our design anywhere near the new yorker, much less packaging for a decaying porn film for a crap director with a cult following. but you know what? that’s okay. i don’t get it at all, but it’s okay.

-pk

10 17 2004: so ever since we launched screenhead last week, denton has been forwarding message after message of people whining, “eeeeew grody. you’re making me puuuuuke. i haaaaaaate that picture,” which was exactly our point. and you know what? it takes a long frigging time to make someone look that nasty.

so here’s how we made the poor guy.

step one: start with a stock photograph of a guy who’s kind of a ‘tater. apologies, whoever he is.

step two: basic retouch to make the skin tones smoother and easier to work with. pluck eyebrows, remove blackheads. yick. funny thing is you can’t really see any difference whatsoever unless you stack it directly on top of the original.

step three: duplicate right eye in three different sections (top lid and brow, eyeball, lower lid and socket), then carefully scale and reshape each piece of the eye into a larger socket (which will be rounder than the original, hence the three sections). erase carefully into the skin tones at the edges of the sections to blend everything together. using a fine brush and four different haircolors, paint in extensions to the existing eyebrow so that it matches the contour of the new socket. realize you have to do it all again and cry a little.

step four: after tears have dried, sample skin on left carefully into a new cheekbone matching the larger eye socket form, extend the eyebrow, remove the original eye and re-shape it into a more bulbous form. realize you’re failing miserably because his eye is being stretched so much it’s getting mushy and cry more.

step five: paint and re-shape eyes until they actually match in scale, scream in exasperation, stomp out of the house, get incredibly drunk at a stupid industrial club that you don’t like anyway because most of the industrial and goth twits these days are so straight off the rack from hot topic, you know? wake up the next morning with a huge hangover, then start rolling that stone up the hill again. paint into the chin area because now his face looks completely out of whack, realize you’ve accidentally erased into the actual chin and screwed it all up again, throw laptop, stamp your little feets, get drunk again (but at a better bar this time), then pass out.

step six: wake up, puke twice, paste on a new chin from the original photograph. go back to bed for two days. refuse to speak to anyone.

step seven: re-shape mouth to be more frog-like, narrow back of neck for that sassy hydroencephalitic look all the chicks dig so much, add shadows around contours, come to your senses and render fake eyeballs in cinema 4D and composite under original eyelids.

final step: add redness, paint veins, add highlights, and generally make his eyes look as large, wet and stupid as you can muster. add shadows under the nose to simulate sunken sockets. stand back, admire your work and go “ew.” after a quick alt from denton (“can you open his mouth a little? he looks entirely too cognizant”), she’s all done and ready to gross your patrons right the hell out. bon appetit!

-pk