Sunday, April 3, 2011

General Jack Ripper

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General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) was the paranoid general in Stanley Kubrik's Dr. Strangelove.  The movie was shot in black and white.  There's one amazing scene where General Ripper is explaining to the RAF liaison, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) that he "can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."  As he says this, he's leaning back in the darkness puffing on a cigar.

So I made this image.  It was a lot easier than I expected.  I used a screenshot of the movie as a reference.  Every shading was pure black.  Everything not shading was made a dark gray.  There was a lot of trust involved.  I had to trust that these bizarre shapes would form the image I was going for once finished.  As I was making it, each shape just looked . . .  weird.  But put together, they created General Ripper as I had desired.  This one was relatively quick, took about two hours.

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