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Greetings from Cthulu, who unusually explicitly centres
himself here in this infofile despite in actuality being at
extraordinary arms-length remove from this entire artpack
undertaking for the first time in... well just say, a very long
time: my family went on vacation with me Oct 11 through the end of the
month, and consequently I only have a very nebulous understanding of what
the pack actually contains. Of course, I have hopes and expectations, but
they could well be entirely uncoupled from the realities on the ground at
the end of the month and wouldnt it make me look out-of-touch if I read
the room so poorly? But I digress.
Two years shy of a century ago, the racist writer who coined my handles
phonetic namesake wrote in the essay Supernatural Horror in Literature
that The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest
and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. He was, of course,
speaking of spooky subjects, but I find a fun resonance with his
proclamation and my own unenviable situation here, of needing to get up in
front of a crowd and address them at some length on a topic with which I
wasnt fully conversant. I know, debate teams do it every day and you can
watch improv comics sweat their way through similar challenges, but most
well-adjusted people wouldnt raise their hand and volunteer for the
ordeal. I get fear of the unknown like one of those nightmares when you
waltz in to the final exam to a class you havent attended all year. Eek!
Of course I do have an excellent grasp of the broad strokes here: we took a
month off from a strong quarter of monthly releases running May through
August, trying to get a handle on a few slippery challenges successfully
tackling the two of the three you are least likely to ever have cross your
path, and found that for several reasons we simply could not skip
releasing an artpack in October, despite effectively having our head
temporarily cut off from the rest of our body during that month. October
is of course the month of our establishment back in 1994 -- in recent years
we tend to celebrate our anniversary later in the year to keep the pumpkins
out of it, but nevertheless when the change in the weather arrives we cant
help but sniff the breeze coming from a new direction and find it smells
like old artpacks and burning leaf piles. In 2016 we thought we were
just celebrating an anniversary near Halloween, expecting to reconvene in
one years time, and wound up stuck, releasing monthly artpacks for three
and a half years like a careless hiker who steps into an enchanted mushroom
ring and winds up dancing incessantly for years.
And despite our excellent Cthulus not here, man rationale for not
releasing an artpack this month and lets face it, just how often is
Cthulu actually fully here?, AXB, VileR and Littlebitspace presented
strong and compelling counterarguments in favour of dropping a release:
they sent in excellent seasonal art that would make us look wholly
negligent if we waited until November to share it. Be sure not to miss
Littlebitspaces spooky true-type font face - it has our editors running
scared to change anything - but, the show must go on as they say.
And theyre not, presumably, alone! Im sure that many other skilled and
talented artists contributed very interesting and well worthwhile art for
inclusion in this seasonal artpack. Heck, I may even have some of my own
in here, somehow! Whoever these participating artists ended up being,
Id like to thank them and give them a very sincere and meaningful round
of applause for taking part in this annual ritual of sorts.
A big thanks also go out to the illustrators of the infofile header and
FILEID artwork that no artpack can afford to be without. Whoever stepped
up to the occasion, and I sure hope that you embedded your initials in your
work so you dont have to languish entirely in obscurity... we salute you!
Special note to Pizzatoe: see? you never need to let a lack of infofile
particulars interfere with the release of an artpack! I mean, the charm
would definitely wear off if we did this on a regular basis, but secretly,
people dont even actually expect much in terms of useful information
in an infofile. The bar is generally so low you can absolutely get away
with leaving most of the blanks actually empty.
Now I rather suspect that Ive extracted just about as much blood from this
stone as it contains, so rather than protract the ordeal further while I
manufacture artisanal gravel, Im going to cut you free to go enjoy the art
free from the encumbrance of my interminable infofile empty signifiers
literally so, in this particular case! Well be taking November off as
well but we have a, uh, entirely predictable scheme were last I heard, at
least aspiring to reproduce again at the end of this year. Stay tuned!
And thanks of course to everyone who I left holding the bag! I really did
leave the release of this artpack to the hands of the community in the same
way that a stage diver trusts the fate of their beautiful face to the many
hands that make crowd surfing possible. If youre reading these words,
then somehow they really did carefully intercept my ill-advised leap of
faith and gently convey it to the security tent. It was awesome,
whooooooo!
ahem....
Swiping the microphone for a moment here is Nitron coming to you live from
inside the infofile. IF you can believe it, Cthulu gave me the conch
willingly whilst embroiled on being outside of his house, or something
equally dreadful. Ive handled the final assembly of the pack and so I
imagine you can blame any substandard elements squarely upon me for a
change.
A few pieces came in late, but rather than call out names I will just give
a blanket thanks to the people who worked with me to get this artpack out
the door on time - you know who you are. Its been a lot of fun drawing
ANSI with the MISTIES these few years now, and here is a cheers to
many more to come.
Happy Halloween!