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Pennywise, Jason, Freddy + more horror movie icons transformed into insects
It's a well-known scientific fact that bugs rule the world, outnumbering all us puny humans by nearly 200 million to one. So to prevent a global takeover by things that creep and crawl across our planet, we occasionally need to pay respect to our insectoid friends by including them in our geeky pursuits.
Artist and illustrator Richard Wilkinson was first featured on SYFY last year with his cool collection of beautiful bugs transformed into Star Wars characters via digital paintings. It's all been part of a special project he's been indulging in these past few years called Arthropoda Iconicus, which is a series of imaginary insects inspired by pop-culture touchstones.
His latest series of incredible insects entitled Timorpersonae is based on famous horror movie icons and we've got the creator himself to dissect these enticing entymological creations, which are depicted in a classic form complete with clever Latin-based scientific names.
Wilkinson's project was born out of a love for Natural History Illustration and for the great historical process of discovering, collecting, collating, naming and cataloging.
"I also loved the artistic practice of representing the details and surfaces and textures of Natural History - especially of bugs," Wilkinson tells SYFY WIRE. "It occurred to me I could apply the same scientific and artistic process to the things we love from popular culture and I would get to indulge my love of the look of these creatures by turning each icon of pop culture into some sort of hybrid creature!"
His laborious endeavor requires many research images of whatever pop-culture icon is selected to get to know it well and define its iconic characteristics.
"Then I sketch out an idea in colour on my ipad and then add to it in photoshop until it looks right," he explains. "I want to try to find the balance of recognition where you don’t see it immediately, but when you do you can’t unsee it. I find that moment really satisfying for some reason! It’s all digital painting at the moment. I’m playing around with gouache and watercolour a bit because I'd really like to get that authentic look of traditional illustration, but at the moment I’m enjoying producing them with digital brushes."
Now check out Wilkinson's insanely creative insect collection in the gallery below, featuring The Creature From The Black Lagoon, The Wolfman, Frankenstein (Karloff), Nosferatu, Freddie Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Godzilla, King Kong, Valek (The Nun), Pennywise (new version), and Pennywise (old version), then tell us which ones deliver the most chills.
