hi guys so uh pitch canker here and I just wanted to go over today what I think makes certain art uncanny creepy or just disturbing in general it's something I get asked about all the time and I thought it'd be fun to kind of go over now being creeped out um is a lot different I think than actual like true fear or revulsion or any of those emotions um it's something like being unable to look away from something unsettling because you can't decide if it's a threat or not right I think that's an important thing to keep in mind right when we think of things like The Uncanny Valley and we think of things that are like truly disturbing you almost can't look away and that's because you don't truly 100 understand what's going on right um a good example of this are eyes maybe that don't look directly at you right I draw a lot of eyes and I draw a lot of creatures that have eyes that point in different directions or maybe look through the viewer um that's unsettling because you can't really figure out what they're looking at if they're even looking at you um you think of like a bug in the wild right and how they have those kind of camouflages of like you know what looks like a predator's eye or something you can't really figure out what it is and that's like your biological instinct to be like I can't figure out if this is going to kill me or not so let me get away from it basically another example is just like a face Maybe obscured by Shadows or a face that doesn't look quite right I mean it could be going back as far as something as like you know we had uh you know Neanderthal and his ancestors or um like a mixed ancestry of like different primates like maybe we couldn't decide what was a good ape or a bad ape when we were a little bit closer uh to that evolutionary cycle you know there are a lot of different things that make us afraid basically um and you know people naturally understand what creepy looks like um yet it Still Remains some level of undefinable you know what I mean that's because anything can really be creepy with the right amount of tweaking and that's where the art comes into it you know when I look at a piece of artwork I don't think like oh what's a what's a creepy thing I think of how do I make this thing creepy right how do I distort this face how do I make it so that um this character looks through me or doesn't look quite right or has almost the features of a human but there's something incredibly wrong like you could almost see with this piece I'm working on the background here um it's a humanoid figure you know and it's kind of there's something up with it but you can't really you wouldn't say that's a person right you could say it maybe was a person maybe there's something wrong with this person there's something wrong with this thing is it even part of this world you really start to think and your gears start going and I find with creepy artwork something that's really useful is not overly defying things you know not putting a lot of detail and being like this is what it is because what you want is for people to not know what it is you know I think a failure of certain um like pieces of art that people try to make scary like why isn't my art coming out scary or or intimidating or um you know frightful it's because you're giving you're giving the game away you know you're not you're not obscuring enough and there's a gentle balance between showing the viewer what is in front of them and what is scary and what they can imagine like the imagination uh is so much creepier than anything you could really achieve just through you know showing off your skills you know what I mean so ultimately I think creepiness isn't derived from you know a particular type of visual or anything like that it's taking a visual and distorting it to the point where you don't recognize it as something that is either socially acceptable or something that is comfortable because if you think of comfort right it's something that you're familiar with it's something that's predictable it's something that you can make sense of quickly um when creating something creepy or creating something uncanny you want to think well how far from normal can I make this while keeping it somewhat definable it really is like a tight a balancing rope act you know what I mean like a tightrope act where you're trying not to overly send it and be like this is my scary creepy guy and also saying well okay this does have human elements or this does have familiar elements but I am going to take that I am going to twist it and I am going to make it different I mean a good example a classic example of something creepy it's a clown right you know it's human they're human rather but you know they have face paint on they do unpredictable things they pull balloon animals out of their you know their arms and they give you hugs and they you know pull out a horn and they honk it like you know it's defanged it's like a very uh harmless type of creepy but you know then you have the Trope of the Killer Clown right like the kind of scary you know murderous clown or whatever and then it becomes really creepy um so you can't really define whether or not it's a a good or a bad thing and so just something to keep in mind I think context is key uh and it's something to note when you're working on something creepy um you know if we think something is out to get us the more likely we are to find it creepy right it's like the same thing with a creepy doll um you know dolls aren't all creepy but you know in the right context they are one of the creepiest things you can think of and so I just wanted to let you guys know what I thought about that how I approach it and what I think about you know creepy art and this is the piece I made while thinking about this subject you know just a humanoid figure with a kind of just a wrong shaped head obscured in Shadows with the eyes in the wrong places like it looks like they're Twisted out of shape can you tell it's a threat it feels like a threat but what is it and that is what I leave you with guys today um I hope you enjoyed this video as always thank you for my patreon supporters and to everybody who watches towards the end uh thanks again and have a great rest of your day foreign [Music] foreign [Music]