Hello, Aliens!
I鈥檓 back with collage style, and this time I'm back with a slightly creepy atmosphere. I鈥檝e always been drawn to images that look ordinary at first but start to feel strange the longer you look at them. There鈥檚 something interesting about combining familiar elements with things that seem out of place, as if something is wrong, even though you can鈥檛 quite figure out what it is.
The main inspiration for this artwork came from the Backrooms and the concept of liminal spaces. There鈥檚 something difficult to explain about these places. At first glance, they look like ordinary locations we might have seen before, yet they feel empty, unfamiliar, and almost endless. It鈥檚 like getting lost somewhere you were never supposed to be, where everything looks normal but something deep inside tells you that you don鈥檛 belong there.
One of the entities I鈥檓 most familiar with from the Backrooms is the Smiler. It鈥檚 usually recognized by its terrifying grin and glowing eyes appearing in the darkness. According to the lore I鈥檓 familiar with, when your sanity drops too low, continuing to stare at this entity can lead to your death. I find that concept quite disturbing, not just because of the creature itself, but also because of the helplessness it creates. Imagine being trapped in an unfamiliar place, knowing that something is watching you, and then realizing that looking at it for too long could be your last mistake.
I wanted to bring a little of that unsettling feeling into this collage. The eyes scattered across the sky create the impression that something is constantly watching, while the sinister sun becomes the main focus of the scene. I also wanted to keep the bright colors instead of making everything dark and gloomy, as we often see in horror imagery.
To strengthen that feeling, I added an RGB glitch effect to the image. The slight shifts in red, green, and blue create a distorted visual appearance, as if the image itself is experiencing some kind of interference or something is not quite right. I thought this effect worked well with the concept, especially with the strange, disconnected feeling often associated with liminal spaces.
I鈥檝e also included the original version without the glitch effect. I wanted to show the initial composition as well, so you can compare both versions and see how a small change in the visual treatment can affect the overall atmosphere, even when all the elements remain the same.
I've included all the images I used in creating this artwork below.
Thanks for stopping by and taking a look at my work! I'll see you in my next post.