Task 2 - Developed Research

This is an extract from the thesis "Urban legends: why do people believe them?", explaining how a believable urban legend needs to be descriptive and specific, removing anonymous characters to ensure the story is not as easily forgotten as well as including informational descriptions to make the experience sound more developed and believable.

This will be really helpful when I'm annotating the journal pages of my cryptids as I can take advice and inspiration from the elements that make urban legends believable and memorable to help my designs appeal to people and keep them in their mind.

This is another extract from the same thesis, showing the "6 principles of sticky ideas" coined by the Heath brothers, demonstrating the 6 key components of an urban legend that will make it stick and not fade into obscurity.

Considering these points whilst writing ideas and descriptions will be really helpful in creating a plot that provides a lot with a concise word count, helping my presentation sheets to be impactful and engaging, whilst not appearing overwhelming and leaving enough space for artwork around the annotations.

These extracts are from another thesis titled "Retells and Remakes: Understanding How Horror Urban Legends Change Over Time" by Lincoln John James Costello.

These extracts quote Richard Dawkins, explaining how the stories of urban legends survive and are remembered over decades, by being changed and added to over years to remain appealing to the people of different time periods and to add new and engaging stories to the same ideas and concepts.

One quote that stuck out to me was: "Rather than erase the characteristics established by the previous replications, each new adaptation built off of the previous one in order to expand upon the original tale.".

This gives me an idea of the process common folklores and cryptids have gone through over many years to reach their current modern interpretations and could inspire my creature designs, thinking of beliefs that would've been thought of decades ago and how they would be reinterpreted over time into modern beliefs and ideas.

This thesis also showcased many examples and explanations of language and depictions in many original legends and stories that would be completely socially unacceptable in the modern day, including racism, sexism, and harmful stereotypes of other cultures. The thesis explains how these stories were influenced by the beliefs and stereotypes of the time, and how retellings of the stories changed as people's beliefs did, with examples of modern day retellings being more inclusive and acceptable.

While I will avoid including anything that could be considered offensive or controversial in my project, this does help to give me a better idea for how a lot of folklore and urban legends began and how the beliefs that inspired them were warped and moulded into stories of monsters and supernatural occurrences.

This is a similar point to the previous extract I showed, explaining how stories of urban legends have changed over time to be more appropriate and relatable by including trends and culture of the time period in which they were told.

This is definitely something I should consider when drawing and annotating my work, as if I pick a specific time period for my ideas to be taking place then include technology or phrases from after that time, my ideas will be less believable and informed. Therefore, I will choose a time period for my artwork and annotation and research and be very careful of any items and trends I include in my work to ensure everything is believable and relevant.

This thesis references Sonja K. Foss and her beliefs in creating a narrative. It lists her requirements to define a text as a narrative, including two events organised by time order, a casual or contributing relationship among events in the story and a unified subject being the focus point of the text.

The thesis also continues into more specific elements that can aid a convincing and compelling narrative, including objectives, settings, characters, narrators, events, temporal relations, casual relations, audiences, themes and types of narratives.

Considering all of these aspects when creating a short but detailed plot to reference in my annotations will definitely help my ideas to become more developed and more memorable, for instance coming up with a character, exploring how they would act in situations encountering cryptid creatures and how they would describe and annotate their experiences.

This extract is from a magazine titled "Facts and Stories of the Unexplained - Myths and Legends Finally Decoded", exploring the topic of zombies and the undead. This extract speaks about a machine known as the 'autojector' created by Soviet scientist Dr. Serge Bryukhonenko as an attempt to re-animate the deceased.

I find this idea of keeping a fatally wounded creature alive to be a really interesting idea in a macabre sense, which I think fits really well into the theme of cryptids, with many designs showing exposed skeletons and bleeding or bloody design elements.

I could use this concept to create a "living corpse" type creature which I think could make a really interesting design, attracting people through morbid curiosity and allowing me to experiment with ideas I haven't really explored before, such as portraying a creature in a sense of purgatory and suffering, whilst being unable to die. This could relate it to ideas of sin or explain strange and violent behaviour commonly seen in monsters and legendary creatures.

This section of the magazine explores the idea of banshees, mournful spirits that roam the Earth after death, relating to themes of family and mortality.

This extract explores one of the potential reasons the banshee follows and haunts living people, being a representation of sin and karma. This idea explains the purpose and goals of the mythological creature and tells us why it does what it does.

I can incorporate similar ideas into my own work, making my creatures represent different ideas and beliefs, potentially including different ideas of sin and judgement, or perhaps as ill omens foretelling tragedies and disasters.