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The Haunting of Hill House (Cont.): Creative Platypus

Here's another try at some fan art for Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House. I didn't want the labyrinth to detract from the central figure, but I'm wondering now if it's too sparse. The central drawing is pen and ink imported into ClipStudio and modified.

Interestingly enough, this iconic figure from the Netflix series is only briefly alluded to in the Shirley Jackson novel. It does, however, make frequent appearances on dust jacket covers. That was really the key for the director in the Netflix adaptation: to build a television mini-series around the most iconic images from the book undergirded by a careful study of the relationships between the main characters and Hill House. It's an interesting way to do an adaptation.

For my adaptation into 2D media, I chose to rework The Bent Neck Lady in the simple color pallette and black background of Mignola and Stewart's Hellboy series. Maybe that's because I can't draw, but the artists who created the style manifestly can and I've tried to use it here to give the image a touch of the hieratic or iconic. I think it works well with the series more dantean scope.

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