Creator Spotlight: @Krypttids
When I think of what and who have influenced me the most at Splathouse, Barbera Dieselbrain immediately comes to mind. One of their works directly influenced the design of my OC Jen, and the freedom/joy they have with their work is something I’ve sought to emulate. I reached out, and was lucky enough to catch them during their busy schedule for a few questions.
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Hi there Barbra! Thanks for stopping in. So to start things off, I’ve a confession-I’ve been following your work since before the 2017 Tumblr Purge. I’ve always admired how colorful and kinetic your work was, but more specifically how you used monsters as a means of showing the beauty of varied body types. Was this wholly intentional when you started, or is it something that gradually became a natural fit as your style evolved into what it is today?
Barb: Well first off, hey thank you! Sometimes I’ll hear from folks like yourself that they’ve followed my work since ye olde tumblr days and every time it makes me feel special.
But to answer your question, I wouldn’t say it was initially my intention! Frankly, I’ve been fascinated by monsters and inhumanoid things since I was a wee bab, so much of it was just funneling those old interests into a new (for me at the time) direction. I feel that it was less of an intentional decision in those early years and more something that grew and started to feel more and more at home in my work. Nowadays, body types and such are things that I take into consideration more actively. And at the end of the day, designs based on monsters kind of lend themselves to pushing the proportions of the body, to capture a particular feeling one may associate with a monster (or, contrast with it!).
One thing I’ve noticed quite a bit is your affinity for horror aesthetics. Specifically, slasher movies from the 70s and 80s. What is so evocative about that era to you design wise and personally?
I mean, nostalgia is an elephant in the room that cannot be ignored. Horror movies remind me of when I was young and my parents taking me and my sisters to movie rental stores in the late 90s and early 2000s. Walking around the store, looking down the horror aisle and gazing at the macabre, gory, grindhouse illustrations on the covers of the VHS boxes, debating with myself about which one I might be able to convince my parents to let me watch. And it was a balancing act cuz like, you know a lot of those older movies weren’t just loaded with gore but had lots of cute girls in tight shirts on cold nights and sometimes they didn’t even have the shirts. Between the blood and the boobs, it was like a forbidden fruit!
And in my honest opinion, a lot of film from that era is just HORNIER. Its raunchy and tasteless and the girls were hot. The movies practically winked back at the viewer like “yeah i know what you paid your money for”. Hate to sound like an old woman but a lot of movies now, even horror movies unfortunately, just feel so castrated by comparison! And im not even talking about your run of the mill “and then the final girl’s shirt gets torn off by a branch while running from MeatFace and his big knife” fanservice, i mean just a sense that the characters on screen were people who FUCKED. People who wanted to stay alive, to beg not to die because life is worth living and sex is too good to leave behind! Blood and boobies go together so nicely cuz its the contrast between sex, animal desire, the drive to reproduce and create life, and grim, bloody death. Sex is good but death is always ready to swoop in for sloppy seconds.
Pride and queer discourse in 2022 feels markedly different than what it was only a few years ago-and radically so from a decade or more. The community has made incredible strives towards acceptance, but many feel as though queer art and queer related creative movements aren’t getting their due. What’s your personal take on queer art movements, and is there anything we as a community can try to do moving forward?
Queer art needs to be allowed to get messy, plain and simple. Critique and criticism are healthy and great but I think some of us are so desperate to not upset the straights that we try to scrub anything they might find unsightly from our work, and by extension, from ourselves.
I’ll be completely honest: in the past, I fell into that mindset. It was easy, it seemed like such a simple solution. The cishets will accept us, they won’t call us filthy degenerates if we just stop BEING filthy degenerates. Stupid. We’ve let fucking Chase bank and Police officers into pride and into our minds and how we see ourselves and our art. I want to see more queer art get fucked up enough that Disney and Exxon Mobile wont want to touch it with a 10 foot pole even during pride month.
Hell much of my own work is safer than what I know I’m capable of. I can go farther, push myself harder. I’ve had to put a lot of things on the backburner because life and immigration have demanded priority, but I’m just ITCHING to make something that really makes some people go “oh GOD”.
Okay, let’s move on to something lighter-what’s your favorite horror movie monster, and why? Personally speaking, I’ve always been a huge fan of Carpenter’s take on The Thing. What gorgeous practical effects!
I mean firstly, who doesn’t love the thing? Every kid’s favorite, the thing! “It’s Thingin’ time!” That’s what he said in the movie right, right before he Things of MacReady?
Ok actual answer though: It’s hard to choose a capital F favorite because often many monsters scratch a different itch but i will say, I have a particular love for Brundlefly from the Fly. Where to even begin. Brundle riding an unnatural, hypersexual high before succumbing to the body horror of seeing your flesh rot, slowly, in front of you. The instinctual human revulsion to insects and the perversion of having your DNA spliced with one. The idea of one’s human consciousness losing itself to something older, simpler, and without empathy. The fucking meat and skin sloughing off Brundlefly as he drags his love towards the teleporter. The FUCKING maggot baby scene. It’s all iconic, it all dovetails with so much I’ve talked about already and tickles so many of my own fears and anxieties, and just, it’s that good Cronenberg shit. Fuck.
Last question! Is there anywhere readers can peep your works (and hopefully toss money at your face)?
Yes. If you’d like to support my work on a monthly basis, I have a Patreon as well as a Subscribestar. If you want to support me work on a more one-off basis, I have an itchio account with some artpacks and a comic (and hopefully another comic as well in a few months) and a redbubble with some merch. And if you just wanna follow me somewhere on Social media, im @Krypttids on twitter, and Dieselbrain on Cohost and Newgrounds.
Thank you so much for having me!
https://www.patreon.com/Dieselbrain
https://subscribestar.adult/dieselbrain
https://www.redbubble.com/people/BoneTownTV/shop