Sunday, 6 December 2015

Self Portrait: Mister Welldone


Mister Welldone is an anonymous blog user on wordpress.com, with a series of entries entitled Curious Things | Come and See.

Mister Welldone is essentially a host for online horror stories, but has a series of cryptic "diary" entries where he explains his utter disgust for humankind, but wishes to attempt to teach them about the world around them, through an 'enlightening' process simply referred to as "The End".

Here is an extract from the introduction entry to his site:

Greetings and Welcome

Hello.
I am Mr. Welldone.
There seem to be many curious facets to this world of ours; each person seeing their own. Many seem comforted by the mundanity of “acceptable” social interaction and nocturnal inebriation.
I am not.
This is not for those seeking to be “safe.” This is for those who question and imagine, but not those who do so reaching for the light.
This is for those of you who reach for the dark to find the secrets hidden beyond, beneath, and within the veil. What is the difference between the secrets and the veil?
Perhaps nothing.
Perhaps everything.
Perhaps something somewhere in the middle of those extremes.
Or beyond.
Let’s take a look, shall we?
Yes.
Let’s.

This person has written several more entries throughout his site, as an introduction to each tale. As they progress, they become more bitter and dark-toned, some even down right hateful. Mister Welldone seems to have and ever-changing mood on how he feels about people.

In a way, I can pretty much relate to this person/character. I like searching for the strange tales of the unknown, but there' that part of me that kinda hates being around people and modern technology.
Since this 'creature' is never actually seen, aside from this first screenshot to appear in one of his stories:.....
..I decided to expand the character and give him some significant characteristics:

-His eye is visible to give him some human elements, so in a way he is very self-loathing, or rather is ashamed to be part of the human race, thus hides his face.

-He wears the attire typical of an English gardener in the countryside, with the acceptation of the tie. I feel that Mister Welldone would see the tie as a symbol; as a 'tag', like the ones farmers put on cattle or sheep, and see the tie as a symbol of bureaucracy, thus wears it as mockery.

-His hunched-back indicates extreme physical damage done to him, possibly self-inflicted. He had either aged so rapidly and deteriorated as a result to his incredible hatred of society leaving him 'rigid and stiff', or he may even have inflicted the suffering on himself as a for of (possibly masochistic) punishment for solely existing.

-He carries unnecessary 'baggage' of useless scraps of junk he finds. This can either be seen as an interest, or again of mockery to how he sees the materialism of humans.

-Even though, this will not be see in the portrait quite clearly, I also imagined his personality, from how he writes to also how I relate to him. He is very articular in his speech, but hates talking to anyone directly, and is collectively hateful, but will open up to anyone like-minded. He is very wise, but spends his wisdom wisely to anyone he feels comfortable talking with. He also has no real remorse or care for people in the way how most people perceive "love". He is also asexual, as well as having no interest in any sort of relationships, as his 'appetite' for that sort of thing died a long time ago.

This is my own personal interpretation of Mr Welldone, and I plan to use this persona in the similar fashion of how Charles Lathom used his.



 

1 comment:

  1. Luke, this is an excellent post. You need to explain what you like about Charles Lathams images and how that relates to your own work - that will be another post. You also need to create another post talking about directing the shoot and then another one about how you shot additional elements and manipulated them using photoshop. You can mention the challenges you have overcome in using photoshop and what you have learned from the experience. Put your final image up as another post with an evaluation of it - what you think is successful and what could be improved in hind sight. Keep going, you are producing some good work here. you are clearly more than capable of producing some excellent work when you concentrate and focus. More, more please - this is good stuff !!!

    ReplyDelete