Ludja I: Fall ot the blackbird

          

As I hope could be understood from my previous post, Ludja is a character who never wanted to stay in her coffin. This Austrian vampiress born in the XVI century had without a doubt a story to be told, some illustrations at random didn´t seem enough for her, however, it always been difficult for me which would be the best way to tell that story. Comic would have been almost perfect for her, but I don´t feel particularly skilled in that field, in other way, I have some experience as a writer, but the conventional narrative would have forced me to resign to the visual aspect, which, in a character as Ludja, I found quite interesting. It took a while for the solution to arrive, and as often happens, it appeared as an equilibrium point between opposites.

The purpose is to make an illustrated novel, and I trust that, due to the combination of genres involved around Ludja, the proposal may seem interesting enough. Very often I said that Ludja is born of the intention to recover a classic idea of Vampirism, a classic idea where the erotic subtext is made explicit, ok, I admit that, but in my personal opinion I think eroticism is more exciting when is used to change a familiar background. Serve this as an invitation and warning of what can be found in this story, so that only who will not be offended by such material approach it. 

Maybe I should warn that horror doesn´t pretend to be shy in this story either, but if you have come this far sure you are of those who can take it. So I invite you to know her, fear her, hate her, desire her, wishing only that she does not leave you indifferent and hopefully wanting for more, cause Ludja is the project I hope to move forward trough my Patreon page, if you want to help me, I assure you that neither I nor her will forget a single name of the ones which help her to reach flesh.

So, partially quoiting Stoker: Enter freely and of your own will and leave some of the happiness you bring… she will take everything else… without asking.

Below there are the download links where you can find the first chapter in English and Spanish and completely illustrated.

Hope you like it.

Download it in English

Download it in Spanish

Ludja Amsel

For quite some time, in illustration my battleground has been the erotic illustration or “Hentai”, with the pseudonym of Candle several of my pictures can be found here and there in the web. I´m not going to break with it, but I´m currently trying to reach other grounds so I can meet a commitment, delayed for too long, with another kind of stories and characters. But I can´t go back from my wanderings on hentai lands without talking about “her”.

As any other fiction character, Ludja was not born from one single place, trying to specify all that served to give her shape can be difficult and confusing, and, being an erotic fantasy character, the attempt can cause me more than one blush, but my mistress would not forgive me if I don´t try it, so I have no other option than go back in time and try to see as clear as possible how was the beginning. As a matter of fact this point it´s not difficult, it happened while I was watching Night of the werewolf (Paul Naschy 1980) for umpteenth time, I was already working as erotic illustrator by then, and those were the eyes I constantly had to use to translate reality, and because of that in the scene when the countess Bathory feeds on a sleeping Waldemar Daninsky, I could not help thinking what would happen if instead of this the countess decided to do “this”. Certainly you understand what I mean, well, this was one of the beginnings. 

Gothic horror is one of my favorite genres or sub-genre if not the most, and back then, more focused in the erotic parody, I took too long out of it, so when I saw the chance to combine both worlds, “she” had already ignored the rule of not to come in uninvited and was taking shape in my mind. Although they will end up dying in anonymity, I like to be ambitious with my characters and not skimp in design or background, is the first right step so they can earn a place in someone´s sight, and Ludja made me suffer before let me see her definitive form. She was there, a caressing shadow behind the curtains or an elegant and cutting laugh vanishing at the end of dark corridors, but, when I finally could saw her, it became impossible to deny her. 

With her design I was hoping to combine a classic aesthetic with something which could make her characteristic enough by herself so she will be more than a simple repetition. Her background answers to this same purpose. Ludja pretends to retrieve an old school vampirism, similar to the one in the classic Hammer movies, a vampirism made of black satin and red velvet, dark places, smell of enclosed ages, creaky coffins and a whispering voice saying “come to me”. In my humble opinion, vampirism today is losing more than is winning, is becoming too mundane, with the purpose of making it more credible or easier to accept by modern audiences is going increasingly away from the bases which defined its attractiveness in the beginning. It denies its monstrosity and feeds too much its romantic and erotic aspects, aspects that formerly were there in a connotative level, even though in Ludja the erotic aspect is intended to be really feed ;), my purpose it´s not to ignore the nature of the monster or socialize it. After all, that´s what makes her exciting, not knowing when the monster will choose to caress instead of  tear apart, when she will demand blood or…

 

Vekania

If I had to be honest, I can´t be too much satisfied with this picture, I´m happy with how ended up the girl in the image; within my capabilities I think it´s a good representation of her character, however, the background it´s another story. When I imagined it looked great in my mind, but when transferred to the paper (I know it´s a digital image but I like to sound classic) I can only say that I bit off more than I could chew. I still got to work a lot in my backgrounds and, in this one in particular, you can see that I was just playing tiredness. It lacks tridimensionality, and the chairs are more like the ones a theatre would have nowadays than back in 1900, but I believe that it ended up being better to let the picture rest with the chance to improve it in future than ending up hating it :)

Vekania is a character from the same series of novels I talked about in the previous post. She is defined as a “poisoner”, but the term sounds much darker than she pretends to be. In fact she´s an expert in drugs, potions and narcotics, an art that in her hands seems closer to witchcraft, however, the purpose of her talent is to help people. Help them to achieve the state of mind needed to feel what they need to feel, find what they are looking for, remember what they have forgotten, or regain the courage to follow their hearts. All of this, with just a few drops of poison in the right spot.