Ludja. From the ashes II

The new chapter is finally here. Something wicked, and horny, and naughty, and thirsty, and hungry, and playful this way comes. Hope you like it ^_^

Ludja. From the ashes II (english)
Ludja. From the ashes II (spanish)
Ludja from the ashes II (images)
You can support me on Patreon if you like ^_^

Ludja second chapter: From the ashes

“Over the village, the Amsel castle behaves as the moon would, it seems visible from everywhere. In the past served to defend this land against Ottomans and Hungarians, but nowadays the villagers do not live comfortable under its shadow…”

“While I write I can see the jagged silhouette of the fortress trough my window and I think again that maybe I´m pretending to do something monstrous”

In this new chapter of Ludja, a couple of travelers crossing Europe to reach the kind of village which is left out of the maps without name, the kind of place where time itself behaves in a strange way, even allowing that, sometimes, something that should not exist finds its way to do it… again. 

Still inspired by a classical conception of vampirism, in this chapter we will see the representation of one of this moments which can be found in many of the old movies of the genre, the moment of the return, when what remains as ashes grows again tangling in forgotten bones till it regains its flesh, face, and hunger. With an erotic variant, of course… if blood it´s not enough, which other seed of life could make that what is dead ceases to be?

I hope you like it, and I hope you forgive me if I remind you that, if it´s so, if you decide to support me on Patreon, one single dollar from you will be the seed of life for me, and it will help me to go on with this novel. :)

Download this chapter in English 

Download this chapter in Spanish

Marta and Raul. Sketch and step by step gif.

 I hope you like this couple. They are Marta Valls and Raul Montes, two new characters which will be introuduced in the second chapter of Ludja. They have travelled a long distance to bring someone back from the death, and the ritual to succed will be quite peculiar.
Sadly, gifs use to look blurry. But in my facebook page I will upload a new album with the full step by step process.

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.

Noviembre

I uploaded this image to my Deviantart account a quite some time ago, maybe it´s a completely nonsense to start a blog when my time to produce new material is very limited right now, however, since this image is in the blog´s title, I think there´s sense in presenting this character and this image in first place. 

Noviembre is the name of the girl in the picture; she should be around sixteen in it, which would situate this particular moment in 1912. I hope to make her the main character of a series of novels that I got in my mind, the first of which is already completed. She was born with the idea of being a character with a great sense of justice, acquired in one of the worst ways possible: trough a very early experience of pain and loose. During her childhood, beyond the late nineteenth century, Barcelona, where she lived, was known as “the city of bombs” by the high number of terrorist attacks which took place there. When she was five, one of these attacks caused her to lose the right leg, from that moment on she got to start to understand that the person she would become was meant to be different than the one she would expected to be. 

Her way to the future started again when her father took her to the theatre where he worked as chief of stagehands. A place full of talented people, for whom the possible and the impossible doesn´t always obeys strict rules. They gave her a new leg, when her father told her that “what is not fair shouldn´t be accepted” referring the fact that a five years old girl should not remain lame. But these words were what ended up defining her as much as her metallic leg, as they would lead her to be completely intolerant to injustice, to the point of face those who feed in the pain of others or use it as a tool for their purposes, whether they were rapists, murderers, caciques, or even monster and demons. 

Her philosophy is simple: You got right to your place in the world; if they try to take it away from you then you defend your position. It doesn´t matter how much strength you have, what matters is what you are ready to defend with it. After all, when the enemy is at the gates and you are lame, run is not an option ;)