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Like any ambitious designer of sinister creations, I'm never completely satisfied with my work. This is what compelled me to make some aesthetic changes to two of our posters. The 'Be as a shark among sheep' poster features a new and improved image of the shark. Although he's still in the same pose, I've redone virtually all of his shading and have given him more variation in color and depth; resulting in a much more visually stunning effect. I've also redone the titular figure of the 'Modern Day Moriarty' poster to look a bit more menacing and thus more befitting of one of literature's first real super villains. I have to say that I am quite pleased with the improvements that I have made and I now feel that these posters are finally living up to their potential. You can easily view the two works that I just mentioned, along with the others, by scrolling down to the bottom of this page or by clicking on our products page. As you know, we are constantly plotting new and more elaborate villainous entertainment products here at Twisted Jenius; but for right now I welcome you to enjoy these wonderfully evil motivational posters. I know I will! - False Prophet |
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Villain Archetypes-I've noticed that we've been getting a steady stream of people coming to this site searching for "villain archetypes" (or some minor variation of that subject). If you happen to be one of these individuals and have come upon this post, I'd like to point out the best places to find that kind of information here at TwistedJenius.com. First and foremost is my "Essay on Villain Archetypes"- Parts One and Two which you will find in our Evil Rant section (I've been knocking around the idea of doing a third one, but I'm not sure if or when I will). These are pretty lengthy and deal primarily with analysis of basic villain archetypes. Secondly, we have the Villains & Heroes Character Key under our Comics section. Although not such a straight forward explanation of villain archetypes, these characters are all designed based on very clichéd character types and they might provide you with some insight into this subject. Finally, we have two links within our Villainesque section which I would highly recommend. The first is So You've Decided to be Evil and although intended as humor, presents basic information about villain archetypes from several different angles (categories include: what they wear, what kinds of lairs that they inhabit and what different villain goals and objectives are). Last, but certainly not least, is The Sixteen Villain Archetypes, and consists of a list with some brief, but insightful descriptions about each of these classic evil doer archetypes. This site will probably appeal to those of you who are looking for a more academic or literary approach to villain archetypes. I hope that this quick guide will be of help to those of you who have come here looking for this sort of information. Congratulations on making the choice to further develop your evil education! - False Prophet |
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Tonight I'd like to share with you, my values readers, some more of the influences which went into creating Twisted Jenius. Towards the end of my Dark Comedies- Part Two: The Continuation rant, I briefly mention that I am a fan of Little Shop of Horrors and I cited the original, 1960 Roger Corman version. The truth is that I'm a fan of both the original and the 1986 Frank Oz versions (yeah, I know, "heresy"!). I actually saw the Oz musical version first and became an instant addict (when I finally got the video of it, I watched it so many times that I broke the tape). The first time that I saw the film, was actually when it was shown to us at a day care center (which is pretty messed up, even by my demented standards; though I guess the film does kind of resemble Sesame Street, what with the singing, the "puppet", the wacky characters and the urban setting). At a young age, I was unbelievably fascinated with that Man-Eating Plant (I wanted one very badly), and it sparked a lifelong tendency to look at household flora in a very bizarre way. You may have noticed that our mascot Twisty has some basic design similarities with the botanical antagonist in Little Shop of Horrors. Although this was not my conscious intention when designing him (in-house, we often compare Twisty to a hideous, evil version of Pac-Man), I doubt that it's a complete coincidence either. Another design element that may have been partially and inadvertently inspired by Little Shop of Horrors is our logo itself. The blood which Twisty uses to write on the padded wall does have some vague similarities to the movie graphic. And while we're on the subject, I think that it's only fair to mention that the general "movie poster look" is what inspires quite a lot of the commercial art here at Twisted Jenius. We're all about entertainment. - False Prophet |
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You probably don't know this about me (in fact, I'm quite sure that you don't), but I'm a big advocate of trackball usage. Vicious and I Recently had an in-depth conversation about the advantages of using a trackball as opposed to a mouse. Now I realize that there is a lot of stigmata among many computer users about trackballs. Many people claim that they don't like them. I think that people often come to this conclusion based on using a trackball only once and then realize that it is not quite as intuitive as mouse (intuitive meaning simple; I'm fairly sure a monkey would have a much easier time using a mouse than using a trackball). Now I'm not one of these snobby tech bastards who believes in making things more complicated than they need to be (I'm a capitalist and user friendly is definitely more profitable), but once you get used to it, I do think that the trackball is a superior device in both speed and especially precision of use. If you want a Star Wars analogy (well too bad, you're getting one), I would say that a mouse is probably more like how blasters are described in the films (clumsy and random, but probably easier to use) and trackballs are more like lightsabers (elegant weapons, which require a little more practice to get the hang of). You only have to move one finger instead of your entire arm while using a trackball and you never have to pick up the entire device while in use as is occasionally necessary while using a mouse. Vicious suggests that all of you hardcore gamers out there consider using a trackball as opposed to a mouse from now on, as you will see a noticeable improvement in your game play. For example, in the online game World of Warcraft, it is to your strategic advantage to be able to circle around a lot and effortlessly and this is something that trackballs excel at (he describes tournament level Rogues in the game as having to "constantly circle around like a twelve year old crack addict" in order to be any good in pvp). I imagine this would be an advantage in many games; especially first person shooter types. As a graphics guy, I find trackballs to be much less cumbersome than a mouse would be. This would probably also apply to individuals in fields such as architecture and engineering as well. In fact, anyone who spends a significant amount of time on the computer should consider using a trackball. It may take some getting used to, but in the end I think you'll find that it's well worth it. - False Prophet |
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Happy anniversary to us! Twisted Jenius is 2 years old this month and you know that we're absolutely brimming with dastardly pride! Twisty is celebrating on the Welcome page, Vicious has made his annual anniversary post on the forum and year 3 is off to a fiendishly excellent start. Stick around, this year promises to be a very eventful one! - False Prophet |
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Tell me, who's feeling nostalgic tonight? Recently, my associate Vicious introduced me to the Internet Wayback Machine. Upon hearing about this, my immediate reaction was "we need to look up EvilPeople, Inc." Although intended as humor, EvilPeople, Inc. was very inspirational to me early on. It had been years since I'd seen this site and I was pleased to reminisce. Chock full of sinister content, I recall a much younger (and admittedly, much less focused) version of me looking at this site and thinking "wow, I wish there were real companies that were so blatantly and unapologetically dark and evil; that's what I'd like to do for a living"! Strange, that was over ten years ago (1997). Well, sometimes dastardly dreams really can come true and I think we can safely say that EvilPeople, Inc. must have helped to make an impression; based on the sorts of activities which I'm currently engaged in right now. In fact, I considered EvilPeople, Inc. to be such a notable influence on what would become Twisted Jenius, that I included it among the Villainesque Links even though the site was down and it didn't even have an actual link! Well, for any of you who were not fortunate enough to see this site in its prime, we're now including the link to the Wayback Machine archive for this site in our Villainesque Links section. You will find this link in the paragraph under EvilPeople, Inc., the last entry within the humor category. I suggest that any aspiring villains out there go and check this out. EvilPeople, Inc. may not have tried to be as realistic or practical or made as much sense as we do here at Twisted Jenius (yeah, I know...), but damned if it wasn't a lot of fun! - False Prophet |
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October 1st will mark the second year anniversary of Twisted Jenius. Twisty will be celebrating all month on our welcome page. In two years we have amassed a fair amount of content; 45 article length rants, 24 interactive Villains & Heroes comics, plus various products, desktop wallpapers and an assortment of other random site content. Of course we're still just getting started and the best is still yet to come (2 years really isn't very long for a business or even a halfway decent website to be around). Incidentally, we're adding two new links to the Villainesque page. We normally update this section as needed, and whenever we find a couple of sites that we feel are worthy to be included within our Villainesque links. I think you're going to find these two to be most enjoyable. - False Prophet |
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Vicious and I have made many improvements to our products section recently. We have changed, altered or otherwise tweaked quite a few of the colors of the general layout, in order to make our products page more accessible and inviting (while trying to minimize any compromise to the sinister aesthetic, of course). The whole thing has become much more streamlined and less chaotic in appearance. All in all I do think it is a vast improvement. We have also added a few new features to this section, as well as rearranged things a bit, in order to make it more convenient for you to navigate through. Like any good web site, TwistedJenius.com is a work in progress and is constantly evolving. But you can be sure that our commitment to quality evil shall remain the same. - False Prophet |
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This is the second installment of what will become a semi regular feature on our sellout page. "Sell Out Copy" will be our way of communicating to you some of the internal goings on and thought processes here at the asylum (something which has been conspicuously lacking on the site up until this point). The reason I am doing this here (as opposed to, let's say, the Evil Rant page) is because I don't want to compromise the established themes of our other content at TwistedJenius.com with this sort of thing. Basically, we're going to be really breaking the fourth wall with this one. Think of this as a fan communiqué, as opposed to our more direct entertainment related content. As we have stated in one of our earlier announcements, we are currently working on a very large project and, although I cannot give you any details on it right now, I do have every reason to believe that it's something which you're going to enjoy. Compared to most of our current content, it's pretty big! However, due to limited resources we have not been able to update quite is much as we would like. You will be receiving a new rant in the next couple of weeks and damned if it isn't a big one (quite literally about five times longer than most of my evil rants!) which is another reason why we haven't updated those as frequently lately. I will try to keep you a little more well informed about what's going on via this new Sell Out Copy section; assuming there's anything of interest to tell, of course (translation: if I don't update, that means I got nothing). I may also give you an occasional glimpse into some of the inner psychological lurkings that go on behind the scenes here at Twisted Jenius; if you keep your eyes open. - False Prophet |
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Well, I hope you're happy. We have now compromised any shred of integrity that we might have possessed (it's actually a relief; we don't have to concern ourselves with that anymore). Initially, the idea was to keep this site clear of ads (except for our own in-house ones of course) in order to maintain a certain degree of desirable aesthetic. However, this proved to be less than profitable. So now we're truly selling out. What's the difference between this and what we've been doing so far? This is the first thing that we're putting on the site that's here only for purposes of making money. Everything that was here before these extremely clickable, pay per click ads, was here because we liked it and genuinely wanted it here. This is a landmark day for Twisted Jenius, because we are now honest to evil sellouts. Although we have been claiming this for some time, this is the first time since the site launched that we have been able to backup our claims of being royal sellouts. Our greed has now surpassed our standards of quality for this site. Such decisions can only do to aid us along the ever winding boulevard of true villainy. For the time being, I will try to restrict the placement of these tantalizing, click ads to the less predominant places on our site. It will be argued that this is not the best strategy for monetization, but I still have some standards for our creepy and sinister aesthetic (for now) and I prefer to at least keep the tops of most of our pages free of such clutter. Maintaining the kind of strange, ominous or even somewhat lonely look of some of the pages on the site is important to me and, as I've said before, I enjoy spending time on this site as much as anyone. Perhaps, one day Twisted Jenius will be rid of these enticing little ads and rely completely on our own dark entertainment products, the way I intended it. The collection of villainesque entertainment on this site will continue to grow, as will the sales of our uniquely enviable posters and other future products. But, for now, I'll leave you with an entire page dedicated to those delicious little click ads that I kept talking about, because that's just the kind of guy I am; enjoy! - False Prophet |
