{"id":913,"date":"2008-03-19T12:40:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-19T16:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/?p=913"},"modified":"2008-03-19T12:40:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-19T16:40:00","slug":"the-penanggal-a-malay-vampire-or-the-tribulations-of-rendering-a-half-bodied-creature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/2008\/03\/19\/the-penanggal-a-malay-vampire-or-the-tribulations-of-rendering-a-half-bodied-creature\/","title":{"rendered":"The penanggal: a Malay vampire, or, The Tribulations of Rendering a Half-Bodied Creature"},"content":{"rendered":"

On and off for the past few months, I’ve been trying to make a digital verson of the penanggal,<\/a> a Malay vampire with a distinctively monstrous appearance. <\/p>\n

While most of the vampires I’ve researched have humanoid forms, the penanggal is only partially human, in fact, only partial. By day the penanggal appears as a beautiful woman, but, at night, she detaches her head from the rest of her body. With her intestines dangling from her neck stump and her heart flashing like a light, she swoops through the darkness in search of placentas or baby’s blood to drink. <\/p>\n

In my attempts to make a digital penanggal, I’ve run up against two problems. 1) It’s hard to divide a digital model of a complete person into realistic pieces with bloody stumps. Since digital models are basically hollow balloons in the shape of whatever they are supposed to be a model of, removing a limb or body section from a human model lets you see the model’s empty insides.<\/p>\n

2) It is very hard to find digital intestines for casual use. I found some commercial digestive systems, but they were way outside my budget. I am not going to spend $350.00 on something<\/a> that is not even in a format that I can use!<\/p>\n

I also have an aesthetic problem with the penanggal. Dangling viscera are just disgusting, not to mention unsanitary. Therefore, I decided that I would make a variant of the penanggal with an entire torso, including arms, and the viscera dangling below her waist. Because some of the dangling viscera are partly “protected” by her torso [even though it’s open at the bottom], the fact that my penanggal variant has at least 50% of a body makes her more aesthetically acceptable to me.<\/p>\n

Then I discovered the manananggal,<\/a> clearly related to the penanggal, but better for my purposes. The manananggal, a Phillipine vampire, is a female creature that detaches herself from her waist and legs and flies about on bat wings to suck blood. She also has a long proboscis-like tongue, which she uses to drain blood. To my mind, a legless character with bat wings and a butterfly tongue is a lot more interesting than a pile of guts with a head on top.<\/p>\n

I also found a source for guts. Over on Renderotica, the marketplace for Poser porn, Davo sells something called the Gore Pack for Vicki,<\/a> which supplies realistic-looking stumps for limbs and also some intestines. Plus it’s on sale for 50% off until the end of March! I’m gonna go get it. Guts are pretty useful to have around, even beyond the purpose of rendering a mananangal. Stay tuned for pictures of my manananggal.<\/p>\n

She would be a pretty amusing character for LHF. “Can you get off my carpet, please? Your viscera are, uh, staining my rug….”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On and off for the past few months, I’ve been trying to make a digital verson of the penanggal, a Malay vampire with a distinctively monstrous appearance. While most of the vampires I’ve researched have humanoid forms, the penanggal is only partially human, in fact, only partial. By day the penanggal appears as a beautiful… Continue reading The penanggal: a Malay vampire, or, The Tribulations of Rendering a Half-Bodied Creature<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}