Siren Head and The Found Footage Art of Trevor Henderson

[Applause] yep that's me you may be wondering how i got into this situation well it all started in the summer of 86. that's it that's the clip that's the clip you've probably seen at least once if you're even a little internet savvy this creature this siren head is very popular right now it seems as though it's 2020's version of slenderman and the similarities are notable they're both long lanky mysterious and spawned from the internet while i don't think siren hit himself is a particularly scary creature it is neat it's cool looking and makes cool sounds but scary the video that went viral on tiktok went viral because when this huge creature is seen from far away it accentuates the scale in awe siren head is less frightening to me and more interesting it came across to me as an oddity of nature and not much else siren head was actually created two years before its insane virality by canadian illustrator trevor henderson who has pioneered this found footage or more accurately found photo art to create these images he starts with a base photo then paints in a creature with lighting that matches the environment finally he plays with photoshop filters like noise and blur to mesh the two together trevor henderson is probably the best in the game when it comes to this sub-genre of horror art because his images are usually convincing and the creatures are well designed but let's get back to siren head for a moment this video is inaccurate to how the creator usually portrays this creature in fact it's unproportional by like an order of magnitude even at 40 feet i just find it hard to be scared by this thing admittedly i'm probably biased because i've seen so many ocs that just take a guy in a suit and replace their head with a retro item and the amount of memes around this creature doesn't help especially with the wave of inevitable siren head is real videos [Music] none of this takes away from siren heads intrigue the simple design makes it easy to make fan art of and easy to recognize and so far it seems that the main attraction is making memes lore or video games rather than being kept awake at night at least to most people i think this is just making me think how the [ __ ] would you react in this situation what do you do kill yourself ah yes because when you see an enormous monster several miles away from you which seems to have no particular interest in harming you specifically and seem so slow and so far away that you probably have like a few hours to escape the first thing you do is kill yourself even if you got up close to it you can imagine that its bumbling slow body and lack of vision would probably not make it effective at harming you much less killing you unless you're in fallout of course although that's ignoring if it locates people by echolocation or if it doesn't need senses because it just has supernatural abilities like henderson has suggested whether a creature is effective at killing you isn't the only measurement of creepiness of course but i find the concept while neat is too goofy for me to take seriously sometimes some of the lore surrounding it is also just flat out comedic although i'm not going to be taking a lot of this lore seriously because you'll find wiki entries that are free to edit by pretty much anyone so you'll get entries like the most common hunting tactic he used by siren head is throwing shekels into the environment also tea hold on more siren head subspecies [Laughter] just to be clear despite some of my lore grievances i really like that just a few edited images can inspire so much it's neat to see that one dude with some decent art skills can inspire all these other creations that immerse people more in the atmosphere and behavior of this creature now i think the strengths of these photos is when a creature is well designed and or well hidden well hidden don't you want to see the creature well yes let me elaborate i really like the designs of some of these creatures this thing that looks like it's made of paper ribbons forming a body and a face that is soaked with so much supernatural energy its jaw isn't even connected is super creative and unnerving this horse gull creature bluntly named longhorse has a really unsettling design and is probably the best integrated monster into a base photo i've seen in his gallery everything from the reflection on the car hood to the way it gets darker as it recedes into the tree is just perfect and once you learn that its body might be infinite and it often appears before tragedies but does not actually cause them makes it even more fascinating this street horse is almost believable at first you might think it looks like a diseased stray dog or something but when you look closely you notice all these details that just scream something isn't right here the scale of it the needle face it's all really unsettling it's why i'm kind of confused that some of these designs didn't go viral like this one did i mean siren head is neat but comparatively these are so much eerier however i think there are some considerable weaknesses in other art that doesn't work quite as well at achieving its goal painting in creatures and making them look real in their environments is hard as hell i tried doing some of my own and i struggled to make them not look painted in but i think where some of these images suffer is when the creature is front and center nothing truly obscuring it no shadows or darkness to really hide the bulk of it in some of these this makes it obviously fake well of course it's fake but with these harsh lights you can really see the painterliness i swear i can even see what kind of brush they were using i wouldn't say this is because of a lack of talent but because of the lighting and how the creatures are positioned like this picture which is basically just a shadow is so much more convincing than this that's why it's sort of a hit and miss with me it's super impressive when the creature is relatively unobscured but still convincing but on the other hand when they are so in your face and don't fit the environment quite as well they're kind of goofy i really like the idea that trevor henderson has and a lot of these are executed really well but i would like to see more hiding or obscuring the creatures well enough to not be obvious but also get that creepy vibe and there are some examples where he's done this this image i was staring at for a solid 10 minutes looking for the oddity until i eventually found it and it's extremely subtle i don't even know for sure if this is the edit but through that time i was already creeping myself out as i scanned this already pretty unsettling environment like the description says the path does seem to be getting tighter as you stare forward you get lost in the claustrophobia of nature almost like the depths of a cave just big enough to fit your body or in this case your car but small enough to be on edge the entire time you're passing through i don't think this level of subtlety and how the creature is hidden is necessary though but there's an advantage in hiding creepy things well take trevor henderson's man with the upside down face series where this distorted man can be found in each of these photos but with a little bit more difficulty than his other images according to henderson this entity only appears after the event of a tragic accident and people don't realize the man is there until he is seen in photos these i find are generally more convincing and more frightening when you see these creatures near the front the picture doesn't beckon you to explore further because there's nothing else to explore the atmospheres of these images carry merit on their own but imagine you seeing this creature but there's even more hidden things you didn't notice that make it even more threatening an example of this can be seen in this other work from henderson first you see this creature then you see the others remember these things these awful things yeah like that but better famous films like paranormal activity employ this technique of making you search for the scares but a more recent film does this with more payoffs hereditary does things like this a lot now i think a lot of horror movies are pretty lame and a lot of things don't disturb me because i'm kind of used to it and i liked hereditary but you know i wasn't really unsettled for a lot of it but there are a few shots that linger on certain scenes and out of all the messed up stuff that happens in that film these shots were the ones that creep me out the most unlike the jump scare riddled films that we usually get this film makes you scan these rooms it makes you actively search for the scares it puts you on edge it usually doesn't play a loud noise and jump out at you and i find that most effective you're just watching the screen in dead silence as you try and figure out what the shadows are trying to hide from you and then you see it and it's like making a life-threatening discovery i really respect trevor henderson's artwork and i realize that some of these are mostly just to show off cool looking creatures hopefully this whole siren head thing will make some of these other creatures more prominent and introduce a lot more people to his work but be warned with this whole phenomenon be prepared to see a lot of terrible creepypastas and tumblr girls wanting to [ __ ] this thing oh boy ryan ryan ryan okay okay we have to go we have to catch up with the trend of siren head it's very important that you that you put this siren thing on on your head right now arise my siren head son [Music] there he is siren head in the flesh you end my suffering so siren head what's it like being a siren head well besides the constant pain and loss of most of my senses it's pretty good actually pretty good you

Channel: Solar Sands

Views: 1,084,247

Rating: 4.953763 out of 5

Keywords: Siren Head, Trevor Henderson, Solar Sands, Art, Drawing, Photoshop, Found Footage, Siren, Head, Creepypasta, SCP

Id: SlfXkMHbl70

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020