Without giving too much away, The Divided Man Book One is a battle of good and evil at the human and godly levels. In this future good and evil are very much Ying and Yang, left and right, balance and chaos. In many of the myths I explored to create the story, the spirits of good and evil are…similar—mirrors of each other.
When I set out to create images of my god characters in @MidjourneyAI, full descriptions yielded chilling but inaccurate results. I made hundreds of interactions before I decided to take pieces of many of them and use my favorite graphics program, @Krita, to create my own godly images. I hope no one accuses me of making false idols!
The Manitou came out very well, just as I had imagined in creating The Divided Man Book One and Book Two [Working on it, promise!].
The Wendigo was much harder. If the God of light had the body of a man and the head of an elk, what did its opposite look like? To find the answer I read many myths of the Wendigo, spoke with friends who are tribal members from across the country, and watched a few really cheesy movies. My net learning is that the Wendigo is a manifestation of the decay of good. Decay.
That was the theme of the Wendigo. The decay of light. The decay of balance and spirit. Rotting flesh and bone. MidJourney came up with some good images and the rest was creative assembly. Here it is, for you to see. And for it to see you.
If you are curled up with The Divided Man Book One, in the dark and quiet, and you feel a chill, push the evil thoughts out of your mind. There’s nothing behind your chair. Really. It’s just the wind…