Popular Dark Art
A few years ago I happened upon the unique and delightful world of Emily The Strange. It was the first time I’d come across anything like this and so I presumed it was the ‘original’ idea that started a chain reaction for other similar cartoons.
Whether I’m right or wrong on that is another matter…according to the website emily has been around for 13 years now.
Not only is the concept for Emily amazing and original, but the entire website is a treat for the eyes. Every page seems to have some new and interesting visually and never breaks theme even once with it’s images or web copy.
When I visited the site some years ago there was a small collection of merchandise, and now this collection has become immense as clearly Emily has grown in popularity over the years.
Again, never breaking theme, even the website url for this piece of merchandise tells us to ‘beware’/'buy or die’!
Some of my favourite pages for artwork include;
http://www.emilystrange.com/beware/buyorDIE.cfm?i=5440 - Emily’s house on the top right
http://www.emilystrange.com/beware/GetLostEngine.cfm - Emily’s ‘garden’ at top
http://www.emilystrange.com/beware/about/StrangeNews/2006Fall01.cfm - Flick through all the tabs there at the top of the page, it’s a feast for any designer’s eyes!
Here are other similar styles of popular ‘dark art’….
Blythe Doll - Now I’m not sure if this is ‘dark’ or just plain weird! It all depends on whether you find dolls scary or not I guess! 
It’s certainly at least creepy.
Ruby Gloom - (nice site)
April 12th, 2007 at 10:50 am
I’ve always considered all dolls to be scary, I believe it was because I was subjected to Chucky at a young age. It’s the non blinking eyes, the permanent stare. :O
April 12th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I completely agree, I used to stare at my dolls in terror as a child from under the duvet.
Now when I kiss my children good night in their dark bedroom sometimes I stare furtively at the dolls behind me on my daughters bedside chair just incase they are moving behind my back!
I’ll always remember a chilling episode of The Twilight Zone called ‘Talkie Tina’ - a black and white story about a doll owned by a little girl and that wants to kill the parents yet cannot be destroyed despite the fathers best efforts.
She would say “My name is Talkie Tina and I’m going to kill you” to the dad.
I just did a quick Google, and my memory serves me well about this creepy episode; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Doll_(The_Twilight_Zone)