The artist, who is also known as nothinghappenedtoday to his 160k Instagram followers, has already been featured here on Bored Panda when he created a series of the secret lives of our favorite characters. His new series called “IKEA Instructions” explores the horror movie scene and reveals to us the instructions on how to make villains. The instructions are simple and were inspired by IKEA’s instructions that are included when buying their furniture. “I thought it would be funny to create IKEA instructions for the Human Centipede—I liked it so much that I applied the style to other horror films,” revealed the artist to Bored Panda.
“I usually stick to horror for IKEA series because I enjoy the genre, and most villains have a "creation" story that I can mine for ideas. Occasionally, I venture into other subjects, but horror seems to work better for the concept.” When asked how long does it take for him to create one instruction, he said: “Usually between 6-12 hours, depending on how complicated the character is or how many steps are needed in the instructions.”
“Usually, I start by drawing the main character image, then I try to figure out how to translate their origin and items into IKEA’s instruction style. It's always a fun challenge trying to distill a character's history into simplified pictographs. My favorite is probably the Freddy Krueger instructions—instead of depicting his creation, I illustrated his nursery rhyme from the films.”
Harrington studied illustration and graphic design at Virginia Commonwealth University and has worked as an illustrator/cartoonist/graphic designer for the past 20 years. It’s no wonder why these instructions are made so well. “For my "day job," I work as a graphic designer at an alt-weekly newspaper. Nights are spent working on illustration commissions or just drawing for fun. I've done illustration work for Fox television, Penguin Books, id10t, and others. I've been drawing my entire life, and even went to art school for college to study graphic design and illustration at Virginia Commonwealth University. I think that my commercial art background as a designer/illustrator with a realistic drawing style allows me to mimic most artistic drawing styles and allows me to be flexible in my subject matter,” says he.
This series features various horror scene characters that we can find not only in movies, but also in books. From Samara Morgan, who emerged from the cursed videotape in the famous supernatural horror movie series The Ring, to shy, 16-year-old Carrie White from Stephen King’s 1974 epistolary novel Carrie that was later adapted into a movie of the same name, Harrington provides us simple instructions on what ingredients we need for these characters and a few simple steps to create them.
