This creature is an original creation, i.e. not based on any movie monster. It’s a giant, long-necked bat-thing. The name was an afterthought. I just had the image of the creature in mind. Any story around it is up to the viewer. The finished version can be found here.

It’s a rare monster that I don’t have some affection for. I almost have more love for the poor creatures that result from no-budget special effects than the beautifully realized King Kongs, Aliens and Beasts from 20,000 Fathoms. The no-budget beasts have so much potential. If only someone loved them enough to tell their story right, with decent actors, an intelligent script and a reasonable amount of money dedicated to effects. Like this critter – La Cancanya – star of The Giant Claw. She’s a giant force-field protected anti-matter buzzard from outer space. How can you not love that?

The finished version of this portrait can be found here

Given the number of 70’s and 80’s horror movies that are getting sequels and/or remade I’m surprised that no one has signed up for a new version of Prophecy. What’s not to love about a giant mutated people-eating bear and her hideous offspring? There’s so much room for improvement in this movie it actually makes sense to remake it.

The finished version is here.

One question that often plagues the kaiju fan – who would win in a fight – King Kong or Godzilla? There are lots of Kongs and lots of Godzillas. As far as I can see most versions of Godzilla would make toothpaste out of most versions of King Kong. Size does matter. So does being bullet and missile proof. And having the ability to breath radioactive fire.

Another question is – what kind of monster would you get if you combined Kong and Godzilla? The finished version is in my Kaijuphile gallery.

Here’s an early attempt at Space Godzilla. You’ll find a later, finished version in my Kaijuphile gallery. I’m pretty sure that the pre-Photoshop version of said illustration will be showing up in a post sometime in the next few weeks.

This one is part of the kaiju portrait series. It doesn’t correspond with any movie monster I can think of so I must have been taking a break doing movie character portraits.

Gabara has the distinction of being Minya’s arch foe. And being imaginary.

Gigan, a three time sparring partner of Godzilla, apparently has a lot of fans. I’m not one of them. I don’t care for his original design from the seventies and I thought there was way too much of him in Godzilla: Final Wars. Nonetheless, I’ve done numerous sketches of him in an attempt to design a version of him that I liked.

So far I haven’t succeeded. The final version (colored and enhanced in Photoshop) of this portrait appears in my Kaijuphile gallery where it has proved to be one of my most popular illustrations. Sigh.

This charming fellow is one half of the Gargantua brothers from the movie War of the Gargantuas. He’s the bad tempered, people eating one. Because of that people eating tendency War is one of the few kaiju movies that I found scary as a kid. I wasn’t too worried about being stepped on by a giant monster. They’re big and loud and so relatively easy to avoid. They’ll stomp on your house but, mostly, they don’t care about people. The few kaiju that considered human beings to be part of their diet gave me pause. Getting stomped on would be a lousy way to go. Getting chewed up? Much worse. The finished version of this image is in my Kaijuphile gallery.

The next image in the sketchbook is of Gyaos, one of the monster Gamera’s most popular foes. It’s the first of a series of monster portraits I did for Kaijuphile. I was playing around to see what sort of color effects I could get using a mix of colored pencils and digital colors. The finished version is here in my Kaijuphile gallery. The final image was colored in Photoshop. Checking the upload dates it looks like I returned to this sketchbook even later than I’d thought. This image is from June of 2005.