More Winter Company sketches. One might think that with all the pages dedicated to these characters that they held a more solid place in my imagination. Oddly though, they’ve mostly been background; not protagonists but characters intended to show up to make the protagonist’s life more interesting.

At the top is a golem.

At the bottom is Archie, the manticore. He’s the only one of the company besides Henry (Frankenstein’s monster) that I gave a name to. For some reason I’m very fond of him. He always seems so cheerful.

More members of the Winter Company.

More sketches of the Winter Company from my 2000 sketchbook. I hadn’t actually read the novel Frankenstein when I did these. I’m sure I’d read Shelly’s description of the creature since this version of him is basically how I’d draw him today.

The Winter Company is a band of monsters living on the outskirts of human society. Many of them used to see humans as prey (or at least as The Enemy) but in order to become part of the Company they have to agree to leave humans alone. The monsters are a variety of creatures from natural freaks to supernature horrors. They are led by Frankenstein’s monster.

I did a portrait of the Company in my Epilogue.net gallery. I’d include a link to the specific image but I don’t seem to be able to access Epilogue today.

Back in the mid-nineties, Jordan Bojar, who had formerly published Misspent Youths, talked to me about his interest in reviving the Atlas characters for a new publisher. He asked if I’d be interested in writing any of the new series. Rather predictably I was most attracted to Atlas’s various monster characters.

There were a couple of characters that I developed fairly extensive new stories for, one’s different enough from the originals that I’d consider them new characters. This character started out as The Brute, a giant blue caveman revived from suspended animation. The original version just grunted and rampaged. This version, revisited here in my 2000 sketchbook, was a giant barbarian warrior from a prehuman, previously unknown civilization. He was revised along with his arch-enemy, an intelligent evolved lemur sorceror.

A version of the Burrabb priest. He’s obviously stockier now but that’s more because I’d learned to draw mass in the years since the first drawing. He’s still got the pointed ears and single nostrils of the original design. The priests of his religion cut off their horns to symbolize their commitment to peace and to indicate that they aren’t available for mating. (The both Burrabb sexes grow horns when they are sexually mature.) The chain is a symbol of devotion to his diety.

(As I’ve mentioned before “he” isn’t exactly an accurate pronoun. Despite being a two sexed species the Burrabb sexes share the procreative process differently than we terrans do.)

On the left side – Moe from Misspent Youths.

On the right side – Miracle Max. This is a less cartoony version than I normally draw.

Out here on my side of the keyboard Nizzibet has succumbed to the cold that I’ve finally gotten over. Her version of it is hitting her harder than it hit me. So my job today is to be a nurse. Yay me!

A copy of the role playing game Delta Green had come in a buy I’d done at Half Price Books during the last year I’d worked there. Reading it had revived my interested in the so-called Cthulhu Mythos. One of the major adversaries in Delta Green were the Mi-Go, aliens from outside our solar system who maintain a base on the (used-to-be-a) planet Pluto.

I did this illustration of a Mi-Go in early 2000. Sometime that same year I used it as one of my earliest Photoshop projects. I submitted the finished piece (and two others) to the Delta Green website.

Sometime later (2001? 2002? I’d have to check) Jon Turner contacted me to see if I’d be interested in doing illustrations for The Black Seal. At the time I wasn’t doing much art and hadn’t been for a few months. I did a few, not terribly impressive, pieces for the first issue. By the second issue I’d discovered a style and working method that I think works. Most of my work that can be found on the web has come as a result of working on that first issue of the Black Seal, either as a Cthulhu Mythos illustration or because of the skills I’d taught myself while working on the Black Seal.

Our journey through the 1999 sketchbook continues. At this point the book may have transitioned into the 2000 sketchbook. Let’s assume it has.

In the top left is K.Z. O’Neil. Next to him is some sort of shapeshifting horror. Next to that is a light sketch of Moe.

Slightly below K.Z. is an unfinished sketch of a shotgun. Beside that is a more civilized version of the chimpanzee mad scientist from yesterday. And then it Moe again.

The final four heads (ignoring the very light sketch of Detritus on the right) are Lili, an older gentleman (probably some evil bureaucrat from King Roach), Detritus and, finally, a random mutant.

One of King Roach’s adversaries was/is a mad chimpanzee who genetically engineers giant monsters by combining the genes of two or more completely unrelated animals. The monster here is a warthog/tarantula combination. The chimp was himself originally part of a scientific experiment in raising the intelligence in the so-called “lower” animals. The experiment was a hideous success.