Gorgo is one of the few giant monsters to trash London. Because I’m of the opinion that there should be more giant monsters stomping on more cities outside of Japan (in movies at least), I’m fond of ol’ Gorgo and his mother. It’s Gorgo’s mother that does the stomping even if Gorgo gets the movie named after him.

My version here looks very different from the movie. The movie Gorgos have … ears? fins? something on their heads that don’t match anything on either modern reptiles or what we can determine on fossil ones. So I gave this one the sort of display frills that some lizards have. I modeled the rest of its features after a crocodile. Gorgo was an ocean dweller. In modern times the only dangerous big reptiles wandering the oceans are the salt water crocodiles of Australia.

More specifically, this would be A fifty foot woman. There have been two. The first was played by Allison Hayes in the 1958 version of Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman. I haven’t seen that version. This sketch was inspired by the 1993 version starring Darryl Hannah.

Today’s kaiju is a “re-imagination” of Viras, one of the many monsters that Gamera saved the world from. Gamera vs. Viras is a Gamera movie I’ve not yet seen. At this late date I’m not sure if I’ll get around to it. There are so many other movies I want to watch and not much time available to do it. I’d be hard pressed to convince Nizzibet to join me.

Maybe when I’m old and retired.

This critter is based on no pre-existing movie monster. It’s inspired by the bizarre design of Irys from Gamera 3. I’ve seen the movie a few times now and I still can’t figure out what Irys looks like. She’s not a giant anything. She’s unique. Frankly, my monster here is a more conventional design – head, body, four limbs.

This one was done sometime in 2005. It’s a reworking of a human sized b-movie monster as a giant monster. I did this with a few creatures; a giant Moleperson, a giant Jason Voorhees, and a giant Metalunan mutant as a superhero.

Today’s monster is a giant version of the Ro-Man from Robot Monster. I must confess that I haven’t seen the movie, but the Ro-Man’s budget costume of a gorilla suit with a diving helmet instead of the gorilla mask is legend. I tend to be under the delusion that any idea can have merit if approached correctly. All it may take is a few adjustments. It helps that I don’t have to come up with a story to go with the illustration.

I’ll also acknowledge the influence of Fantastic Four #137, one of the first issues of that series I remember reading. I don’t remember the actual story much, mostly just the climax featuring the Warhead, a giant gorilla with a gun bedecked Sputnik for a head, as it steps out of a drive-in movie screen.

I did this drawing prior to the Black Scorpion one but during the same burst of energy. This is a “re-imagined” version of Anguirus. Anguirus was Godzilla’s first sparring partner. He and the Big G fought it out in the little seen first sequel to Godzilla. The sequel is little seen most likely for two reasons: one, it was titled Gigantis, the Fire Monster when it was first released, and two, it’s not nearly as interesting as any of the movies that followed. Anguirus gets killed before the climax of the movie.

When I was a kid I’d try to draw the Japanese movie monsters as I’d seen them on TV – looking like men in big rubber suits. These days I don’t worry about it. I don’t have to try and fit a man into a costume. In the movies that meant that the poor actor playing Anguirus had to spend the movie crawling around on his hands and knees. (With the exception of Baragon in GMK: Giant Monsters Attack all the kaiju have been played by men.) So here Anguirus is depicted as a dog like quadruped.

Sometimes you’ve just got to admit to yourself that you’re not going to get a project done. That it’s time to set it aside and move on. When I first started contributing to the Kaijuphile Gallery I decided that I was only going to post what I considered to be finished work. I’d been posting to Epilogue.net for a couple of years by then and, while frustrated that Epilogue rejected art that I thought was good, I’d gotten to like the idea that a submission should be a finished piece. Since I started submitting to Kaijuphile I’ve had occasional bursts of creativity when I’ve begun multiple illustrations. One or two will get finished and the others will be set aside for “later”.

For the next few weeks or so I’m going to be showing the ones that aren’t going to be finished. My schedule has gotten a little too full for me to keep kidding myself that I’m going to dust them and get them ready for publication.

This one is of The Black Scorpion. I think this was the last film that had special effects by Willis O’Brien. The story concerned a group of giant prehistoric scorpions, released from their underground prison, going on a rampage in Mexico. I believe this drawing is from 2004.

I’ve been commissioned to illustrate a couple of t-shirts for The Black Seal. One of the illustrations is a colorized version of this picture. The other is a depiction of the King in Yellow. And with the King in Yellow there is usually the Yellow Sign. Unfortunately, the Yellow Sign that I’ve come to know and love is actually copyrighted (and possible trademarked) by Kevin Ross and TBS is good at respecting such things.

So I set about designing a new Yellow Sign. I figure that the Sign is probably not a fixed image. It’s much harder to defend against something that twists and mutates. So I narrowed things down to these six images and sent them off to Adam Crossingham and he showed them to the Cabal and now there’s another Yellow Sign. As to which one of these it is, well, when the t-shirt are available, then we’ll all know.

And this is the last page from the 1995 sketchbook. I’m sure there’s other work from that year that will show up here in the future but that book is done. Tomorrow we’ll start some more recent work.

Who is this guy? I’m not sure if I ever named him. He’s one of a trio friends/roommates who rescue an angel while drunk at the beach one night. That is, they are drunk and the angel falls to the sea in front of them. They rescue her and take her home with them. Hilarity ensues. Or not. Most of the stories I think of have some element of the absurd while not actually intended to be comedies.

The sketch here is the next to last one I scanned from my 1995 sketchbook. Tomorrow’s image will be the last one and then we’ll start looking at some more recently pieces.

Via Craig’s List we found a 1989 Honda Civic to replace our poor crunched Toyota Corolla. It needs some work, not surprisingly. Nizzibet had most of that done the day we bought the car. The tires will need to be replaced. That might be a project for this weekend. It’s also an automatic, the first such we’ve owned. I prefer manual transmission. It makes me pay attention to driving just a little bit more. But I’ll get used it. I’ve driven enough automatics in the past.