I did this version of King Seesar prior to the more traditional example posted on my Kaijuphile gallery. Since Seesar is based on the lion dog guardians of Asian temples, and since I didn’t have to worry about fitting a man into a costume, I decided to go for a literal canine design.

I’d already done one version of Gappa when I did this sketch. I returned to the subject because I’d sketched a more radical redesign on some scratch paper at work. The Gappa of the movies is as aerodynamic as an office building. It doesn’t flap its wings to fly. It just takes off and goes. This version of Gappa is much more of an animal, albeit a mythical one. It became a sort of giant griffin.

Any guesses as to which monster inspired this sketch?

Hints:

He’s human sized.

He’s been in more than one film.

None of those films were made in Japan.

Another example of transposing the design of a familiar monster, King Ghidorah in this case, onto a different genetic structure. The original Ghidorah is a space dragon. This Ghidorah has mix of eel and insect in its parentage.

Oh. Was that obvious?

This drawing was inspired by the question, “What if Hellboy were a giant monster?” Actually the question is, more specifically, “If I were to transpose the design elements of Hellboy on to a giant monster, what would need to change to make the new creature a “new” design?”

In this case we’ve got broken horns instead of shaved ones, a wrecking ball in place of a stone hand, reptilian skin and black scales in place of hair. Even with those changes it’s pretty obviously a Hellboy clone. This sketch was done in 2004, before the film came out.

This is the atomic mutant from The Day the World Ended. Here, instead of transforming into a lumpy and hideous creature who must hide his face from the rest of humanity, he has transformed into a giant, dynamic superhero primed to kick other mutants butts. Thus does nuclear radiation act as a positive force in the world.

The original mutant is a Paul Blaisdell creature and features the pointed ears that most of his monsters sported. The details of the movie have faded in my memory. I’m pretty sure that the mutant creeped me out. Certainly its first appearance did. The whole monster didn’t appear. Just its three fingered, black furred hand reaching in from off screen to pick up a dropped hankerchief.

I saw the She-Creature as a kid. It was one of the those movies that played on Saturday afternoons on the Chiller Diller Theatre on channel 2. It wasn’t a Godzilla movie but it did have a monster if only a human sized one. The creature was created and played by Paul Blaisdell. It’s only as an adult that I’ve come to appreciate the skill and imagination that went in to Blaisdell’s costumes. Making an interesting looking creature on the budgets he was given must have been a huge challenge. Never mind how goofy the costumes looked. They were unique. They were memorable.

Today’s sketch is a re-imagination of the She-Creature as a giant. I’ve tried to keep the hallmarks of Blaisdell’s design while streamlining it and making it look more natural. That is, make it look more like a living amphibious creature rather than an interesting costume.

From 2004. One of the movie ideas that Willis O’Brien tried to have financed was King Kong vs. Frankenstein. I based this sketch on one of O’Brien’s sketches of the monster that I found floating around the internet.

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.