I have an irrational affection for The Horror of Party Beach. The movie features some of the goofiest looking monsters you’re likely to see so, of course, I feel a need to take care of them and actually try to make them scary looking. The monsters are the corpses of drowned sailors that have been reanimated by radioactive waste. For some reason this means they’ve grown googly eyed fish heads and scales. Radioactive waste is so creative!

There are fish zombies littering my sketchbooks. The one finished version I’ve done can be found here. It was used for the cover of the webzine Decompositions last year.

Today’s sketch features the Shepherd, a relatively recent creation. This is the first time I’ve put him down on paper. If he hangs around my imagination long enough I’m sure he’ll show up here again. If he sticks around I’ll have more to say about him then.

The first superhero I remember inventing was the Alpha Beast. I’m not sure how old I was. He was scientist named Brian Daniels who invented a machine that could de-evolve any living thing to an ancestral form. So, of course, he used the machine to transform himself into a superpowered reptile-simian. And then he fought crime. Because that’s what you do when you’re a genius who can transform himself into a completely non-existent ancestral form. He called himself the Alpha Beast because alpha=first. It surprises me that I knew that as a kid. I’m pretty sure I learned that from reading comics.

AB’s physical form was inspired by the monster Gog from Spider-Man #103. Brian Daniels had technology that prevented his brain from de-evolving with his body so he was both super strong and really smart.

And now, for a change of pace, a recent sketch. As you’ll note, this one has a date. Since beginning to post my sketches here I’ve tried to remember to date my sketches. I’m not always consistent but at least there are dates in my sketchbooks now so it’s easier to figure out when the undated sketches were done.

This piece isn’t in a book. It’s on a loose piece of paper, cardstock actually. It’s my most recent interpretation of the Weirdsmith. I never seem to get the same mask on him twice.

This one was inspired by the stupid, stupid rat creatures of Jeff Smith’s wonderful Bone series. The rat creatures are the orcs of the series, only funnier. Bone is good read, especially for if you haven’t read a million fantasy novels. If you have read quite a few you’ll see where things are going pretty quickly (at least once the Dark Lord type shows up) but Smith’s cartooning and his characters make the story worth finishing.

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.