The Gardeners

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In the movie The Thing from Another World the alien invader turns out to be a mobile plant that feeds on blood. While playing with a redesign of the creature I started to wonder what sort of civilization a mobile plant would come up with. Frankly, I was stumped. A plant civilization is going to have a whole different set of wants from an animal one.

After a bit of thinking it occurred to me that just because the Thing was a plant didn’t necessarily mean that it came from a civilization of plants. It could have been the equivalent of a guard dog or a helper monkey. The ship it arrived in is destroyed. The Thing can’t (or won’t) communicate. The men who find it only assume it is the ship’s pilot.

So then I started thinking about what sort of culture would create plants to act as soldiers and servants. And I wondered what other sorts of plant creatures might they create? (And which b-movie monsters could I reimagine as plant monsters?.)

Human

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The world that this version of Mara lives in is one with multiple human species. None of the species represent humanity at its best. Neither is one species an avatar of human evil. Even angels and demons are more complicated than that.

Mara and the Angry Red Batratspidercrab

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At the top of the page is the most memorable of the menaces from the movie Angry Red Planet. I haven’t tried to “improve” the creature. How could I?

The bottom of the page is devoted to Mara Winikat. She’s supposed to be skinny and gawky and awkwardly adolescent. The drawing on the bottom right takes those qualities a bit far. I know that lots of artists exaggerate proportions in their illustrations but, honestly, most of the time I’m trying to draw realistically. If a character is nine heads tall then they’re probably a freak or an alien.

It Conquered the World

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Paul Blaisdell was responsible for some very striking monster suits in a series of low budget monster movies in the fifties and sixties. Most of the suits are pretty goofy looking but that’s part of their charm. Blaisdell went that extra mile to create creatures that were unforgettable.

“Beulah”, the Venusian from It Conquered the World is a prime example of Blaisdell’s goofy imagination.

This drawing is one in my ongoing series of re-interpreting old b-movie monsters, combining what (little) I know of science and biology with the basic designs of the originals to make something new. With this one I went with the idea that Beulah was some sort of crustacean (those claws are suggestive of that) and this is the result.

The Other Master

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For the Mandate of Heaven kung fu dictionary I planned to have two characters demonstrating the moves. One was the male I’ve shown previously. Here are some of the work sketches as I tried to figure out what the female kung fu master would look like.