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.

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.