November 3rd, 2008

So Friday afternoon had me thinking how crappy it was that I had this big update at ScrollBoss on Halloween with now Halloween stuff in it but it was even worse that I didn’t have anything for Illmosis. My mental condition, also named Illmosis, kicked in and caused me to think of Count Floyd from the SCTV sketch, Monster Chiller Horror Theater. Then I thought it was too bad that I couldn’t have a “Monster Iller Horror Theater” on the site and that was followed by, “Well why can’t I? It’s my damn site!” So that’s where the idea for Creature Iller Horror Theatre was born. Actually, I kept accidentally flipping between that and Creature Iller Terror Theatre, but I’m changing it back to Horror because Homeland Security may claim I was giving aid an comfort to the enemy or something. Anyway, the idea was to try to draw as many monster and horror related pics as I could without sacrificing quality.

Slimer flying right at you. Don't get slimed!
Werewolf from Sega's Altered Beast
Solomon Grundy.
Full body shot of a Lego Skeleton Warrior with sword.

As soon as I got home from work, I drew a really quick two-panel comic of Nutroll dressed as Count Floyd and put it on the index page to let any visitors know what was happening over the weekend. Then I started the creature art marathon which stars the characters you see to the left of this post. Click on the thumbnails to check out their Illmosis gallery pages. I started with Slimer/the Green Ghost from Ghostbusters as a warm-up. He’s a weird mix of the (un)live-action and animated versions since I like both of ’em. I followed that up with the werewolf from Altered Beast. This was a giant pain in the butt that killed most of the momentum that I had because I pencilled him three times before I got a version that I liked. The problem was that I kept trying to draw him in a wild, feral pose but the Altered Beast wolf is more of a brawler. I was inking the picture until around 7 AM Saturday which meant that I didn’t sleep much. When I hung out with my friends that afternoon, I sat in the car and pencilled Solomon Grundy’s pose as they shopped in a rummage sale. After all that and having some fun at my niece’s birthday party, I came back and spent a really long time fixing up the pose and then inking it. I finished it that night but sleep deprivation kept me from doing anything else for Saturday other than watching Pan’s Labyrinth, one of the most amazing movies I’ve ever seen. I woke up Sunday and went to work on the Lego Skeleton which took longer than it should have. I wanted the picture to look as close to a real minifigure as I could with minor tweaks to get the pose right but use the shadows to get a more horror-style vibe.

At this point, the Skeleton seems to be the early favorite with Grundy as a close second. That’s close to what I expected except I thought Grundy would be more popular. I didn’t get a lot done in the end of it all, but considering all the ScrollBoss recoding and commission art pencil work I did earlier in the week, I had a bigger Illmosis update than I expected. That counts as a win in my book. I may not be able to do it like this next year but I will keep the event name for the month and may have Count Rollula or another Halloween mascot announce the pictures. If I do anything like this for ScrollBoss, I’ve already decided to call it Danger Terror Horror Theater. Yes, I’m just that damned corny.

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