Wednesday, May 09, 2007

MORE MONSTERS!!!


Here's about 100 sketches for my series of 1,000 monsters that I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with. I need to do a lot more experimentation with book binding before I'm comfortable with doing a run of books for this. I'll be using these a lot to reference for various characters in my Hob Bob comic, I'm going to try to incorporate every one of them in one way or another. Some will probably be characters that I use a lot, others will get background cameos. The one that looks like it's split in half has inspired me to do a weird tribe or village of characters that are all split in half but fit back together when they're in danger. That's going to be fun to draw. I might make all the buildings split in half too. Maybe have some giant golem creature that's in two giant halves that all the townsfolk need to push back together to fight for their plot of land against whatever invaders come their way.

Anyway, what you're looking at is very light pencil sketches that I dropped the levels on in photoshop and adjusted with the stamp filter. A few of these I'll start drawing with an idea in mind, but it's usually just stream of conscious drarering. Strangely the diamond formation, ghosts and serpents keep finding their way back into different creatures so I'm just running with it.

12 comments:

Ray Frenden said...

Aeron, do you recall the mid-eighties toys Monsters in my Pocket?

If not, they were a small, rubber toy, only about two inches tall, and draped in neon colors. They were a HUGE influence on my likes and dislikes, shaping the stuff that I really dig today.

Long story made slightly shorter, these condensed monster sets really bring some of that same feeling of joy as seeing all those miniature, neon creatures. Very cool.

Aeron said...

Ha, yeah I don't know where I was during the Monsters in my Pocket blitz. I wish I'd known about them when I was a kid I'm sure I would have dug them. M.U.S.C.L.E.S is where I came from. Those clear translucent trash can containers with a pack of twelve or more of those pink bastards, that's what I grew up on. Well that and all the other 80's toylines "Masters of the Universe!" and videogames. But influence wise I've always had a fascination for dinosaurs, fossils and monsters in general.

Aeron said...

Oh and I've looked into the process of mold casting and I think I might be able to actually create plastic toys of these. The process is pretty simple although it involves a lot of steps. I think I posted the tutorial link on here awhile back but basically you just sculpt something in clay, cover it in this weird material that hardens around it in two halves, and bam, you got a mold that you can cast whatever solidifying material you want.

Ray Frenden said...

I think those two toys coexisted on the shelves. I know I wanted, if not had, both. I definitely had fewer Muscle dudes, though. I was too busy reading the packaging on Baba Yaga, Minotaur, Red Cap, Spring Heel Jack, Behemoth...

Man, what a great set of toys.

Ray Frenden said...

I've vacuuformed stuff before, and that wasn't too bad.

Luke P. said...

I love MUSCLES! I wish I still had em.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.U.S.C.L.E._Men

They're doing a new manga too.

btw, I have a few original drawings from this series, graciously thrown in by Aeron with a couple of paintings that I bought- they look great.

zeke said...

These look great, they'd make ace posters as they are.

SEAN said...

I've got a monster in my pocket... or is it a banana? Anyhow, MUSCLES were a bit before MIMP (?)... i think they first came out in 1985, when i was in 4th grade while i remember MIMP coming out in 1990, when i was in highschool, which is why i didn't buy them foolishly. anyhow, great set of drawings aeron. i wanna trade with you!
s.

Ray Frenden said...

That sounds about right. I was in 3rd grade-ish.

Paleo said...

Whatever you do, i think you should find a way to show all the creatures in one place when you finish the 1000, maybe a painting ( mural?) or a website, could 1000 drawings be shown in a continuous scroll or "infinite canvas" kind of thing? will it work or it will crash everybody's computer?

Jacob Covey said...

This is beautiful. Aeron, you really should make a poster of every 100 drawings. Keep you motivated and in the end you have 10 awesome posters!

Aeron said...

Thanks, I've thought about posters. I need to experiment but I absolutely want to make some of these into a toyline. I just need to find the right plastic material so I can make these out of something that doesn't break easily if dropped. Ideally I'd like to make at least 100 of these into mini toys similar to the M.U.S.C.L.E.S figures but have them at least 3 or 4 inches tall and capable of standing right side up. I also need to find out a way to tie in my drawings with the packaging. I'm going to leave them all one uniform color similar to the original muscle figs and probably encourage people to paint their own and send me pics. There's going to be 150 of these monster drawings published in a book coming out later this year, I'll mention the details on that book as it becomes available to me.