Busy-Busy and The Borg

Hi, everyone! Sorry, it's been forever since my last post. The Kickstarter short film I did the demonic Tarot cards for (you probably don't remember) got funded, so they're moving on to make their feature. I should be doing more work for them soon: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/okaybyme/fire-city-the-interpreter-of-signs-a-demon-noir-fa

 I've been very busy with freelance- all table top RPG stuff. It's really fun work. Here are some examples (I'll stick to drawings with monsters in them):

 In my free time I drew a portrait of Ernest Borgnine. Always wanted to draw The Borg. Reminds me, I need to see an uncut version of "The Devil's Rain" at some point.

 Here's a doodle I did while on jury duty (we did nothing all day and got sent home):

 And that's it for now. I headlining my first gallery show- small gallery in NYC- so I'm busy prepping illustrations for that. I want to produce some new work for it, but it's on October 3rd, so I don't have much time. I probably should have figured out how to get 60+ drawings framed before now. Never had to do this for a show, so I'm pretty clueless. Also, working on the Firefly RPG. Bye for now!

QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT

 Happy New Year, everyone! I recently re-read the classic M.R. James ghost story, "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad." If you have not read this short story, just stop right now and read it!: Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad

The ending is absolutely chilling. I remember seeing an illustration of the ghost when I was a child, long before I read the story. Well, I was inspired to take a bed sheet and a skull and try some creative photography:

 I always imagined the ghost in the story to have a face that was a bit more defined- perhaps feminine at first, but then the fabric would sink back, hollowing out the eyes like a skull. Or maybe it would look like a piece of diaphanous sculpture (the Veiled Vestal Virgin by Raffaelle Monti): 

 More from my series of photos can be found in my Photo Album, "Oh, Whistle."

Unfinished Demons and Yokai

Hello, All! Sorry, it's been a while since my last post. As per the email conversations, I thought I'd show some sketches I did for a freelance job. Rejects, really, as none of these really look like the finished drawing. The client was " Burning Wheel," an RPG. The creator needed illustrations for his "Monster Burner," a compendium of beasties included in his game world. These are drawings I did for creating a generic demon.






I didn't have much direction on it- just "draw a demon," so I drew a fairly wide variety.



The demon head in the lower left is the closest to what we ended up with. The client liked the almost female half-face, like the demon was a twisted perversion of a once-beautiful woman. Odd. I can't seem to locate the final inked version on my drive, but I think we can live without it for now.

I did a series of Yokai- creatures from Japanese folklore- for the same game. This is Hari Onago, a Japanese spirit possessing the usual extra, extra long hair, but each strand has, at its end, a barbed hook for ensnaring her victims.



Now, something a bit different, as far as my usual styles go. These are Yokai characters for an animation project at work. There's a very loose attempt at creating a sumi-e style.



L-R Top Row: Yama-chichi/Yamajijii, Nuribotoke, Dodomeki
Bottom Row: Wanuguchi, Rokurokubi

I hadn't heard of the character, Nuribotoke, before. He's this dancing corpse with oozing black skin, dangling eyeballs, and a bloated belly. I want to do further illustrations of him.

Location:Brooklyn, NY

Nucklavee, In Work

Hello, everyone! Really seeing some nice work all around, and I'm very proud to be in such great company. My introduction to Eaten By Ducks was through Robert Adam Gilmour, who had seen a drawing I had done on Agony a Go-Go (picture on left). Somehow, I had forgotten the source of the creature. I looked through all of my mythology and folklore texts, as well as my notes, and couldn't find a thing on it. I put it up in my gallery, along with the caption that should anyone be able to identify it, they should email me. Well, Robert emailed me and said that the man-horse creature was known as the Nucklavee and then invited me to join EBD. At least, that's how I remember it. 

 Anyway, I've always hated this drawing. What you're seeing is actually a xerox of the original sketch that I clumsily colored with marker. It's not even cropped off right- you can see the edges of the sketchbook page it was taped into. So, I've started on a newer version. It's not done yet, and I'm not happy with what I have so far. I started with some sketches of sickly horses(ignoring versions of the creature that involved huge flipper legs and flipper appendages protruding from the chest of the horse):

 Even if I wasn't drawing a Nucklavee, it's always good to have some nice sickly horse studies. I'm positive that the description of the Nucklavee I had seen had said that the monster was comprised of a rotting horse with the rotting torso of a man , his head huge and his arms long enough to reach the ground, sticking out of its back.

  So, anyway, I started off with this drawing, but I made the original pencil line too dark- which is a bad thing for me. You see, when I go to ink it with a fine line, and the pencil line is so dark, I can't see the ink line very well, so what looks okay when you first think you're done looks like crap after you've erased the pencil line. You what I got was this ugly, disjointed bit of line work with bad hatching. I hate the neck, especially. So, anyway, I started another version, this time adhering closer to the descriptions that I'm reading all over the web on the Nucklavee, wherein the horse and "rider" are comprised mainly of exposed muscle covered with pulsing veins.

   It's an okay start, but I think my horse looks too much like a young horse or pony because of the proportions I've given it. So dainty. I think I'll go for a rotting musculature look, as opposed to the shiny wet look I've seen.

   Finally, I made a quick sketch of another idea, where the features of the Nucklavee are more exaggerated, like the horses in the paintings of Breugel the Elder. Even more so, than in this sketch. I'll let you guys know when I've finished anything.

My Penanggalan Obsession

 Ever since seeing it in the D & D Fiend Folio, I've been a bit obsessed with the Penanggalan, a female vampire from Malaysian folklore. A good part of Agony a Go-Go was dedicated to the Penanggalan, and was, I think, one of the primary reasons people found my site, back in 1997. I noticed that my images or writings on the Penanggalan appeared on several mythology and folklore websites, including some academic sites, at the time. Not sure if I was providing a helpful service, since I had greatly embellished on the mythology.

   There's just something so odd and demented about the Penanggalan. There was a similar monster in European folklore which consisted of a wizard, whose head and entrails separated from his body and floated around performing unsound deeds. The Penanggalan's purpose is pretty straight forward: it eats babies and small children. 

   It's preferred method of attack was to come up through the floorboards. I'm not sure if the original folktale involved her forcing her way up through the floor as we see here- perhaps she had some more discreet method that Southeast Asian architecture allowed- but I liked the idea of this disgusting thing blossoming out of the floor.

   Apparently, you could protect your home from the Penanggalan by having the Jeruju thistle growing around it's perimeter. The Penanggalan would become ensnared in its barbs and be trapped until morning, where she would be vulnerable to attack. The Penanggalan uses her long hair and innards as tentacles.

   Anyway, I have a whole bunch of drawings of Penanggalans, some of which I've posted to my Flickr page. The last thing I'll post here, before being rude and going on too long, is a sampling of just how demented my little obsession was: two pages of notes from a sketchbook, back in 1993:

First Steps

Hello, my name is Kurt Komoda. I've been lurking on here for a while. I'm an artist living in New Jersey and working as a commercial artist in New York City- though, it doesn't really pay the rent and bills. I think you all know the story. Like many of you, I grew up as a terrified child, tormented by the things in the dark or just outside my field of view. Most of my nightly phantoms were fueled by the snippets of horror movies I was able to see before my parents would send me off to bed. Unfortunately, they always did this just as the nice movie we were watching turned into something ghastly- so....I be sent upstairs to my room where my imagination would begin to fill in the blanks. In all cases that I've have the chance to check, "my version" was better than the actual movie. I've learned that it sometimes better to keep it that way. My introduction to Eaten By Ducks was through Robert Gilmour, when he identified one of the drawings I had done of the Nucklavee: I had read about it somewhere and immediately sketched it, but then forgot what the hell it was. I don't think it's a very good drawing. It was just a silly sketch that, for some reason, I Xeroxed and then colored with marker and white gouache. I hate the human head and the one-eyed horse looks like "My Little Pony" or something. I'll have to draw it again and make it look a bit more sinister. Okay, well, I can't take up too much space. I suppose there will be more as we go on. Obviously, I'm fascinated by monsters- but I draw other things, too.