Harpy

The Harpy is a demonic woman, hideously ugly. Her looks are counterbalanced by her voice, which is beautiful and alluring, capturing the wills of any who listen to it and drawing them to their deaths.

I almost went for something more bird-like, but I stopped when I realized my ideas were too close to the World of Warcraft harpies. The head of this one is still based on that of one of the ugliest birds in the world, the turkey.

Vampire

Vampirism is a dreadful magical curse which spreads, virus-like, from one creature to another. The curse is passed onto any creature whose life is drained by an existing vampire, and only creatures of roughly human physiognomy are succeptible. When the afflicted creature dies, it rises again as a creature of the night, driven by tortuous necessity to drink the blood of the living. Vampires vary in temperament and style as much as the diverse races they hail from, but by the nature of the curse itself are predestined towards acts of evil.

Vampires are such an old and complicated myth, it's a shame that the rampant popularity they've enjoyed culturally over the last few years does little to acknowledge the weird shit that inspired them (one part of necrophilia, one part cannibalism and one part sexual predation and rape, for starters). The most well-known incarnation is probably still Béla Lugosi's, but it's a little too visually hammy for my tastes. Much scarier for me is the Max Schreck version, this scene in particular.

Sorry for the sort of sparse illustration this week, it's actually part of a poster design that I did reworked without the text. German expressionism, go!

Atropal

Of the many deities and demigods across the planes, only a fraction of real knowledge is held. These beings, unknowably powerful, defy rational thought; they live indefinitely, apparently drawing some power from the faithful acts of their followers.

Knowledge of the creation and destruction of godly beings is thus incredibly hard to come by. One story, however, is sometimes whispered of by the eldest and most knowledgeable archmages: it is said that sometimes, when a god comes into being, some fault or flaw corrupts its manifestation and the god perishes in the instant it is born. These stillborn gods, still powerful in their own right, instantly rise as gigantic undead beings called Atropals. An abomination in the truest sense of the word, the rise of an Atropal dooms worlds.

This is the first creature we've done from the Epic Level Handbook, a fun volume that contains everything you need to make an adventure for characters at 20th level or higher (at level 20 characters pretty much become demigod superheroes). All the creatures in the ELH are really imaginative and cool, and most of them stats that would make a 5th level paladin cringe. The above creature is surrounded by a 30-foot aura that kills most creatures outright then resurrects them as undead minions a few turns later. Yipes!

and yes, it's pretty much an aborted god-fetus. sorry!

Ghost

The halls of the dwarven kings are the sombre grave of a great civilization who met unfortunate doom. In it's great halls, there is first the quick patter of a thief's feet, followed by the wail of spirits still defending the ancient ruin.

A ghost is what's known as a "template" creature. You know how you can have a dragon, or a griffin, or an elf? Well you can also have a ghost dragon, a ghost griffin, or a ghost elf, by applying a certain set of stats to that creature. Something I like about D&D is its customizability through sheer number of templates for every situation conceivable. Because --gosh darn it-- if I want the players to fight a two-headed T. Rex that breathes acid and is made entirely out of goo, then my players will fight a two-headed T. Rex that breathes acid and is made entirely out of goo.

Those ghost were originally meant to be part of the Valkyrie image from a couple of months back, being the spirit of a dead warrior being taken to the enternal battlefields of the afterlife. But I couldn't find a way to draw the ghost that didn't take attention away from the Valkyrie herself, so he had to be scrapped.

Dryad

Born from the branches of ancient oak trees, dryads are the protectors of forests and plantlife. They are peaceful creatures, lacking the mischievous instincts of her faerie brethren, but can become a fierce opponent when she finds her home threatened.

This image is inspired by Ivan Bilibin, a Russian illustrator best know of the images he did for the tale of Vasilisa the Beautiful. I think it's a crime that there don't seem to be any books collecting his artwork.

Odopi

Odopii are legendary beings of chaos and evil from the Tarterian Depths of Carceri. A directionless bundle of twisted limbs, the Odopi moves constantly and inelegantly onward by rolling on its many hands, each with an ugly yellow eye in its palm. Their huge bodies can lay waste to cities in moments.

I wanted to try a more painterly style again with this one, I guess it's sort of like a cross between the Necronaut and Shivhad. What can I say, I love drawing bony arms.

Also he's supposed to be rampaging through the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, another planar realm based on order and lawfulness. I might work some little robot men into it to get a better sense of scale.

NB - click on the image to see it full size, the colours got kinda messed up in the blogspot thumbnail.

Bulette

A Bulette, or land-shark, is a huge quadrupedal burrowing creature. Strong and mindless, Bulettes live simply to eat, and with such a massive body comes a notoriously resilient digestive sytem. Bulettes are true omnivores and will eat literally anything, including animals, plants, metals, even soil and rock if nothing else is available. Solitary creatures (except in certain terrifying situations where they reside with a mate) Bulettes are mercifully rare.

Back to routine! After posting the animations we're back to just static illustrations for a while (although keep your eye out for an animated .gif or something). Trying to go for a stylised Craig McCracken look here, whilst tipping my artsy hat to that other great land shark.

Frost Giant

The Frost Giant is a massive blue-skinned humanoid that makes its lair in icy caves. They live in groups, ruled by their wisest, strongest and most evil among them, called Jarl, and served by slaves snatched from raids.

Okay, I'm going to straight-up admit that I strayed a little from the desciption in the books, becaue the books essentially describe 15-foot tall blue Vikings. Not that Vikings are bad or anything, since the Frost Giant is based on the jotunn anyway, but I just wanted to do something a little different.

I feel all rested up now from doing that big animation for the last post. Maybe I'll start a new one.

Edit: Now with alternate colors. Does anybody have a favourite version?

Lizardfolk

The lizard-men are one of the staple creatures of fantasy, presented in D&D as the aptly-named Lizardfolk. They're a non-evil people, primitive but not savage, or at least that what the original Monster Manual indicates. Further books down the line give subraces/tribes of various lizardfolk, some with more evil abilities than other.

AND I'VE FINALLY FINISHED THIS ANIMATION WOOP

This was probably one of the more complicated characters I've animated to date. Other characters I did were a lot simpler, whereas with this one I always had to keep track of his belly ridges, number of teeth and so on.


Here, have some progress.

1) Turnaround of the monster, so I can always be aware of what details I'm missing, what proportions are wrong, what color goes where and so on. Drawn like three weeks ago.



2) Animating. Several step process because I can't just do it the smart way and not redraw the same shape a bazillion times.






Special thanks to Joe for showing me a whole lot of After Effects tips for improvements on the final render. Sounds on the film were taken from freesound and were originally created by Rhedcerulean and melarancida.

Rust Monster

I wouldn't say it's 100% finished but I have had pretty much the most-stressful-day-that-hasn't-involved-worrying-about-money-ever today, involving (least of all) my computer completely refusing to cooperate in any way imaginable so I'm just going to upload it as it is so I can stop being annoyed at it. So here it is, sans floor shadow and a coupla other things. Phooey! Phooey, I say! I will make it better and give it a formal uploading on vimeo or something later! Sorry to all you (doubtless by now both innumerable and disappointed) fans expecting more of me.

For those in the dark about Rust Monsters, all the necessary info can be found here. Goodnight!

Troglodyte

A bloodthirsty race of primitive lizard-men, Troglodytes are mostly found underground, where they live in small tribes. Rarely arming themselves with anything more sophisticated than a simple spear or javelin, Troglodytes have nonetheless evolved some interesting features for protection - most famously, they are capable of excreting a scent through pores in their skin which smells so awful it can disorientate and deter most non-troglodyte foes.

STILL NO ANIMATION, ALTHOUGH YOU CAN HAVE A SNEAKY WORK-IN-PROGRESS PEEK IF YOU WANT:


INTERESTING, HUH? CHECK BACK NEXT WEEK. :3

Catoblepas and Gorgon

The Catoblepas and Gorgon are both classic monsters of the D&D beastiaries, but I have a special reason for drawing them both together; they're based on the same mythological creature, though one of them was given a different name.

Pliny the Elder and Bartholomeaeus Anglicus describe the Catoblepas as an Ethiopian bull-like creature with a long neck and head always kept low under the weight of its massive horns. Its vision is deadly. Some centuries later, Claudius Aelianus added that the creature had shaggy hair, a scaly back and poisonous breath. It's generally assumed that all these authors were referring to Africa's wilderbeest.

So this single monster was divided into two monsters: the extremely aggresive, metal-scaled Gorgon with petryfying breath, and a considerably more peaceful, long-necked Catoblepas with death vision.


Animations next week! Probably!