GUEST WEEK: Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing by Third Rail Design Lab

This creature appears as a tree stump with a rabbit sitting on its shorn edge. But on getting closer the stump reveals teeth and tentacles; the rabbit is just the lure it used to draw you in.

Image is provided by Third Rail Design Lab, a comic/illustrator. Yeahhhhh, this is one of those creatures that got excluded from further editions of D&D because it's just a little too silly to take seriously, even for this game. The fact that the rabbit is a part of the creature's body seals the deal. And its name doesn't really help that much because implies something a little more... something that isn't a stump with a rabbit on its head. It's still a classic though.

Paizo attempts to slightly refluff the monster in their book Misfit Monsters Redeemed by making the creature on top be the last thing it killed; which makes more sense because you kill one adventurer, then you lure the rest to you with images of him.

GUEST WEEK: Banshee by Matt Layzell

The Banshee is a hideous female monster, ghostly and fearsome in apperance, always preceeded by her unholy howls. She is the spirit of a woman who in life was dominated by jealousy and hatred, and in death is consumed by envy of the living. Her wails slay all life around her.

Welcome to the first day of our second ever Guest Week. We've got some more artists for you offering up their personal interpretations of various D&D monsters. Up first is Matt Layzell, a super cool illustrator-slash-animator. His work may be better known among any English people following this blog; he and his studio Treat is responsible for the very cool Slackers Club spots on Channel 4.

Alchemical Golem

Alchemical golems are constructs created by wizards with a special talent for potions. They made of several expensive and rare alchemical liquids contained within a tough membrane. These liquids, along with a trapped elemental spirit, are what makes this giant creature lumber forward. It's touch is acidic and piercing its membrane results in the corrosive liquids within spilling out, before the membrane repairs itself. An alchemical golem must cosume vats of alchemical liquids to replace those lost to physical damage.

Guest week soon, fellow watchers.

Grisgol

A Grisgol is a strange construct, made haphazardly but nonetheless dangerous. Its body is comprised of a tattered mass of various magical items, loosely held together by mummy-like bandages of spell scrolls and wards. Its arm might be a sword or staff; its head an enchanted helm, or its insides a clinking stack of alchemical potions - their highly chaotic, magical nature makes them immune to most magical effects. In addition to this, the enchantments usually used to power an ordinary golem are simply too weak to bring Grisgols to life; they are usually powered by a Lich's phylactery - a small trinket such as a jewel or phial containing the soul of a dead sorcerer. This makes them doubly dangerous - not only are their physical bodies corrosive and unstable, their souls are ancient and malicious.

Our second guest week begins tomorrow! As with last time, we'll be updating with a new image every day for a whole week, involving a bunch of different artists with different styles. Check back each day for some new artsy goodness.

Kraken

Krakens are gargantuan leviathans of the deep, intelligent and predatory. Mostly seen by sailors (and even then rarely) these squid-like creatures devour ships whole or drag them beneath the waves as prisoners to their underground cave-lairs, where they keep slaves to serve and feed them.

One day I'll upload one of these on time again! Remember what that was like? When I used to upload on a Sunday? That was nice. In my defence my main job as a comic book artist is sort of spilling over into the weekends and I also do a bunch of other stuff (STARCRAFT2COUGHCOUGH)

Pixelly stuff again this week, sorry if you prefer the more brushy sort of drawing. Also why am I so fond of hi-contrast colours? I guess it satisfies my inner purist. These colours make for such nice, simple hexadecimal values! #000000, #FF00FF, #0000FF, I could go on.

Displacer Beast

The Displacer Beast is an alien-looking creature, with sleek fur and multiple limbs, which include an extra pair of legs and two muscular tentacles that sprout from its shoulders. It's the size of a tiger, intelligent and malicious. In addition to these already formidable assets, this creature is able to bend light around itself, causing its outline to duplicate and blur (or displace), making it difficult to hit.

The Displacer Beast is another of those classic D&D monsters. It's also one of those classic scifi monsters; this creature is lifted from the coeurl, an alien created by the science fiction writer Alfred Eton Van Vogt.

This is a pretty popular monster, mostly because it's weird and cool looking, and felines are always well-loved monsters. But in most of the images I looked up for the Displacer Beast, they were all Beast and no Displacer. When I started trying to plan this image, it became apparent why this is. It's hard to do in an interesting way, man.

Battlebriar

Battlebriars are actually huge plants, magically grown by teams of druids to serve as living siege engines. Galloping along on six muscular legs, they resemble huge, knotted masses of bark and huge thorns, making attacking one in melee combat a treacherous task to say the least (to take no account of the creature's monstrous size). Often proving too wild for their creators to control, many Battlebriars now roam free in the forests of the world, killing indescriminately to feed.

Inspired a lot by horned lizards and by one of my favourite magic cards. I like how you have this stereotype of druids being peaceful hippies - I imagine one day they all just had enough of people ripping on them and thought "fuck it, let's make some CR 15 living siege weapons, that'll teach them to make fun of us". Those craaaaazy druids.

Kappa

The kappa is a small amphibious creature, half turtle, half man. Though sometimes malevolent, kappas are extremely curteous beings and won't harm anyone who shows them politeness and respect. The top of their head is hollow and filled with water. When the water is tipped out of their heads, they become extremely weak and immediately dash for the nearest source of water.

This monster is brought to you by the Oriental Adventures setting and Japanese mythology. I always liked this monster, even when I first read about it in a mythology book when I was itty bitty. According to these books, the kappas' favourite food was cucumbers and a sure way to get on their good side was to give them cucumbers with your name carved into it.

Topiary Guardian

The topiary guardian is a creature used by druids and noblemen as sentinels for their glades and gardens. Unlike true golems, which are purely animated by magic, topiary guardians have a summoned spirit that moves their bodies. They are able to stand perfectly still, blending perfectly among the other similarly manicured hedges. Their soft leafy bodies make them invulnerable to attacks from non-edged weapons, making arrows and clubs useless, but mean that fire is their worst enemy.

Sorry for being late with this stuff; it's been a tiring week. The reason the creature's shaped like a stag is because the job I've been working on involves me animating a stag, so I've been looking at lots of videos of bouncing deer.

Varakhut

Varakhuts are the elder, stranger kin of the Kolyaruts , both members of a mysterious family of mechanical creatures known as "Inevitables". Inevitables are the very incarnation of law and order, forged in the pure heart of Mechanus and sent out as agents of balance to bring order to chaos and prevent specific occurances which might harm the natural harmony of spacetime.

Each class of inevitable is responsible for a different aspect of order - Kolyaruts punish oathbreakers, Maruts kill those who unfairly avoid death - Varakhuts are responsible for the defence of deities against those who would depose them. Inevitables are not creatues that engage in worship of any god but understand that the destruction or deposition of these divine powers would bring only chaos. Varakhuts are as such the most powerful among the Inevitables as their natural opponents are strong enough to threaten gods.

We're a week late this week, so we'll be doing a mid-week post at some point to make up. Varakhuts are pretty cool, I like them because I imagine they are from a system older and more fundamental than the gods they protect. Like, the gods will come and go, but the Varakhuts will always be there to protect them.

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!