#monstermayhem

something that ive always been distantly interested in is the effects of radiation on living creatures and the environment. from the very VERY start i wanted this thing to look like it was living in a heavily radiated area for a while. i think i had just finished watching a few people play silent hill 2 remake which is why the board has a LOT of them, and i was playing re:biohazard on stream a few days from when i was concepting so i had the mould people in mind lol (and then misc interests started popping up in the board, like cry of fear)

i went down a short rabbit hole of lizards on google after looking up frill-necked lizards and found the toad-headed agama

real fucked up guy, and whatever i was doing with the frill-neck got abandoned REAL fast (im also really partial to agamas, i owned two butterfly agamas who sadly passed away a few months ago) honestly you can kinda see how short-lived the frill-neck was, i think it only had 1-2 concepts before i started merging it with the toad-headed agama.

another thing is the spikes! i found some image about constructing large, concrete spikes in areas with heavy radiation to warn people from entering and i thought that idea was super awesome (and kinda helped me figure out what i was missing on the back of the design), it DOES mean the monster is fucking massive though. good luck running away from this thing.

i truthfully do NOT remember what caused me to give it a shit ton of arms, i think it was one of the people in call with me, but it kinda helped expand the "lore" of this thing in my mind so i cant complain. i wanted the arms to get crushed under the weight of the end of the body, which is why a lot of the rough designs feature them dragging, but it was kinda lost when i did the actual sketch.

eventually i did get a sketch in order and it left me with something i could honestly improve, but i dont design creatures like this often! so it was a fun exercise. i appreciate horror games more now for their enemy design. and now we get to the almost-finished drawing.

i struggled most with the colours, but that wasnt really represented anywhere as i did all of the colouring off-stream (and i dont usually leave concept colours behind), so all you get is the 'sorta done' colours. the inside and the boils i wanted to contrast heavily with the outside of the body, so you wouldnt see anything until its face opened up, and by that point u may as well accept your fate.

generally horror games had taken over most of the designing process, i was thinking about how this thing would move and where it would be. i decided on a sort of dilapidated radiation site, and the creature was initially an accident from improper waste disposal that just kept growing. the arms iirc were from the scientists that didnt quite get out in time, and now this thing kinda just... guards the site.

very quick low-effort mockup, but i just like visualising what this thing could look like in the right environment. my weird dog i never got to show off to anyone. rip unnamed creature

to end this off, here is a stupid doodle of it eating a burger (requested on stream while i was working)

so to start, I looked into wisteria and will-o-wisps.

Wisteria can be in tree form and vine form! In flower language it's usually romantic, can mean longevity and luck. What stuck out to me is that it can represent a clinging desire, a desire that can persevere beyond death. It seemed to fit well with how vines grow by "clinging" to other things.

Will-O-Wisps have a few meanings in literature. I won't be going through them all, but what I wanted to focus on was how they trick wandering travelers. I like tricky, crafty creatures that seem harmless on the outside but then actually lead others to their demise hehehe

Will-o-wisps are also usually fond in swampy areas, so I wanted my creature to be one that lived in swamps. What lives in swamps? Bugs. With that, I had my bare bones for my creature.

Soughs are nocturnal bugs found in swampy areas with very short lifespans, ranging from one night to two days. They find creatures wandering alone and attach themselves to them for nourishment, usually along the spine and near the head. These creatures then experience paranoia and hallucinations. One example is a loved one moving away from reach. Another is an urge to continue forward and make progress, no matter the cost. These serve to make the creature expend more energy so that the Sough can absorb it.

Soughs will always run their host dry, causing them to collapse from exhaustion. They use this energy to transform their bodies and begin fostering offspring. When all energy has been drained, the life of the parent Sough ends, while the baby Sough all shoot out in a burst at once.

Soughs from the same "bloom" have been seen working together over an unfortunate soul, and different "blooms" will fight on sight, often leading to the demise of both fighters, as Soughs do not contain enough energy for propagation.