Puzzle Designs

Before I started with a concrete design I simply drafted up a simple variety of sketches, mainly of random concepts that I felt would be mildly interesting as an image in a puzzle. These ranged from dragons and dead space skeletons, my usual characters Falafael and Todd, and some miscellaneous creatures I created originally.

After some consideration I chose a sketch to turn into the final puzzle design-

One of the main motivations/appeals for this concept also goes hand-in-hand with one of my introduction and tutorial books that I've read and taken lessons from numerous times through the years. Even now I still find it relevant and interesting. It was the main source of inspiration for many of my more recent, horror-creature creations alongside the more fleshy textures that I use.

The book is 'Drawing and Painting the Undead- create gruesome ghouls for graphic novels, computer games and animation' by Keith Thompson. It was given to me as a gift many years ago by my mother and I've base many original concepts and drafted creatures on the inspirations I found in this book.

Indeed, my habit of thumbnails and scribbled sketches (in preparation for a final piece) became more habitual after reading this book, since it's one of the first ideas Thompson stresses at the start of each piece and my sketches certainly got inspired by that since I originally wasn’t very prone to plotting out my work.

The main focus of the puzzle, the fleshy, four-armed beast is also inspired by Thompson's work, namely the thick, fleshy texturing on the majority of his creations. He has a habit of drawing undead and other macabre creatures. Unlike many other horror artists, he doesn’t go for vast quantities of blood, scaly monsters or feral furry beasts instead he keeps the majority of his monsters fleshy and hairless. While some might not consider it gruesome, I personally prefer this approach, as well as the creepy, human-flesh tones he works with.

Some such examples are the ‘Anthropophagus’-

It’s some kind of ghoul herder and keeps some as vicious pets; as you can see, the Anthropophagus is very fleshy and keeps normal human skin. While it’s obviously not human, it keeps many proportions (barring lack of head and chest-face) as well as a human skin tone. I really like this approach Thompson uses for his monster and used this approach for my monster in the picture;

While I chose a more purple texture than a human fleshy texture, I tried to keep the creepy, humanesque skin and fleshy body shape for my monster.

Another of Thompson’s monsters inspired the overall body shape for my creature, namely the Pripyat Beast which is a demented, amalgamation and fusion of corpses and dead livestock.

Note the multiple limbs, large scattering of teeth and creepy hands everywhere, which I added to my overall monster design.

While she doesn’t resemble livestock, she has the additional limbs, unnatural proportions and half-broken anatomy to help bring home how off and unnatural she is.

The other part of the picture, the more gentle, nature-orientated aspects were largely inspired by artists such as Anna Mohrbacher in "An Offering", with the 'little girl running around with giant monsters' cliche. It's a cliche I like, since I like the contrast between the two subjects; the innocent little girl and the giant monsters near her.

It's still nature-filled but it has the normal girl with the weird tree beasts, which vaguely inspired me to add the nice, natural background, pond and butterflies.