The Art of TyrantisTerror

No Sympathies Old Demon Concept Art Dump Part 1: The Main Cast

By request, I am posting the demon concept art I made for what would eventually become my first novel, No Sympathies. It's art that's over a decade old at this point and kind of hard for me to look at without thinking about its myriad flaws - I'd rework most if not all of these designs now, and even back then I kinda felt like I got a lot better at designing demons towards the end of the batch than I was at the beginning, which made me want to redo the whole project again. Someday I might, too, though probably only as a series of pencil sketches.

But here, for posterity and nostalgia's sake, they are. In this batch, from top row to bottom, left to right:

No Sympathies Old Demon Concept Art Dump Part 2: Oh fuck I'm already out of subtitles

By request, I am posting the demon concept art I made for what would eventually become my first novel, No Sympathies. It's art that's over a decade old at this point and kind of hard for me to look at without thinking about its myriad flaws - I'd rework most if not all of these designs now, and even back then I kinda felt like I got a lot better at designing demons towards the end of the batch than I was at the beginning, which made me want to redo the whole project again. Someday I might, too, though probably only as a series of pencil sketches.

But here, for posterity and nostalgia's sake, they are. In this batch, from top row to bottom, left to right:

No Sympathies Old Demon Concept Art Dump Part 3: The Malebranche

By request, I am posting the demon concept art I made for what would eventually become my first novel, No Sympathies. It's art that's over a decade old at this point and kind of hard for me to look at without thinking about its myriad flaws - I'd rework most if not all of these designs now, and even back then I kinda felt like I got a lot better at designing demons towards the end of the batch than I was at the beginning, which made me want to redo the whole project again. Someday I might, too, though probably only as a series of pencil sketches.

But here, for posterity and nostalgia's sake, they are. In this batch, from top row to bottom, left to right:

No Sympathies Old Demon Concept Art Dump Part 4: More of 'Em

By request, I am posting the demon concept art I made for what would eventually become my first novel, No Sympathies. It's art that's over a decade old at this point and kind of hard for me to look at without thinking about its myriad flaws - I'd rework most if not all of these designs now, and even back then I kinda felt like I got a lot better at designing demons towards the end of the batch than I was at the beginning, which made me want to redo the whole project again. Someday I might, too, though probably only as a series of pencil sketches.

But here, for posterity and nostalgia's sake, they are. In this batch, from top row to bottom, left to right:

No Sympathies Old Demon Concept Art Dump Part 5: Still More of 'Em

By request, I am posting the demon concept art I made for what would eventually become my first novel, No Sympathies. It's art that's over a decade old at this point and kind of hard for me to look at without thinking about its myriad flaws - I'd rework most if not all of these designs now, and even back then I kinda felt like I got a lot better at designing demons towards the end of the batch than I was at the beginning, which made me want to redo the whole project again. Someday I might, too, though probably only as a series of pencil sketches.

But here, for posterity and nostalgia's sake, they are. In this batch, from top row to bottom, left to right:

No Sympathies Old Demon Concept Art Dump Part 6: I Can't Believe There's Still More of Them

By request, I am posting the demon concept art I made for what would eventually become my first novel, No Sympathies. It's art that's over a decade old at this point and kind of hard for me to look at without thinking about its myriad flaws - I'd rework most if not all of these designs now, and even back then I kinda felt like I got a lot better at designing demons towards the end of the batch than I was at the beginning, which made me want to redo the whole project again. Someday I might, too, though probably only as a series of pencil sketches.

But here, for posterity and nostalgia's sake, they are. In this batch, from top row to bottom, left to right:

No Sympathies Old Demon Concept Art Dump Part 7: Yet More Demons

By request, I am posting the demon concept art I made for what would eventually become my first novel, No Sympathies. It's art that's over a decade old at this point and kind of hard for me to look at without thinking about its myriad flaws - I'd rework most if not all of these designs now, and even back then I kinda felt like I got a lot better at designing demons towards the end of the batch than I was at the beginning, which made me want to redo the whole project again. Someday I might, too, though probably only as a series of pencil sketches.

But here, for posterity and nostalgia's sake, they are. In this batch, from top row to bottom, left to right:

No Sympathies Old Demon Concept Art Dump Part 8: Are We Done Yet?

By request, I am posting the demon concept art I made for what would eventually become my first novel, No Sympathies. It's art that's over a decade old at this point and kind of hard for me to look at without thinking about its myriad flaws - I'd rework most if not all of these designs now, and even back then I kinda felt like I got a lot better at designing demons towards the end of the batch than I was at the beginning, which made me want to redo the whole project again. Someday I might, too, though probably only as a series of pencil sketches.

But here, for posterity and nostalgia's sake, they are. In this batch, from top row to bottom, left to right:

No Sympathies Old Demon Concept Art Dump Part 9: And Some Angels Too

By request, I am posting the demon concept art I made for what would eventually become my first novel, No Sympathies. It's art that's over a decade old at this point and kind of hard for me to look at without thinking about its myriad flaws - I'd rework most if not all of these designs now, and even back then I kinda felt like I got a lot better at designing demons towards the end of the batch than I was at the beginning, which made me want to redo the whole project again. Someday I might, too, though probably only as a series of pencil sketches.

But here, for posterity and nostalgia's sake, they are. In this batch, from top row to bottom, left to right:

No Sympathies Old Demon Concept Art Dump Part 10: More Recent Art

Shortly before my carpal tunnel set in, I started sketching new takes on my demons, with the art from the Dictionnaire Infernal being a reference point (to mixed results - some demons looked good in their Dictionnarie Infernal poses, but others, like my Lucifer, did not), with the goal being to not only do them better this time around, but do even MORE demons than before.

It fell apart when my carpal tunnel set in and I was told to lay off drawing so damn much. I'd still like to do it eventually, but I'd have to start from scratch again.

Drawing some more Godzilla gang fellows, with Megalon taking the starring role. Always loved this big lug.

And then... hmm... don't remember these guys from any Godzilla movie... guess they must be from the comics.

Alright, some more Godzilla monster sketches. First, a batch of polished designs for Anguirus, Hedorah, and Gorosaurus. If you're thinking, "Wait, did I miss Gorosaurus sketches?", the answer is you did not...

...because I figured him out pretty quickly. Retrosaurs come easy to me by this point. Varan's going to need some more work, though.

I think I got my approach for Titanosaurus pretty quickly, but had to spend a while refining the details. The original Titanosaurus's head has all these details fighting for prominence - the big fin, the fin ears, the horns, AND some catfish barbells, all clustered around the eyes. It's a lot! Figuring out how to work them all in elegantly was difficult, and I ended up shifting things around. Even then, I think I'm probably going to cut the barbells in the finished design.

You might notice that both Titanosaurus and Gorosaurus (and Varan's unfinished sketches) have some details in common with my Godzilla. I'm kinda taking a page from Singular Point and making them part of the same clade of fictitious prehistoric reptiles - Goro's species lost the gills as it took on a fully terretrial existence, while Titano's gills are more prominent to enable her almost entirely aquatic lifestyle.

Baragon gets to join the Godzilla relative train too, mainly for meta reasons. He's somewhere between Godzilla's branch of the family tree and Gorosaurus's - because his role in Frankenstein Conquers the Role was at one point pitched to be Godzilla's, and his role in DAM was ultimately taken by Gorosaurus, you see. I didn't change his design very much beyond skewing some proportions to make him seem more mole-y - I mean, I tried to, but Baragon's hard to improve upon, he's already weird as fuck as is. Baragon's... kinda perfect?

Stepping away from prehistoric monsters, I had fun with Orga, mainly by playing with elements of his Godzilla Unleashed: Double Smash incarnation. He's gonna getcha with his big ol' grabby hands, you see. God I wish I could find that tumblr post.

Finally (for now), I'm... still figuring out Gigan, honestly. Not really sure what angle I'm going to end up with, he's proving hard to pin down. Will require more sketching.

I've done a few more Godzilla kaiju redesign sketch studies. Focused on my favorite guy from the pantheon, Anguirus, first. Figuring out his shell was the hardest part - it'd be so easy to just copy the Showa version and call it a day, but this exercise is all about pushing myself to be creative, so it took a while to find something I liked as much as the OG. After that it was a lot of proportion tweaking to try and get him to look big and bulky like a good wall should be.

Then I had entirely too much fun playing around with Hedorah. Ended up feeling really endeared to the big ball of ooze. It's those goofy eyes, man, those creepy cute vagina eyes.

Finally (for now) I had even more needless fun with Biollante, specifically by trying to integrate some newcomers to Godzilla canon from Godziban and those terrible CGI movies into her. It kinda evolved into me toying with the concept of Biollante expanding to the point where she's her own ecosystem, with different branches of her body serving different functions as facets of her DNA makeup. Also Godzuki is a servum - I mean, he is described sometimes as Godzilla's nephew, and Biollante is basically Godzilla's sister, so it makes sense in a weird way.

So I've done personal designs for Godzilla, like, a billion times throughout my 30+ years of life, but I've generally stayed pretty tame with it. But lately I've had an itch to try and push myself out of my comfort zone with the big guy, so I did some sketches to try and figure out a weirder approach than my normal take. I ended up trying to emphasize Godzilla's status as a mythic sea monster rather than the atomic mutant angle - both are important, but the former gets overlooked a lot in favor of the latter, so I figured I could balance the scales a bit.

Of course, Godzilla designs are like potato chips, you can't stop at one. So I decided to tackle Mothra next with the same "make it more mythic" approach. I also wanted a Mothra who'd look capable of beating Godzilla's ass in a fist fight, in both forms no less, without losing her cute, round, fluffy look. I ended up emphasizing the elephantine aspects of the larval form, while trying to give the imago a bit of an angel and multi-armed goddess vibe.

Rodan was next, of course, and I wanted to get some of the pterosaur proportions that singular Point's design had while still making him look physically durable. I wanted a Rodan who's Godzilla's equal (or near equal), rather than a diminutive flunky. I ended up taking the samurai vibe of his original suit's armor and emphasizing it a lot, really trying to make Rodan look like he can take a hit and keep on ticking.

Finally (for now) the Golden Demise himself, King Ghidorah. Going off the mythic approach, I wanted to make him scream "apocalyptic Asian dragon that falls from the stars" rather than "space monster," and kinda nailed the gist of it pretty quickly? Snakey proportions work better for him than I anticipated.

I'll probably do finished sketches for the other three to go with Godzilla's up there later on, but this is where we're at for now.

Love Ghidorahs zygodactyl feet. It's such a good idea for a monster that likes to swoop down at enemies from the sky, grab them and smash them into the earth.

Thanks! I wanted to give him six claws to play on the idea of Asian dragons being ranked by how many claws they have - normally it tops out at five, but it's Ghidorah, so we're going above that. Making him zygodactyl ended up being an elegant solution to fitting that many talons on a foot, and as you said it makes him all the more deadly as a flying monster.

Refined sketches for Mothra, Rodan, and Ghidorah.

Four more Midgaheim takes on Olympian gods!

Hephaestus, god of the forge

Hestia, goddess of the hearth

Demeter, goddess of the harvest

Poseidon, god of the sea and the first Brony

More Midgaheim gods! More I say!

Some more Midgaheim takes on the Greek Pantheon, including:

Zeus - everyone's dad, either literally or figuratively

Hera - the goddess of marriage who is reminded on a daily basis of the definition of irony thanks to her husband's frequent infidelity

Hecate - tripartate goddess of witchcraft, the occult, and the arcane

Athena - goddess of wisdom and war

Aphrodite - Aphrodite, Aphrodite, The Goddess of Love!