Recreating a Monster: The Grah'Thor

This bizarre creature was loosely based on a mutual friend. As Beast Battles evolved into The Book of Zool creatures, I began using color late in series 2. Finding success with that, I considered going back and simply coloring in previous creations. I ran into a problem with this guy though, in that I'd long since lost his original file. Thus began the process of going back and updating and redoing older monsters in higher resolution and color. The biggest change with this one was reworking the head plating to not resemble a face as much.

Recreating a Monster: The Rahg Rawhk

At this point in the Beast Battles project, I still hadn't found my style yet and was fussing around with different approaches. With this guy I simply drew the first thing that popped into my head with marker. The description called for tusks protruding from each cheek. Naturally, I decided that meant butt cheeks. The rest of it was more or less an Ankylosaurus with many eyes. For the update he remained mostly the same, but with heavier armor on his legs.

Recreating a Monster: The Skrifchule

This was my first description for the Beast Battles project. At the time I believe I was really into Disney's Lilo & Stitch franchise and basically just described Stitch and called it a Chaos Demon. With some "creative editing" from my partner, the description was flushed out a bit and given a more fantastical name. For the remake, I tried giving him a neck, floppier ears, and more defined arms to make him more of an original looking creature.

Process of Creating a Monster: Jo'Reler

The idea behind this monster was to get us out of the "Many eyes, razor teeth, giant predator" comfort zone I felt the project had gotten into. My initial drawings had her being more of a Poison Ivy type humanoid, so I pushed myself into more plant like features.

Recreating a Monster: The Frahkis

Comparison of the Beast Battles version of the Frahkis vs The Book of Zool Frahkis. Back in that period of the Beast Battle days, my interest in the project had slipped and in a moment of bad judgement, with some encouragement from a certain peanut gallery, I decided to see how many monsters I could design with tits. I believe this was the firs, but sadly not the last of that experiment. I went with a more beastly pose for the update, and dropped the problematic reptilian breasts.

Recreating a Monster: The Arri

Comparison of the original Arri submission to what was known at the time as Beast Battles and the newer HD color redux version for The Book of Zool. I was trying a few different media typess out at the time, and ended up doing that one as a charcoal drawing. The newer version sort of ended up looking like a Battlecat and Panthor crossover when it came time to color him. Oh well.

Process of Creating a Monster: Vraxxonius Steam-Sayer (Concepts)

I decided early on that this guy was going to basically be a giant lava pumping heart beneath a volcano. The hard part was figuring out where to put the required 20 eyes and "Giant Torso-Maw" from the lore.

Process of Creating a Monster: Vraxxonius Steam-Sayer

Tried to make it look like this guy's skin was burning up in the magma and cracking to reveal his molten core. I didn't like how it was coming out, so I just left him with a dark skin all around.