DAY THIRTY TWO: Hara No Mushi Art Gallery!
We're back for a bonus page! Just a few people submitted their own artwork, but it's all appreciated, and I think I'll actually just leave this open for more submissions until the end of the season! (That's December 31st, 2019). Whether I add them to this page or make an additional page will depend on how many if any submissions come!
Kayak-Gharial
First up, this artist actually drew all 31 of the bugs we reviewed, many of them completely reinterpreted into original monsters.
Leier-Coyol
Leier-coyol submitted three redraws of existing mushi, and they're excellent choices as well as just turning out gorgeous! They've been resized, but right click and "view image" to look up close.
Jac Boles
Jac drew some reinvented but easily recognizable mushi, and I love the more flatworm-like head of Taibyou no Kesshaku especially! Gyoshu is also looking pretty much perfectly on-model, yet significantly more ghoulish and menacing. A style shift can make such a difference! It really feels like something that lives under your flesh and records your sins.
Yohoia
I love how cute yohoia made all of these, including the STYLIN' new hat!
Everbound Venvel
Venvel's Kutsuchi no Mushi looks especially ominous, wretched and even birdier than usual, its head more like a plague mask or an ibis skull.
Thomas F. Johnson
Thomas's original mushi is called the uhh, "spooge bug," or the Tom-Franklin bug, and it supposedly embodies whatever plague must transform so many people into fetishistic anthropomorphoids. We're assuming this is some kind of disease here, simply because there's so much artwork of it around the internet, right? At least the bug itself is cute.
Kaaramel
Kaaramel's original mushi is the bug that lives on the underside of your stomach, wraps tendrils around your spine, and makes you lie in bed longer than you should. I really like its misaligned, crescent eyes! It really has a look and feel that fits right alongside the style of existing mushi.
Monkeysky
Monkeysky sent in a sprite of "house bug," with its little bug inhabitants imagined as excellent goomba-like creatures.
Pettamapossum
Pettamapossum illustrates a superb group shot, which feels to me like it could have been an interior illustration in some sort of short pulp story about the creatures. I really like how these are "on model" yet just stylized enough that they enhance and emphasize the unique characteristics of each!
Pyroraptor
Pyroraptor combines the Hara no Mushi with the anime Mushishi, including some new hybrid takes on "bugs" from both!
Myself
For my own original Mushi, I wanted to draw something that looked and felt like it could have come from the same book. I didn't QUITE get the style down perfect, but I feel like it's close enough?
I think I'd call this one the "Sore Bug." Inhabiting the liver during the day, this bug would emerge at night to peck at the possessed's body, causing the development of boils. The tiny wings on its neck would always flap, but wouldn't be strong enough for it to fly.
If the possessed goes to sleep drunk, Sore Bug wakes up drunk. It can then be found passed out near the possessed by morning, and can be disposed of before it re-enters the body.
