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Creatures on Gaia

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:05:00 +0000

I'm not a fan of the virtual avatar-based Gaia Online, but the avatar items can get pretty interesting at times. Here's a few gems:

Yes, this is a Penanggalan, the disturbing Malaysian vampire I've talked about both on Bogleech and Cracked. An absolutely adorable, beautifully illustrated Penanggalan, actually created for Gaia by o-8, an artist whose skills I'm incredibly envious of.

The same artist is responsible for this gorgeous "bogeyman," closet monster, and even a Popobawa. If you don't know what a Popobawa is, I suggest you google or wiki it.

Most of the items here will run you tens or even hundreds of thousands in virtual Gaia money, but this superb giant fly costume, eyeball mask and tentacle limbs run pretty cheap!

I'm very impressed by these beautiful marine animals, actually created by our friend Tengu - artist, writer and webmaster of obakemono.com! The Blobfish and the firefly squid are actually "hat" items! The last one is none other than a flamboyant cuttlefish.

I'm a pretty big fan of medieval plague doctors, and you can also collect some absolutely adorable rats and fleas to go with it.

You have to love these slimy mutants and tentacle critters, also by Tengu and all part of an item called "The Experiment!" The second one covers your avatar's face. I can't even pick a favorite of these.

Here we have various growth stages of the "Dionaesil" item, which are some of the coolest carnivorous plant sprites I've ever seen. The largest stage gives you the option of completely replacing your human avatar and *being* the plant! The dionaesil item was designed and started by o-8, but finished by Tengu.

Dionaesil also includes a variety of other fly-trap decorations. This is combining six of them at once.

The last dionaesil item I feel like pointing out, this fly-trap door is a direct reference to the online horror story, Dionea House. The item is even titled "The Door is Open," one of the tale's memorable lines.

Finally, Tengu created these cutely creepy Youkai monsters!

Whether you play Gaia or not, you can play around with the avatar simulator on tektek.org to make all kinds of stuff. For example:

Superfriends Junk Monster

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:22:00 +0000

Just caught an old episode of Hanna Barbera and DC's cheesy "Superfriends" on a streaming video channel, and it features this AWESOME monster made out of garbage:

It looks like a more Lovecraftian Ro-Man from Robot Monster, and the very best part?

IT "INFECTS" BATMAN. That's basically the focus of the episode. Junkmonster turns Batman into tentacle-faced garbage Batman and the other heroes rush to find a cure and destroy the monster. Too bad. He could have turned our world into a utopia of garbage and tentacles...

DAY OF ALL THE BLOOD: THE MOVIE!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:33:00 +0000

Youtube person CountMek has adapted my horror fiction masterpiece, THE DAY OF ALL THE BLOOD, to the cinematic medium using state-of-the-art computerized visual effects technology!!!

Pirates of Dark Water - carnivorous plants

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:24:00 +0000

The Pirates of Dark Water was a short-lived fantasy cartoon with a number of neat creatures every now and then. My favorites were probably these killer plants that strongly resembled frogfish:

Aaahh!!

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 02:24:00 +0000

Nickelodeon's "Aaahh!! Real Monsters!" had all sorts of interestingly weird characters, but some of my favorites only ever appeared once, despite being students at the school where every episode took place.

"Slimebucket" only appeared in one episode and had a couple of throwaway lines, but his entire concept is at least as interesting to me as any of the show's central characters. A living monster that just happens to look like a bucket full of slime? I like how the whole bucket has a sludgy texture, so it's obviously organic, and I like how a little slime is always coming out his mouth. He spoke with a heavy, wet lisp, and seemed to be a bit of a jerk. A lovable jerk.

Another one-shot monster was "Megavolt" here:

This cute little guy was only brought out to power a television, and looks like he's made entirely of wires. I guess I just generally like weird object monsters with stalk-eyes.

Dr. Chaos

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Dr. Chaos was a notoriously difficult NES game that I couldn't make heads or tails of as a kid, but boy did I ever love the cover art:

In particular, I was fascinated by this little guy:

Is his weapon attached to his umbilical cord? It looked that way to me as a kid, and it still does. As far as i know, he doesn't appear in the actual game anywhere, but I used to draw him all the time. Wish I could find those.

LEECH CHORUS

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:40:00 +0000

Despite its hamfisted flaws and some grating scientific inaccuracy, "Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest" was one of my favorite animated movies as a child and I'm still pretty fond of it, but one very particular moment always delighted me more than anything else in the film: LEECH CHORUS.

The little guys show up near the end of a pretty memorable musical number about predation. It's never really explicit that they're leeches, but what else could they possibly be?

It's just too bad that the song is cut so short in the final product. The soundtrack version has TWICE as much leech chorus! Someone tried to concoct this extended music video, but they just threw in some random non-leech clips to fill the extra space, so you'll have to shut your eyes and IMAGINE the leech chorus:

ARE YOU IMAGINING?

More mutant neopets

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:22:00 +0000

So I've already talked about how neopets.com betrayed me once before, but the mutant chia is far from the website's only instance of something memorably badass getting buried and forgotten:

Here, we have the aborted "Mutant Aisha." This beautiful design was uploaded to neopets around the same time as the mutant chia, but was never released at all. They did eventually release a very different mutant Aisha which is fairly cool in its own right (it has tongues down its back and three mouths, for starters) but I'd have adored this crazy bug-eyed chestburster-cat.

Goodnight sweet prince :(

Next, we have the similarly aborted mutant bruce. This snot-dripping, eerie-eyed penguin looks like it was meant to replace the mutant chia, and was in fact uploaded to neopets shortly before the chia's horrible makeover. It even has some similar battle poses. Alas, it was deleted from the servers, and the mutant bruce available today is only about half as creepy.

The mutant "Usul" here is a pet that DID see release, and was changed the same day as the chia. The modern mutant Usul is a gothic, purple critter with three eyes, drawn in a reasonably neat style but nowhere near as creative or gross as this warty, hairless pusbag. THIS is what I think of when someone says "mutant." Sadly, I didn't save any of its other poses.

Mickey's Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:59:00 +0000

Who doesn't want to see Mickey Mouse terrorized by drunken mutant insects?

Lots of cool Disnefied bug-monsters here, even if it's all just a dream sequence. WARNING: THAT WAS A SPOILER.

I have very, very rarely seen a preying mantis portrayed in an old cartoon, even as a background character.

The snail looks the coolest, in my honest opinion.

Ambush mimicry!

He has eight legs because he's a bad-ass motherfucker. That's why.

The perfect cartoon

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:12:00 +0000

I'm disappointed in myself for not having come up with this. This renders almost everything I've ever done moot, because I could never do anything this sublime:

Perfection here.

Robot Love!

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:18:00 +0000

From January 22-30, I'm going to have a bunch of artwork (including both Mortasheen drawings and some sculptures I spontaneously threw together for the occasion) on display at the second annual "Robot Love" art gallery and music festival in Melbourne, Florida: http://www.321agency.com/robotlove/

It'll all be for sale, too, so hopefully I'll make some money. I'll be posting pictures once everything is finished, but here's one of the smaller, completed sculptures:

Sorry if you were expecting a post about robots.

Zombie cereal/candy commercials

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:29:00 +0000

PEANYUT BUDDAHHHHH.

(You've seen this one incessantly if you stream on cartoonnetwork.com)

Takena's Claymation

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:18:00 +0000

Since I've neglected my blog for years at a time, I feel the need to post some of the things I'd have blogged about back when they were still new. Maybe some of you still haven't seen any of these, maybe all of you have, but either way, I need to address them publicly. First up, the claymation horror shorts by Takena. These are adorable, disturbing and completely kick all kinds of asses (all of those kinds that there are!) so here's three of the most recent and impressive:

Bloody Date is Lovecraftian horror at its finest. The final ten seconds are the coolest, but do not under any circumstances skip ahead to them. Stick around for the weirdly wholesome image after the ending, too.

Chainsaw Maid is probably more interesting than the vast majority of full-length zombie movies.

Finally, we have PUSSYCAT, actually my favorite. It's horror of a different sort and not remotely for kids. Does it make me a furry if I like the cat girl? It's only ears and a tail :(

Pocket monstrosities

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:51:00 +0000

Because I'm sure people are dying to know my in-depth opinions on various Pokemon, here's what I personally consider some of the most fascinating creatures in the franchise:

GLOOM - grass/poison
This little guy was my single favorite pocket monster the second I laid eyes on him back in the late 90's, in an official Nintendo strategy guide. I'm a big fan of weird, rotten-smelling flowers (as you may surmise from my article on plant life), and Gloom has the added charm of constantly slobbering and having a cool, spooky name. I had an obsession with the word "gloom" as a kid and actually used it for several slimy fungus-like monsters, so this always felt like a pokémon I might have designed myself. It's unfortunate that his Rafflesia-based evolution loses the drool, and his other evolution is even cutesier.

PARASECT - bug/grass
While I still have a soft spot for Gloom, Parasect has slowly crept up into my #1 spot. He's the only parasite-themed pocket monster, and borrows from one of the most disturbing parasites in nature, the cordyceps fungus. Even more interesting is the fact that his unevolved form, Paras, is patterned after a cicada nymph, but never evolved into a winged, mature cicada-like creature. In the real world, a variety of cordyceps actually does kill cicadas in the nymph stage. What we're looking at here is the pokémon equivalent to a zombie. An entire insect species universally infected by a mind-controlling fungus!

SHEDINJA - bug/ghost
Based on a cicada but completely unrelated to Parasect, Shedinja is actually the molted exoskeleton left behind when Nincada evolves into Ninjask. Somehow, the exoskeleton comes to life as a ghost-type Pokemon, and has the unique quality of having only a single hit point, compensated with immunity to the majority of damage types in the game. If your opponent doesn't have any moves left that can touch him, they're completely screwed! I have to love the idea of a haunted insect exoskeleton.

MAGCARGO - fire/rock
I admire how pokémon would never just put a face on a pile of magma and call it a monster. Instead, they turn the traditional lava creature into a snail, with a shell formed as the lava cools off. It's genius, and it saddens me that he's actually one of the WORST fully-evolved monsters in the video games, due to a quadruple water weakness and low stats. I love you anyway, Magcargo, don't listen to those Smogon.com jerks.

Weezing - pure poison
Koffing and Weezing are such popular, iconic monsters that people don't seem to dwell on how peculiar they are anymore. The franchise is over a decade old now, but I still can't get over these guys. They're floating balloon-bomb-molecule heads filled with (and apparently CONGEALED FROM, if the Pokedex is to be believed) toxic gases, germs and dust. My favorite thing about Weezing is that third, faceless little pod fused with the two main heads. It's such a grotesque and disturbing mutant freak.

FORRETRESS - bug/steel
Though it looks like a bivalve, Forretress is an insect-based pogeyman; an evolution of the bagworm themed Pineco. It's also, apparently, metal-plated, and its claim to fame is its ability to explode. It's a caterpillar that wears a bomb. I used to wish it had a more bagworm-like appearance, but when they came out with another, completely unrelated bug/steel bagworm (sure as hell didn't see that coming) I still preferred Forretress.

SHUCKLE - bug/rock
Nobody can seem to agree on what the hell Shuckle is supposed to represent. His japanese name, Tsubotsubo, basically means "jar jar" and could be a reference to Fujitsubo, or barnacle. He certainly looks like a bunch of barnacles, but he lives in forests, and feeds by allowing fruit to rot and ferment inside his shell. I always thought he might be a scale insect (a type of immobile, squishy bug which spends its whole adult life under an anchored shell) but I honestly don't know anymore. The English translations call it a mold pokemon. I guess it doesn't matter if he's a barnacle, a fungus or a scale insect, because those are all things I love anyway. His main theme seems to be the fermentation thing, as his shell produces various "potions" in the games. In Germany, they call him PottRott, which is awesome.

SWALOT - pure poison
I'm not sure whether I love Swalot's childishly simplistic design or wish he had just a smidgeon more detail, but either way he's certainly one of the more imaginative monsters for LACK of any distinct basis. He evolves from gulpin, officially referred to as a "stomach sac" pokemon. Swalot is a "poison sac" pokemon, so I guess these guys are giant body organs. His main gimmick is that his little mouth can stretch open to engulf almost anything, and rapidly digest it. Fairly horrifying, really. I particularly wonder why the artist decided his poisonous stomach-monster should be decorated like playing cards.

EXEGGUTOR - grass/psychic
I didn't think about it until recently, but Exeggutor is easily one of the weirdest mons of all time. A walking, psychic palm tree with goofy-looking heads for fruit, which apparently drop off and turn into Exeggcute, his unevolved form. Downright unnerving, really. It's like a triffid that can read minds.

SLOWBRO - water/psychic
I loved the recurring theme in the first 151 pokémon where various psychic types (once the most overpowered type in the game) were deceptively dopey and slow. I also love the idea of a goofy, sluggish sea-mammal with a grumpy seashell monster clinging to it forever. I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be a Sazaeoni. I used to think Slowking was less interesting because the shell turned into a hat, but when seen from behind, it actually still has the awesome grouchy monster face:

I still like Slowbro a lot better esthetically, but Slowking has some pretty awesome lore to it. Apparently the mollusc (a specially evolved Shellder) injects poison into its head which somehow makes it more intelligent.

HIPPOWDON - ground
I like when they mess with the status quo like this. It's a hippo monster, but it lives in sand and it hates water. It even BLEEDS sand, apparently. It also just looks totally bad-ass.

HYPNO - psychic
Easily EASILY the most frightening pocket monster. Forget all the legendary beasts and ghost types and firebreathing dragons; this is a pointy-nosed, squinty-eyed, hairy man-tapir that sneaks into houses at night to feed on people's dreams. It has an uncanny valley quality to it, and the same ugly-goofy feel that I apply to a lot of my own monsters. Part of hypno's lore also seems to be that he steals children, but I forget where this was started.

Miscellaneous monster post: Drawdo!

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:53:00 +0000

One of my all-time favorite video game bosses is a pretty obscure one. "Drawdo" appears with little to no explanation in one of the final dungeons of Wild Arms 2 on the playstation:

I dig the "Shapeless Slime Monster" title, and I also dig just how loosely they're defining "Shapeless Slime."

See, apparently "Shapeless Slime" means "Melted Pile of Moray Eels with Dinosaur Feet." Naturally, he has only gross, toxic attacks. Optochemical Bomb (kickass name) inflicts almost every status condition in the game!

This guy may very well be my favorite Muck Monster design of all time.

Sorry, Guys...five heads are better than one. And Moray Eel heads are better than not Moray Eel heads.

Used toy run

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:43:00 +0000

I recently discovered a magical little "collectible toy store" nearby; a dark, cramped little place resembling the interior of somebody's garage. Somebody who spent decades hoarding toy cars and action figures of every imaginable variety. For just a few dollars, I came away with a wonderful little armful:

The tusked insect from "Sectaurs" was the first thing I spotted that I had to take home. I wanted this particular one when it was brand new in the 80's, and just never got around to getting my own until now. We also have a Stretch Screamers mummy from Mcdonalds, that axe chicken thing from Quest for Camelot, a mystery green monster, a second PROFESSOR, and most impressive of all, a Dungeons & Dragons bendable "Deadly Grell," from the same line as my beloved Carrion Crawler. I already owned a Grell, but you don't pass up an opportunity to own TWO Grell. You just don't.

The mystery monster is pretty neat. He'd be cute and cartoonish if not for the wickedly dangerous-looking teeth. He's hollow like a finger puppet, and has positively no markings.

The second PROFESSOR is missing his BASE FOR GUYS, and shame on you if you don't know what I'm talking about. I really never thought I would see one of these again; they were part of a generic, nameless dollar-store toy line I came across only once, back in the late 90's.

My Halloween

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:32:00 +0000

Yes, it's the end of December and I'm just now catching up my site blog to my Halloween.

My Pumpkin this year is a Surinam Toad or "Pipa Pipa," with froglets I sculpted out of Play-Doh.

My friend Jesse carved a nice Haunter (Pokemon)

My other friend Dylan carved an amazing Slimer after I drew him on the pumpkin in pen!

Everyone's pumpkins! I also carved the vertical mouth with lots of eyes, which was kinda lazy and random. You can only see the mouth of my frog, on the far left.

Finally, costumes!

Believe it or not, I have almost never made my own costume or found anything to actually DO for Halloween. It was usually a matter of having no friends, so the most I'd ever do is put on a store-bought mask and go trick or treating. This year I wanted to finally be creative, so I spent two days wiring together a plastic hat, some window screen and over 70 rubber bugs. I also fashioned a sort of "tie" out of other bugs and wore insect puppets on my hands; just a giant swarm of arthropods wearing people clothes.

Jesse put just as much work into a scarecrow costume, sewing a burlap bag into a head and hands and stuffing all his clothes with straw, suffering horrible itchiness and allergies to get the "authentic" scarecrow experience.

Dylan, on the other hand, spent what must have been at least 20 hours on his costume, even with several people helping out. They collected bark from paper trees (the lightest bark available) and tons of spanish moss which they hot-glued to a sweater, overalls and a wire frame for the head. You probably can't tell, but he also had tiny red LED's for the eyes, taken from a light-up rubber ball. His joints could not bend (he had to lie flat in the car), he could barely see, he could only walk at half normal speed and he nearly passed out from the heat...but the constant screams of children and the parents stopping us for photos were all worth it.

Yes, despite our ages we went out trick or treating...or attempted to, anyway. Less than one in five houses were giving out candy...not for lack of Halloween spirit, but EXCESS. I have never, ever in my entire life seen so many people of all ages walking the streets of an ordinary suburb. It wasn't part of an event, there was no party or parade or anything, they were ALL out trick or treating or escorting trick or treaters, to the point that almost nobody was left to hand OUT the treats! No big complaints really, since this made it more like a massive outdoor Halloween convention.

>o[[[>

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:28:00 +0000

Toygasm

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:27:00 +0000

Back in July, my friend Jesse woke me up to go to the most amazing depository of toys I have seen in many, many years:

Here he is browsing one wall. It's actually just a storage unit, but it belonged to a kind old man (I never met him, but Jesse had on several occasions) who spent his entire life amassing thousands and thousands of toys, records and curiosities. He was claimed by Alzheimer's last year, and wanted people to enjoy his collection, so his son is selling everything for even less than it was originally bought...way less.

LET'S TAKE A CLOSER LOOK:

I was overwhelmed at every turn...seemingly every toy line from every decade was represented in some small part, and the most insane part of all? "Most of it was snapped up already"...I don't even want to know what that could have been if this is what I saw today.

Here's what Jesse bought:

Here we have an original Boglin, still in the box. They sold this to Jesse for SEVEN DOLLARS. If you know what these are, you're probably Jealous.

This "Robot 17" was only around eight dollars, still in its box, still fully functional (it fires the missiles and projects a scrolling martian landscape on its chest!)...according to the internet, it's worth $200. There was a whole table of robots like these.

$10 in the box, and his pull string still works!

Now, here's what *I* bought:

A bag of dinosaurs including the elusive Dungeons & Dragons monsters!

A Mars Attacks action figure! They had TONS of Mars Attacks toys, which are highly rare and collectible. I passed these up back when they were new, so this is my first toy from the line. I figured I should start out with one of the basic aliens.

A giant, bendable biker-cockroach from CAPITOL CRITTERS. I remember this cartoon. It was not very good and a huge flop. I didn't even know there were toys!

He's got bendy limbs, a hollow rubber head and a foam rubber body.

This is part of Modulok, a villain from She-Ra. He originally came with dozens of pieces you could mix and match, but this is a fairly decent minimum to get for just a dollar; these are both of the heads he came with.

Grawww!

OPTIK! I had my eye on this guy for years when I was a kid, and never got him until now.

SWARM! The spider-man villain made entirely of bees in a cape!

....And finally....

MARS. ATTACKS. STRING. LIGHTS.

This is a product I would never even believe existed. I had no idea there was any Mars Attacks merchandise besides the action figures, let alone something you can put on your Christmas tree. These might already be among my all-time favorite possessions...and I'm itching to try them out with different color lights or perhaps the flashing kind.

.....EVERYTHING I bought combined? $30.

One of life's greatest accomplishments

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:22:00 +0000

This is the biggest slug I have ever met.

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:16:00 +0000

We always had at least seven or eight people (often more than ten) for our Otakon meet-ups, but this year only five core regulars showed up including myself, which actually felt a bit more fun and personal.

Here's some stuff I did and photographed:

Thursday - this is the early day where all you can do at the convention center is pick up your registration, a two hour wait just to get inside. I met up with everyone and we ate at ESPN zone, kind of expensive and not a good selection but we goofed off in the upstairs arcade for a while. We were seated there under the following gigantic thing:

Shaq as Godzilla and some other guy as Gigan! I don't know sports, but I do know monsters. I run bogleech.com after all.

Friday - first actual con day. After my friend Cait and I scoured the whole dealer's room, I watched "Big Man Japan," a live action Japanese movie with some amazing monster designs, definitely worth seeing if you're as big into creatures as I am, though not especially funny and fairly slow paced.

Here's some of the cosplay I recognized and loved:

The Dee Dees from Batman Beyond! In the series, Harley Quinn's crazy granddaughters.

This is a boss monster from one of the Persona games. Never played them, but love the enemy designs and recognized this from youtube videos. Bringing your own stripper pole is classy as hell.

GLISCOR! One of my favorite pokemon + decent costume + totally sexy. She didn't have time to make the claws, but I really appreciate that she thought to hold her hands like pincers.

I don't remember this thingy's name. It's from a recent video game called Blazblue.

Characters from PSYCHONAUTS, one of the most entertaining video games ever put together. I should've asked for a closeup of the homemade turtle, it was absolutely spot-on.

Cait behind a weighted companion cube. Cate went as the Pokemon Shaymin!

Saturday - this is the "big" day for Otakon. There was an early morning Pokemon get-together and Cate went as Shaymin. I took several pics but just uploaded the best few:

That mewtwo was possibly the most professional costume there. The girl who made it was really cute and mentioned her costume design website, but I completely forgot it.

This is about a FOURTH of the Pokemon who showed up at once, which were only about a fifth of the Pokemon at the con in general. Someday, it is going to be pokecon. Just you watch.

JYNX!

Cait is on the right, being adorable and holding her homemade adorable Shaymin plush with the only other Shaymin we found.

The Psyduck guy is HILARIOUS to me, because it's easy to pretend the guy's head isn't there and it's just Psyduck's face warping backwards.

Have I said before that I have a crush on Silent Hill nurses? Yeah, all of them.

THE MONARCH and Dr. Girlfriend from the Venture Brothers! While she didn't look as much like Dr. Girlfriend as a few other fans, the lady apparently made both costumes herself and their amazing quality puts her well above the rest of the VB cosplayers. You couldn't ask for better outfits for an officially licensed production...the Monarch looks like he came to life right from the show!

GIYGAS.

Later Saturday night, Mike and Ben took over an abandoned table in the art room and did five cent napkin commissions. I joined them and honestly had some of the most fun I've ever had at Otakon just drawing goofy doodles for around five people before we left. One girl paid in a pudding cup and a guy gave us a "tip" in squished brownies. He made them himself and they were amazing.

We then all went to "iron editor," which is where they give people some predetermined footage and they have to make an anime music video in just a couple hours. They hold little quiz games while they work, and I got called up entirely because I drew a shyguy on nintendo DS pictochat. Somehow I guessed an obscure anime correctly and won a free DVD, despite my layman's knowledge of anime in general.

Sunday - this is the "winding down" day where the con is only open until the afternoon. It's always a little depressing, but it leaves the rest of the day to just hang out and have fun with ourselves, which is what we're doing right now. We went to a pop culture museum for only $5 per person, basically just a really amazing antique store where nothing was for sale. This made me laugh:

Note the name of this.

On the way to eat, I did take my very final cosplay photo, another totally hot version of a personal favorite Pokemon:

WHY are they making all my pokemons hot?! I'm never going to see Tentacruel the same way again! Not that its name alone didn't conjure enough images.

I bothered this poor girl in the middle of a phone conversation and held up everyone else so I could take a shot, but when would I EVER see someone dressed like a jellyfish monster again? There's no telling! I love how her hair basically serves as the tentacles.

D&D on B&M

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 04:58:00 +0000

It's certainly been a while since I've posted in my dumb blog with all the time I devote to art, but I felt the need to point out that some classic "Dungeons and Dragons" monsters appeared in an episode of Cartoon Network's "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" as background characters:

The large, tentacled monster is an "Otyugh" or "Gulguthra" (dung eater) based directly off the LJN bendy toy from 1984. The beaked, tentacled brain is a Grell, which also had a toy in the same line.

This beetle-like monster is clearly an Umber Hulk, borrowing traits from both the older and more recent illustrations of the monster. That may also be an Owlbear to his right.

Last of all from this episode, the green guy with the empty eye sockets is a classic D&D style Troll.

I'd also like to point out Ro-Man here from "Robot Monster" in the made-for-TV movie.

NES Manuals

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:37:00 +0000

If you never have before, check out Vimm's lair at vimm.net for a huge archive of video game manual scans.

Here's a couple pages from the NES classic, "Kid Icarus":

And from the famous "Metroid:"

I do so love the Zeelas.

Tene-blog

noreply@blogger.com (Scythemantis) — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 02:42:00 +0000

1997's "Extreme Ghostbusters" was met with mixed feelings - the stories were great, but the new team completely lacked the charm of the sarcastic scientists my generation grew up with.

Regardless, the creature designs by returning artist Fil Barlow were creepier than ever, and include some of the most horrific beings ever written into a children's show - particularly "Tenebraug", the eyeball-stealing demon from the episode "The Unseen:"

This towering monstrosity is the guardian of an ancient stone sphere left behind by an unknown civilization. The sphere is apparently so sacred those who see it may never be allowed to see anything again, and it is Tenebraug's job to collect the fee!

He speaks from the eyeless, withered face in his upper body, but can say only one thing: "Sacred sight you did partake, now your sight you must forsake". The orifice in his stomach emits a red light which sucks the eyeballs from his victim's sockets, and he can control his many eyes individually.

In the episode, Tenebraug's orb is the latest acquisition of a local museum, its true nature unknown to the curators. You can guess how the episode ends: someone manages to show Tenebraug his own orb, all of his eyeballs are returned to their original owners, and both the orb and demon are obliterated. Hardly fair...the guy was only doing his job.