Concept Art Challenge #1: Design A New Universal Monster

I've always enjoyed perusing the Concept Art forums for their design of the week activities. Thought I'd try something similar out here and see if anyone is interested in participating. These art design challenges will be kept to film related subject matters.

I'd like to stress right off the bat that this is a concept design challenge, so it will be the ideas and how well they are presented that will determine the winner and not just artistic talent. Anyone, regardless of how well they can draw, is welcome and encouraged to participate. I'll be posting a start date and deadline at the bottom of this post within the next two days and there will be a two week period for your entries to be completed. The two week period isn't indicative of how much time you are actually expected to devote to the challenge. It's just to give enough time to conceptualize and finalize your idea in a more laid back matter. Entries will be judged by a poll that I will start in a separate thread. Polling will be open to all members, obviously.

This Challenge is now over.

You can vote for your favorite entry here:

http://chud.com/forum/showthread.php?t=120095





The subject for the first challenge, Design A New Universal Monster, has already been revealed in the thread title. Since the idea for this sprang to mind around Halloween, and I always like to revisit the universal monster films during that time, I originally conceived of a contest centered around a redesign of those classic and iconic monsters. But that has been done so many times I thought it would be more interesting to try to come up with original characters/creatures that would feel right at home standing next to Karloff's Frankenstein's Monster and The Mummy, Chaney Jr's Wolf Man and Lugosi's Dracula.

That's a key part of this challenge. It's important to remember that when you are creating a new monster that you consider both the design sensibilities and the limitations of materials and make-up techniques of a particular era of Universal horror films. So once you've come up with your idea, put yourself in the shoes of Lon Chaney, Jack Pierce or Milicent Patrick. If you presented your ideas for a new horror film to them back in the 20s, 30s or 50s, what might that character have looked like?


Rules:

This is meant to be a fun activity so I'm not going to enforce many rules. I do, however, feel there needs to be certain criteria adhered to.

1. As I mentioned above, keep your designs period appropriate. Don't design something that looks like it came out of a modern monster movie. You'll need to abandon all modern design sensibilities to properly create something that wouldn't glaringly stand out in a Universal Monster roll call.


2. Drawings need to show a good majority of your character. I'd like to get a good idea of how your creature would look in a live action film. So I want to see as much of it as I can. Not just a head. Down to the waist will do. Oh, and this is probably a no brainer, but entries should be in black and white.

3. Since this is a conceptual design challenge your idea needs to be properly conveyed. You can do this in two ways. You can add a short or detailed (if you'd like) description of your character along with your drawing of it. Or you can make up to 3 drawings (all centered around the same character, of course) to help present your idea for a character. I figure this would be helpful if your character can transform into something else or it has abilities that can't be conveyed in one drawing. Or you can do both...a limit of 3 pieces of artwork with a story and character description added.

4. Use whatever medium you feel like. Paint programs, pen and ink, sketches, detailed drawings..doesn't matter. All I ask is that you at least put a tiny, little bit of effort into it. Nothing overly complex is required. No need to spend more time than you have to spare. This is meant for fun after all. But please don't post a stickman with a green dot for a head that you made in MS Paint in five seconds and call it Curse of the Stickman with a Green Head. While artistic talent isn't a necessity for this challenge, again, it is important that your idea is at least properly conveyed. And I'd encourage a little effort just to see what kind of cool ideas are created.


5. Include the title of the film your monster will appear in when you post your entry. Doesn't need to be included in your drawing but it can be if you prefer to do so. No reason you couldn't present your monster in classic movie poster form if you'd like. Since the titles of the films were usually just the name of the monster to begin with...well, shouldn't be too hard.


Interested in participating? No sign-up needed. Once the go is given to begin anyone can join in during the two week period. But you'll be expected to post your entry on the same deadline as everyone else.

Like the film drafts, I don't really see this as being a series of contest with prizes in mind. It's just meant as a fun community activity. So, yeah, bragging rights. But I like your idea. So I'll consider it. Won't offer it as a prize, but perhaps it would be an interesting capper to this particular challenge. Just comes down to me having the time to do it between my professional projects.


I'm still thinking about this. While the technique was available, my initial reaction is to limit it to make-up and man-in suit creations. That just seems more appropriate to the classic Universal Monsters. I figure if Universal wanted to implement that technique and develop a stop-motion monster film they would have at some point considering the success of Kong and Beast from 20'000 Fathoms. But then you'd start getting into the giant monster genre. And that's an entirely different beast than the Universal series of horror films.

So, yeah, let's just keep it to make-up and man-in suit monsters. We can develop more elaborate creatures for another challenge.

I'm sitting here flipping through my very old and very tattered copy of Monsters from the Movies...




From a design perspective I think it will be just as interesting and challenging to come up with a discernible source inspiration for a character as it will be to properly conceive them as period appropriate. Whether that source is a literary adaptation (as was the case with many of the Universal horror film characters), an idea embellished upon from folklore, or simply something like the public's fascination at that time with the curse of the pharaohs inspiring The Mummy, they can be traced back and attributed to something. The same should be said for a character designed for this challenge.

To design something that truly feels as if it was a Universal horror character that, say for example, was never developed past the design stages, fell through the cracks at Universal, and was just recently unearthed in the form of sketches or photographs of make-up concepts isn't as simple of a challenge as it may originally seem. But I think that is what will make it fun. We all like to sit back and criticize certain design decisions by filmmakers. I figured that these film specific challenges will give us the chance to channel our own very vocal creative design instincts into an activity that could result in some interesting ideas being put forth.

Heh, just found this old drawing scrounging around through some data cds.



Lousy scan, but gives an idea of what is to be coming down the pike from me technique wise. I'll be sticking with sketches for this. Not even sure how much time I can devote to it. Again, though, this is a strength of design challenge. Drawing skills aren't as important as the ideas presented.

That's actually a pic of my copy. It's barely holding together. Got it at a book fair coming up on 30 years ago.

Dickson's got the right idea for what I'm looking for from this, but he jumped the gun a bit. Unless, that is, he was just throwing that out there for someone else to use as an idea for their entry. I haven't actually given the go yet. I am waiting a couple of days since I didn't put up an announcement thread for this and wanted there to be a bit of awareness before I started the actual challenge. I'll be posting the go ahead tomorrow evening and the deadline will be exactly two weeks later.

And just to clarify, I haven't actually began any work on this. I have a few ideas but I won't begin giving them any real thought until tomorrow night.

I'm winging this. So no worries. If you want that to be an official entry just edit it out for now and post it after I've given the go ahead tomorrow night. I'll use this thread for entries and discussion and then gather them all together in a separate thread for final voting.

Doubt I'll be able to be online later this evening, so I'm going to go ahead and give the go on this.

Deadline for entries will be December 1 at 11 am EST.

You can post your entries in this thread as well as discuss the thought processes that led you to your final character or ask questions as you are still working on your entry.

Posting your work-in-progress is fine. And actually encouraged.

But, if you are going with a modern myth for inspiration, you'll need to reverse engineer it somehow. There wouldn't be a movie monster or film called The Chupacabra made in the 20s, 30s, 40s or 50s because, as you pointed out, the name and creature it is associated with wasn't coined until the 90s. You'll have to find something that would have been known or uncovered during the original run of Universal monster films to explain what gave inspiration for your character design.

I'm also struck by the fact, and this is something I'm wrestling with at the moment as well, that a character design is going to have to fit into a particular era at Universal studios. If you are going with an elaborate man-in-suit design, it would have more than likely belonged to a film made in the 50s. That being the case, you saw the trend at that time shifting more towards sci-fi B-horror and away from the gothic horror that inspired many of the earlier Universal monsters. So your character would have to follow suit and fit within the themes and tones of those later films.

Since my character is gothic in nature, but also has a bit of elaborate rigging and effects work involved in its final appearance (at least a bit more than I can picture being incorporated into a Jack Peirce design), I'm leaning towards it being a Lon Chaney character. I could see him designing and fitting himself into the rigging. But the themes of the story could have been one of the many contributing factors to why the film never got farther than scripting and design stages.

One of the things I like about the concept art forums is the chance to see the entries as works-in-progress. It gives a clear idea of the techniques and design processes that goes into conceptualizing an idea.

Having said that, here are a few preliminary concept designs of a component of my character's...well, we'll just say it's a part of the costume. As these aren't designs for my characters head, I'm not revealing anything about its/his/her nature.

I tend to start out with the most roughest of sketches and doodles when I'm first wrestling with an idea. I can fill up page after page with these sorts of quick scribbles...



..slowly honing in on some vague notion of what I'm looking for....





...I'll then continue refining a chosen design in rough sketch form until I'm happy with it.



The last sketch will more than likely find its way into my final drawing in a far more refined and detailed form. I'm satisfied with it. Oh, and no, my character doesn't have a devil headed penis that has been covered in molten iron and shackled in chains. Not to say that I didn't consider it at some point.

Nice. I'd never heard of that legend. I could easily see a narrative being spun around the idea of a good and evil Cadejo. And, yeah, that's the type of stuff you need to be looking at, Zweit. There is nothing wrong with using a cryptid for inspiration, but it just needs to be one whose origins are less modern. The Gill Man simply sprang out of a conversation about a myth of half-human half-fish in the Amazonian. That's vague enough to hang it on any sort of legendary creatures from the area. The Universal monsters were "universal" in every sense. Werewolves, vampires, the reanimated dead, golems, cryptids...they already existed in some form in legends and folklore (even if vaguely as in the case of the aforementioned gill-man) long before the likes of even Stoker or Shelly (and later Universal) appropriated the ideas into their stories.

I actually considered using Spring Heeled Jack for a bit. He's a bizarre character even for a creature of folklore. Can't wait to see what you come up with for him.

Decided to make a quick little sculpy mock-up of one of my sketches the other day. Then added a bit of metal leafing to it. This was mainly just for toying around with some lighting ideas for this particular prop. I really wanted to get the feeling that my final drawing was sketched using a promotional photo of a Universal character as reference. So a dramatic use of light and shadow like you would find in those was a must.

Crunch time...always fun time. I'm such a procrastinator, but I work best on a deadline. I figure I'll being toiling away right up until the last minute to get mine done... or at least done to my satisfaction.

Great and imaginative write-up, Dickson. Digging your depiction of the headsman, as well. Love that final rendering of The Ghoul, Zweit.

Most of my original plans are already out the window. I really wanted to do a completely lifelike rendering in graphite. Something that wouldn't look a tad out of place in this collage...



But I've been working on another project and had to switch over to it for a bit. Then the holidays. Then I switched ideas for this midway through after already making that sculpt before switching back again. That cost some time. I've got a couple of drawings I'm completing at the moment. May throw in a third quick little sketch if time permits.

Hahahaha

How much cotton and collodion would Peirce have needed to build up that lower lip?

Along with my official entry sketch, I originally planned to try and knock out a quick digital rendering of my character in the form of box art from an Aurora model kit. Now I think I might have to take a stab at doing one for The Spook.