I’ve won one internet comic contest (Dark Horse’s Strip Search contest) and lost one (DC’s Zuda contest) so I’m not trying to make a personal comment on online awesomes. Online voting is a weird thing when Stephen Colbert can have people vote that a bridge in Hungary should be named after him. I have to say that when I was losing the Zuda contest I drew strength from my favourite hockey team, The Toronto Maple Leafs. They haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967 but they still go out and try their best each night (well, recently most of the team does). So I could accept losing with dignity, which if I always rooted for the Red Wings might have been harder to do. Sports still has good role models.
It’ll be no surprise to Princess Planet readers that I love to draw Medusa. What is weird is that Dungeons and Dragons use the term “medusa” for this monster while using “gorgon” to mean a steel-skinned bull which breathes deadly gas.
Perhaps the most striking image from the 1st edition Monster Manual, to me, was the Lich. Maybe that’s why I made Speleton a bad guy in Princess Planet. Here I covered his bones with magic runes, which I think would make a magician skeleton look all the cooler. The addition of fur to his robes was due to the Ice Age set of Magic cards where the villain was a lich called Lim-Dul. They never put him on the cards, but I imagined he’s cover himself with fur robes, even if he had no warm blood to chill.
Riffing on the Chinese Qilin creature, D&D’s Ki-Rin is a good spirit of the sky. The Quilin is often “depicted with fire all over its body” according to Wikipedia, so I thought instead of white clouds I go with smoky clouds for it in the sky, as if it would be at home amongst thunderstorms rather than just marshmallow puffs on blue.
J was kind of a dud letter for awesome monsters. I tried to muster a slightly interesting approach to a jackal monster by giving him Egyptian-styled gear.
The ilithid, better known as mind flayers, are a subterranean race that use psychic powers and their brain-draining tentacles to enslave or kill. You don’t want to meet these dudes when you are level one. I’m not 100% happy with the skull cap. With the staff in front of it, it’s kind of hard to see. However, I do like the staff as a brain/cobra hybrid.
Into the D&D grab bag this week we have a harpy. From Greek mythology it’s a cross between a crone and a vulture. They like to eat marrow so I figured a sharpened bone and skull weapon would be up her alley.
My other entry for Classic-Castle.com‘s contest is in the mythical creatures category. Here’s a talking tree wizard brushing up on his spells near his friends at the unicorn castle. Click to enlarge.
The fine folks over at Classic-Castle.com are having their annual Lego building contests. This is my entry for the “Wooden Castle” category. I thought a shipwrecked group of knights and maidens would be a fun thing to build. If you like Lego and castles, you should go check out the other awesome entries. Also, click to enlarge.
In Dungeons and Dragons, the golem is a pretty tough customer. You need powerful magic weapons to hurt them. And only a few spells work against them. And I don’t think they’re ticklish or susceptible to bribes. Mostly they are made them out of flesh (like Frankenstein), clay, stone, or iron but in The Princess Planet you’re more familiar with the snow variety. Here I was definitely inspired by the Batman: Animated Clayface design but mixed with some Dan Seagrave heavy metal album cover art and the idea that there was a kiln inside the clay.
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