[1,210 words, 6 estimated read time]
[Content Warnings: lots of body horror and gore. Seriously, it’ll get gross.]
[Spoilers: This post includes concept art and discussions of creature designs from The Thing (1982), Halo, Dead Space, and TMNT Rise the Movie (2022)]
For a while now I’ve had a character I knew would involve some body horror but… never really got around to drawing it. So lets change that!
Backstory Behind My Character
Originally this character spawned from a Dungeons & Dragons session. The character I was playing at the time, Killian, had a curse that caused randomized mutations. So every couple of sessions I would roll a d100, and whatever the number was corresponded to a random mutation.
One of these mutations involved an identical clone sloughing off my character and sprinting away.
I continued playing my character Killian, but for a one-shot session taking place in the same world decided to pick up with the clone and play him. I started thinking about where he’d gone, what his motives would have been. Did he know what he was? Did he have some motive to replace my original character, Killian? Did he have Killian’s same memories? Or were his memories patchy, was he confused? Did he think that he was Killian?
We started jokingly calling him Clonian in the meantime and it stuck. The one-shot never ended up happening, but I still thought about that character. I’ve always been fascinated by creature designs that involve something pretending to be human. Whether that be creatures that mimic the voice of a person as a lure, or mimics the actual appearance of a person, it’s something that I’ve always found particularly creepy and cool, and I wanted to explore it with this mutant clone character. Plus in this case I figured the clone isn’t just something non-human pretending to be a human- he genuinely thinks he’s a human. But the more time passes, the more he realizes something is terribly wrong with him.
I wanted to figure out what his mutations looked like for a while, I’d had vague ideas in my head for a while but nothing on paper. I knew generally I wanted to aim for the kind of body horror that came with parasitic aliens I’d typically seen in scifi horror. So I figured I might as well take the opportunity to look at some references and learn what I can!
The Thing (1982)
When I think of body horror, the first thing I tend to think of is The Thing. Despite only having recently seen the movie for the first time, I can recognize how iconic the creature design from it was. The mimicking aspect of it is especially relevant to my character’s design, and I was particularly interested in the transition stages as it’s ‘true form’ starts to reveal itself only in certain parts of the body.
The way the Thing moves was the creepiest part to me, the way the tendrils flail around. The creature was always moving and it always looked so viscerally wrong, it was captivating.
(Image from Screen Rant Article “The Thing: What The Creature In John Carpenter’s Movie Almost Looked Like”)
(Images from Fancaps Page for The Thing)
Halo: The Flood
My first experience with the kind of body horror that comes with parasitic aliens was actually the Flood in the Halo series. Admittedly I don’t remember how I first reacted to seeing it- I played it at a young enough age and my memory is bad enough that it just feels like I’ve always know the Flood was part of the Halo games.
One unique thing about the flood is that it doesn’t just feel like flesh and blood and bone, there’s a component of something fungal with the design. And I especially like that we get to see not just how it takes over humans, but also other aliens.
(Images were gathered from the Halo 3 Concept Art Wiki Page)
Dead Space: Necromorphs
Despite my first experience with this type of body horror being The Flood in Halo, when thinking about it showcased in videogames the go-to for me is still usually Dead Space.
(Images were gathered from the Dead Space Concept Art Wiki Page and the Dead Space Necromorphs Fandom Wiki Page)
One thing I found difficult was translating this kind of body horror into a more cartoony, 2d art style. While looking online I found out there were actually anime style adaptations of Dead Space.
(Images were gathered from the Dead Space: Downfall Fancaps page)
I looked through screenshots of Dead Space: Downfall (2008) and Dead Space: Aftermath (2011). I found myself surprised that I… didn’t really like the 2d designs as much as I’d hoped I would. There’s something that almost looks too clean about them. I’m sure part of this is just due to limitations of the animation- it’s easier to animate smoother areas than have super detailed designs. I think with these limitations they did as good as they could, but I just didn’t find the designs nearly as interesting or creepy as the designs from the game.
Rise of the TMNT Movie: the Krang
Of all the 2d interpretations I found myself most impressed by, it was actually… the Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie. I know, I know, but here me out.
Obviously it’s for kids so it’s not like there can be super crazy gore or anything. Yet despite this, something about the designs of the krang aliens is super interesting to me. Yes, they’re usually bright purple instead of a fleshy red or pink- again, for kids- but they’re able to get that gross texture across in 2d animation shockingly well. This really helped me get a better grasp for the basic shapes I should be going for.
(Images were gathered from the Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Fandom Wiki Page)
My Artwork
I decided to just doodle a bit and get a feel for the general style. For this first page of doodles I mostly referenced the art from Dead Space.
For the next two page of doodles I focused on referencing the art from the TMNT Rise Movie.
I especially liked how the last two pages of sketches turned out, it helped to see where to add more detail and where to simplify.
When making the full illustration of my character I tried to incorporate several of the different shapes I had seen- spikes, tendrils, weird little bumps and spikes all over. I also added detail to his face with the teeth kind of expanding out.
I was pretty happy with how it turned out! I mostly stuck with the shapes I just saw from the TMNT Movie- in future art I’ll try out some different elements. Good thing about this character is that it can change it’s form, so I have plenty of room for drawing different designs!
There’s also a bunch of other media I can look into as well for inspiration, two that come to mind are the anime Parasyte and the videogame Endoparasitic. If you know of any other cool media you enjoy with this kind of parasitic alien body horror, leave a comment about it and I’ll check it out!
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