What Makes A Great Monster Design?

Also, the conjuring universe sucks, it's just a bunch of jumpscares every 30 seconds

the coolest and most unique monster is probably the death angels or whatever they are called from a quiet place 1 and 2. epic movies!!!

THE ENDING SONG IS ZIGURAT BY KAIKOMUSIC

Now horror can be expressed in many ways of the human body like legs, arms, mouth, etc. Mostly im making a game on Roblox called EyePhobia even if it should actually be called Ommetaphobia I think the name EyePhobia will satnd out the most than Ommetaphobia. Mostly it's a game where you have intense hallucinations that are actually real. Your hallucinations are so real you travel to different dimensions and use different items to defend yourself like a DB shotgun or a handgun wich only have temporary bullets and you get the point. Mostly my game focuses on eyes as I mostly like the eyes of the alternate from the Mandela Catalogue and eyes in general as I find them the most necesary part of a monster along side making a monsters limbs long and making it as weird as possible. I mostly got into horror drawing because of this project and ive drawed and drawed and drawed with my friends for 1 year and we didnt even code ths game yet. Tho I suggest for people to not exactly just stick onto something for the rest of the project if you know what you whant it to be and kindoff use your skills in action. Ofcourse you can make monsters with different parts of the human body but you can keep that same idea and experiment to make it look way scarier but still keep something and make it as visible as possible to keep on good work.

Maybe going the other way around, like monstrous body ans perfectly human head ???

this gave me an idea for basicaly a trypophobia monster where it mouth would be is an elongated section of skin dotted many whith tiny mouths. if im to make a horror game i want to include as Manny fears in possible whithout it feeling overcrowded and forced

Do more drawing vídeos... pls

His hairline tho

ITS CALLED UNCANNY VALLEY

I've been thinking a lot about monster designs that stray away from what we can think of as a monster. I feel we always make monsters too... Familiar. Almost all monsters have mouths, arms, legs, wings, eyes. Things we can easily imagine. I think it would be cool to make a monster that doesn't have any familiar features to us as humans and no human influence in it's body structure or design (if it has a "body" to begin with). I'm not thinking of blob monsters either. Just something so unfamiliar, but given those requirements, it's really really hard to imagine things like that without restoring to what I understand as anatomy

Edit: actually, thinking about it more, I think I described Lovecraftian horror lmao

I have to disagree somewhat...
Just because it's "basically set in stone", doesn't mean we as artists have to comply.
If we don't experiment and push the limits, the art and creativity will stagnate.

There are plenty of sources we can turn to for monster inspiration, that are familiar to us as humans without them being humans.
Something based on animals, insects or plants can be at least as scary, because we then can't be sure of their motivations or understand their goals.
Limiting our choices to "humans" can get super predictable and boring, because there are limits to how much you can stretch a human.

There's also the hurdle that newer horror movies fail to get over constantly - from my perspective, at least:
If you have a humanoid monster, we subconciously expect them to follow a specific set of rules and guidelines, and it breaks immersion completely if they don't.

If you have concept constraints, you obviously have to comply... but if not, why limit yourself?

You need to know what kind of fear you want to tap into, to make your monster scary.
Take two classic human-based monsters, that are scary for two very different reasons:
○ Vampires are not scary because of the way they look, but because of the twisted psyche. The individual is warped.
○ Zombies aren't scary on their own. They're scary because there are so many of them. A tireless, relentless horde, who doesn't have any feelings invested at all.
● Both of these extreme end results comes from different fears that we as humans have: the fear of external influences changing us, possibly against our will - and the fear of disappearing in the crowd, and losing our individuality.

If you want to tap into a different fear, a human based monster might not be the way to go.
An insect-based or fish-based monster might be better.
Something completely inhuman can be just as scary as something human-based.
Perhaps even more so, because there is an over-abundance of human-type monsters.
But what does the alien hivemind want?
Can we reason and compromise with the man-eating plant creature?
Can we afford to not look into the motivations behind the actions of a hybrid cow&shark monster?

Also also: If monsters can't be intelligent (because then they're just a different species), then Vampires can't be monsters 😅

Im sorry but your design choices are way to human and boring. Fear is promped by things unfamiliar to us that we dont understand. Wanna see some good guidlines for Monster design? Read some Lovecraft!

wolverines??

You have to make humanity "jump". Show us something new. Nobody wants to see a copy of "The Walking Dead" or "Resident Evil". "Noting new" means "No Innovation". Make something different. Would like, maybe even love, to see something completely fresh. <3

guillermo del toros monsters and creatures are stunning.

Seacreatures are the best source for monsters. Let's behonest, it's basically an ecosystem primarily made heads with weapons. The rest of their bodies are either worms or just bags with fins.

The third design definitely gives me silent hill energy. Which, if you're going for a horror game monster then i feel like that's good lol

And to me, Bloodborne had a good mix of monsters that were originally human, and had its share of monsters that were never human to begin with. Subnautica also had really good designs, and they were more alien/animal and knocked it out of the park with it.

I just make a humanoid figure and add and remove like make him hella slender long ass legs and arms pitched one color old wrinkly a new face and alter from there

interestingly a loss of teeth can be a result of radiation poisoning

ngl theres one shot in the first lord of the rings movie that breifly shows the ring wraiths horse has the teeth of a carnivore, which you might not notice but imidiatly clues you into the fact that these are not natural creatures

Something I always disliked is when monsters look like people with some kind of real-life deformity or malformation. Like, I've seen dozens of monsters that look like people with with cerebral palsy and other stuff and it always felt so mean spirited to compare real people with monsters.

Sad you didnt mention the thing

The most interesting Monsters I can think of are from the Sweet Home series

what kinda pen tablet do you use?

Herbivores have great teeth for references. Especially deer. Leatherback sea turtles and geese tongues are also good reference for...tooth like structures.

Did he say “vampires, zombies, and wolverines.”?! What’s a wolverine

Codww2 nazi zombies is has great zombies

Angler fish

how do you draw ur art?

I made a monster where it’s a mix of robotics and human fused together, the result of awful government experiments. They are still conscious and are friendly, but the robotic part was meant for super soldiers, so it often takes control and attacks the character.

As an estonian, i can confirm we make great monster design.

This video actually helped me figure out what kind of universe I want my characters to exist in: once I figured out the concept for the enemies instead of just making random designs, the rest of the story started falling into place! My babies finally have a home 🤩

One thing that almost always makes a design much better is a good dose of biological believability. You've done very well here in this regard.
Personally, I've always been annoyed by various anthropomorphic designs (including furries, yes) that completely disregard any realism. Instead, I love myself some wings in place of arms (instead of attached to the back), tails that actually extend downwards from the spine and stuff like that.

Hyper focusing on design elements like teeth seems like a great way to avoid working on the story. 😉 I’m really enjoying this deep dive, but writing the story around the designs seems very counterintuitive to me

Once I was making a sea monster, and couldn't decide on the teeth. So, it was a human that was more amphibious, and in place of teeth, its lips would pull back exposing a giant squid beak. Its a pretty gnarly monster!

Body horror is definitely the most unnerving for me, so the dude with rebar in his head and the nose skin pulled off is definitely the creepiest. Not sure if he'd be scary per se, but certainly if you get up close to him, it would gross me out. I think for scary the thing has to be huge and make me feel like I've got no chance of fighting back.

"vampires, wolverines and zombies"

I know you meant to say werewolves, I just love the idea of wolverines being included in that list, it's unintentional comedy gold!

Sorry but lovecraft s monsters looks way more intresting inspired and scarier that zombies , vampires or infected humans

so. inspiring.

I watched my dad do an animation for work of this surgery where they literally rip off your face. On one hand I’m traumatized but i also made the most fire monster design.

hey! I doubt you’ll see this but i’ve been working on a horror homebrew involving lovecraftian fae (: if you’re interested in cosmic and body horror i’d love to work with you

every time i see the thumbnail i confuse the third guy with a toilet plunger.