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The reason tabletop RPGs use polyhedral dice – in spite of them being such an unlikely thing to have on hand in the pre-gaming-store era, and rare even in the roleplaying hobby’s tabletop wargame predecessors – is because there just happened to be an educational supply store where they could easily be sourced near where the designers of Dungeons & Dragons lived.

The reason that D&D dragons are colour-coded is because the game pre-dates the widespread availability of fantasy minifigs, so they represented dragons using plastic dinosaurs from the local five-and-dime, and those are just the colours that the plastic dinosaurs used to represent each type of dragon happened to be.

The reason that iconic D&D monsters like the bulette, the owlbear and the rust monster exist is because one day, a bunch of bootleg Ultraman kaiju figurines just happened to be mixed in with the plastic dinosaurs, and – being unfamiliar with Ultraman, and the bootlegs in question being almost unrecognisably shitty anyway – they statted up what they thought the figurines looked like.

Sometimes I wonder what the history of the tabletop roleplaying hobby would have looked like if any of those coincidences had lined up just a little bit differently.

Art and design challenge, everyone:

Find the cheapest, weirdest, ugliest little toy or bauble you can at a local dollar store or thrift shop. Design a new tabletop monster off of that.

I would LOVE to try and figure out what kaiju ended up being the inspiration for what classic monster

Knock yourself out – the linked page contains numerous photos of what’s believed to be the specific set of plastic “dinosaurs” that served as the original minifigs for monsters in question. Some of the figures that are included in the set are clearly identifiable as classic Ultraman bootlegs, while others are less recognisable; to the best of my knowledge, nobody’s 100% sure what the figure that inspired the owlbear is supposed to be. For reference, it’s this one:

ohhh shit, i always thought the “original” art was just dumb and terrible

“that looks nothing like an owl OR a bear!” i thought

but now i see that it is a VERY ACCURATE ARTISTIC RENDERING

OF SOMETHING THAT IS ITSELF /VERY STUPID LOOKING/

Demons

I like how the strongest condemnation there is "making a mess of it".

Not "it's murder". 

A bunch of fellas designed from randomly generated pixel sprites inspired by @mossworm! Which one is your favorite?

random sprite generation site

Arstation Challenge: Grand Space Opera - Character Design by Raphaëlle Manière

decided to combine these ones into one post now i’ve got a whole batch more of them. these have been a load of fun to do! both the ones that attempt to look like a whole new pokemon and the ones that are just an exercise in monster design. parts palette of beedrill, icecream line, and deoxys. 

Happy October! I decided to do Inktober this year with a monster/mythology theme. :) First day is the Peryton. A stag and bird hybrid created by Jorge Luis Borges in his 1957 Book of Imaginary Beings. Perytons were said to live in Atlantis until an earthquake destroyed the civilization. Through their life these beasts cast the shadow of a man until it kills one, at which time it starts to cast its own shadow. Prophecies say they can lead to the downfall of civilizations. 

This should have been an exploration of a sketch from this morning’s train, but it’s now pretty far away from a banana teuthis x)

Art By FB: @Emiliaillustrations

Instagram: @artwoonz

THIS IS SO ADORABLE WHAT

Werewoof pls!

Ashley and the Shadow! Another lowkey OTP, and two of my oldest OCs.

Characters and image © to me

only the most important characters.

Monster Character Design I’ve done for our Bachelor Project in progress, Dark Dark Woods. I tried to explore previous designs more roughly in crayon to force myself to simplify them down before fleshing them out again.

Another little drawing of that monster. A little Cerberus interpretation.

my storytelling final! or, that week i almost went blind cross-hatching!

it’s a couple weeks old at this point, but i’m still proud of it (all that cross-hatching…) even though looking back at it now i can see a ton of flaws or things i just could’ve done better. maybe i’ll redo it one day.

the page colors are kind of wonky because they’re photographs; i didn’t have a scanner big enough for the pages.

hell yeah monster/human friendships

Thought this was interesting

MONSTERS I HAVEN’T HEARD OF YET!?

Killer paper!

Mineral Monsters

Decided to toss them all into a photoset for convenience. It was a fun week! Sources: Mineralists, Friends of Minerals Forum, Wikipedia Creative Commons, You Flaming Brute

These monsters are pretty damn solid!

Ha. Haaaa.