So, yeah there was the inevitable delay. This page was just unfortunately a perfect storm of formatting, real life business, and being half done and then me wanting to start over. So to hopefully make it up to you, I’ll share a bit of the creative process behind making the monster in the second panel.

If you saw the design and felt it was just a shameless reference to Quake 1’s shambler, I can totally understand that. My love for old shooter games is no secret, and combined with their ability to teleport, I’d forgive you for assuming that was the inspiration. However – you’d actually be totally wrong. These giants have been something I have had art of since before the comic started, and I believe are based more off of the “parent” enemies from Risk Of Rain. (Pictured to the right.)  Their original design was much more like this – one of the oldest drawings i have that isnt of a cast member is of one of these giants, (bottom right) and their design didnt change much. However, eventually i decided the head was silly looking, and planned to have their mouth be in their chest area, and elongate their arms and legs. I dont have any art of them in this stage, but the closest equivalent I can find is this monster from the band Tally Hall’s animated music video for the song “Turn the lights off.”(Bottom left) It’s saved to my pc from around that time, so it was a likely inspiration.

From there, I started caring more about making this monster somewhat realistic, so the proportions became stockier, basing their legs (and in bone structure) off of wooly mammoths, giving them their fur and hoof-like feet, and giving them large incisors akin to rodents, namely naked molerats, to make their role as  scavengers And that’s how we landed at their current design. I won’t lie and say theres NO shambler in their design – the blood-stained fur around the mouth strongly resembles the bloodstain around a shambler’s mouth, and I am too self-aware to assume my subconcious didn’t cause me to unknowingly make it more shamblery.

Anyway, hope you had fun learning about how my designs form.