Saturday, January 05, 2008

Roland Topor Drawings In Viva la Muerte Here's a dose of insane Roland Topor drawings included in the opening credits of a film titled Viva la Muerte or "Long Live Death" from 1971. The film was directed by Fernando Arrabal, "a founding member of the panic movement (along with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor), a chaotic theatre group that performed mainly in Mexico during the 1960's." The plot concerns the surreal fantasies of a child living during the end of the Spanish Civil War, check out the trailer here.

- quote source
Jack The Giant Killer





















The illustrations in this version of Jack the Giant Killer are identical to those found in this copy, however they are colored completely different. Both are illustrated by J. B Geyser from 1881. I've posted examples from these books below, be sure to go to those two links to see the rest of the artwork.
More Jack the Giant Killer books with many great illustrations can be found on this page.

Check here to see additional illustrations. See Arthur Rackham illustrations of Jack the Giant Killer at SurLaLune Fairy Tales. There's a large collection of other illustrations covering Jack and the Beanstalk and Jack the Giant Killer in their gallery here.

See a previous post I made of Jack and the Giants here and a previous post on Giants from Cornish folklore here.













Thursday, January 03, 2008

Kaiju Guts




Here is another great collection of illustrations on flickr from Modern Fred. This time we have Kaiju paintings, strangely some of these are like medical cross sections showing the colorful guts of the Kaiju beasts. I found more of these cross section drawings elsewhere, if anyone knows where I can see more I'd love to check em out!








Update 1/6/08 - The following is an artwork from an art book by Takeshi Murakami titled "Little Boy" as provided by cemenTIMental in the comments of this post.



And here is yet another amazing artwork of a Godzilla monster with its guts on display. This is an anatomical diagram of "Flaming Monster Gamera" from An Anatomical Guide to Monsters, 1967, 1997. Text: Shoji Otomo. Illustrator: Shogo Endo.






















Above work found in this article at Tinselman. Check out this installation with more similar kaiju beasts with cross sections displaying their juicy gut stuff.

If anyone knows anyplace online where I can find all of the artwork from "An Anatomical Guide to Monsters" illustrated by Shogo Endo, I'd REALLY like to see, thanks! Hopefully they all end up on flickr sooner or later.

Tuesday, January 01, 2008






















Accidentally found this while preparing a future post on Haw Par Villa. - Image Source
Adventures of Space Family Robinson



You can see the original covers I cropped these images from along with dozens of other pulp illustrations from various other science fiction comics in this excellent flickr gallery from Modern Fred.





Monday, December 31, 2007

Monster Brains In 08!!
Monsters In Videogames, from the juicy gut spilling maggot infested things in Splatterhouse to the Octorocks of Legend of Zelda, there's going to be a lot of weird stuff in this week long post. Also, this was a complete accident but does that Tempest energy beam jive up with the pic below it or what? Crazy!


Older social / political cartoons with heaps of strange beasts.


I've wanted to do a big post on these vintage demonic diorama photographs for over a year. I'm still hunting down photographs to include in the post but it should be ready next year.


Gargoyles..


A full week or more will be devoted to dozens of the more interesting monster infested movie posters from the past century.



There will be a full week or two devoted to monsters in manga including works from the following artists.. Junji Ito, Suehiro Mauro, Kazuo Umezu, Kentarou Miur, Shigeru Mizuki , Hitoshi Iwaaki and a lot more.


Lots of Dinosaurs..


I have barely scratched the surface of grotesque art. Expect to see a variety of drawings and sculptures in the grotesque art style sometime next year.


There will be a few weeks devoted to the human body. Plastination, deformed infants in jars, wax models in museums, all that is monstrous and bizarre from the human anatomy.


The Maw Of Hell, one of my favorite motifs in art, the giant monster head with the gaping jaws that is the entrance to hell. This is probably going to be another week long post.
Many ancient maps with all variety of strange beasts littered across the fantastic seas of past explorers.


Dr Who Monster Week!


The Labours of Hercules, I've posted works from this Greek narrative before and I'll be posting more in 08.






















Monster toys/novelties, I'll spend a week or two devoted to all the weird plastic monster junk to come out in the past couple of decades. Here's a good example.






















Kaiju Toy Week!

This is some of what I have planned for next year, I have no idea in what order or what months these posts will be made but I should fit it all in across the next 12 months.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Mark Powell’s Grotesque Dioramas






These fascinating dioramas look like some nightmare hybrid out of a Brothers Quay film. I'll be really looking forward to what else Mark comes up with in the future. You can view these horrifyingly detailed dioramas at www.markpowellart.com and see additional works at Mark's flickr gallery.