Hi-res Mortasheen Art and Concept Notes: Crepugnant

I just brought this monster up in a recent tumblr post, and realized I may have never shown it in high-resolution detail; it's definitely one of the most meticulously detailed monsters I ever illustrated for Mortasheen.

Crepugnant's concept started as a "catoblepas"-inspired monster, a beast that hid its "ugly" face and could cause harm just by being seen. This is also reminiscent, to me, of the more innocent "squonk" from North American folklore, so I came to think of the monsters as a blend of both.

Around the same time, I had a concept for a bipedal turtle Mortasheen whose head could be sent out on a long, long neck, but it really didn't feel strange or ghoulish enough for a Mortasheen creature, and the turtle's actual powers and abilities kept changing.

The two monsters blended together pretty abruptly one day, and I still like the idea of a turtle using its shell to hide its "hideousness," but a literal turtle wound up feeling too ordinary for this creature. Instead, it took on a pale, eerie humanoid body that, to me, had a sort of "silent hill" vibe to it, and I liked the notion that it would appear to be almost faceless, with nothing but a mouth, until it revealed the true head and face inside its body cavity.

I'm actually not quite satisfied with how the head turned out, exactly; it's a little more round, fat and bulbous than I really like, and I wanted it to seem much more like a withered, almost vulturine face covered in many long feelers and hairs. Maybe some day I'll give it a second try, but it would be even more of a pain to draw that way.

The flesh dangling down between the eyes is inspired by the "snood" of a turkey. That's what that thing is called that dangles off a turkey's face. A SNOOD!

I'm also not sure how obvious it is, but the creature's eyes are very, very gelatinous, rippling like pools of liquid when at rest.

The fine, random biological details making up the skin surface are how I always imagined "shoggoth" type creatures to really look like up close.