Inspiration process: Ticktox

It occurs to me that a lot (if not most) of the monsters I draw have a long, dumb story behind their inspiration, and I thought maybe it'd be a fun feature to get into for the patreon, so here's the monster I just uploaded, Ticktox, and some of what went into the idea.

Already obsessed with plant monsters, "Liceplant" was the one figure I wanted most from the "Trash Bag Bunch" toy line, but could never find. All I had to go by was the picture and name on the back of the package, and I was fascinated by even the name alone. What did this plant creature have to do with LICE? Did it HAVE lice? Did it control lice? Make lice?

For some reason though, I completely misremembered Liceplant for most of my life as having a round, gentle, sloth-like face, with either no mouth or a simple slitlike mouth. I don't know how I missed that its entire head was just teeth.

Liceplant als reminded me already of the "Shambling Mound" from Dungeons and Dragons - the original one, with the flaking, rotting, shredded-looking body and the weird little snout. In my head I started conflating the two right away, and kept coming up with these "shambling" plant monsters who were also full of lice, mites, fleas or ticks.

Ticks of course make the most sense. They already hang out on plant life waiting for hosts to brush past, and there are even certain plants that certain ticks particularly prefer as ambush sites.

This also circles right back to my "sloth" interpretation, since no mammal on this earth is more bug-ridden than a sloth.

In designing Ticktox, I also feel like a bit of Amanaman crept in, my favorite Star Wars alien for his weird and unsettling proportions.

I'm not totally sure if I like Ticktox's bony knob face too much, but, it's sort of drawn from both a sloth and the head of a caterpillar. I might find it slightly cooler if its face matched its body, but then that would be too predictable and like so many other gloppy moss-people out there.