First Abyssal Set

Richard Svensson, the Lone Animator, has started to work on a puppet. I'm not fully sure which one it is, but its only half-sculpted. We might have some photos tomorrow.

That said, I asked him about backgrounds/sets on Tuesday. I had sent him the sketches for the inanimate structures of the Abyss, of course drawn by KingOvRats.

Richard kindly agreed to do it himself for us. In the end, he shot for the more organic structures. KingOvRats had told me he imagined the Abyss as a more bacterial structure, as seen below.

Now, I hadn't told Mr. Svensson that - but in the end, he came up with exactly that - Lovecraftian bacteria. In summation, the Lone Animator sent me a 2D mockup of what the Hyperspace Abysses might look like.

And it is amazing.

We thank Richard Svensson from the bottom of our heart. He created the perfect image.

Pete von Sholly and Others

In looking for more concept artists to jump onto the already talented team of Witch House, I have contacted several renowned artists in the past few months: most recently Jason B. Thompson (artist of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath comic and movie), Devon Devereaux (artist of Hot Rod Horror and Graphic Classics contributor), ebe-1, and Pete von Sholly (artist of the utterly random, grotesque, and fabulous, including P.S. Publishing's Lovecraft series, Graphic Classics: H.P. Lovecraft; First Edition, History of Monsters, Capitol Hell, and other strange and limited collectibles). Less recently, Gris Grimly (Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Madness) and Michael Zigerlig (friend of the late H.R. Giger and artist of The Call of Cthulhu) were contacted. Here are the results.

• Jason B. Thompson will be drawing the Twilight Abysses of Hyperspace in December.
• Devon Devereaux will be doing a pen, ink, and Prismacolor drawing of the meeting between Gilman and the Black Man, also in December.
• ebe-1 is too busy to work for us right now, but we're going to talk about it soon.
• We'll talk about Pete von Sholly in a minute. He did supply us with something awesome.
• Gris Grimly is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy to busy to work for us, but he told us so in a very courteous manner.
• Michael Zigerlig is willing to do something once we have the proper funds.

So if you like creepy art by awesome artists, you're going to be in for a real treat in the next few months.

Now, here's the wonderful thing that happened with Pete von Sholly.

Mr. von Sholly has done an admirable job of resurrecting good ol' popcorn-munching monster movies, toys and pulp magazines in his work. When I contacted him, he was very polite and kind, saying that he'd be happy to help - but he'd need to decompress from Monsterpalooza first. Today, I contacted him again.

After giving him an outline of what I wanted, he told me that there was nothing new he could bring to the table. He had outlined all of the best scenes so well in his book version from P.S. Publishing that he had already said it all - already got the best bits.

What he did do was send me all six images from the book, and said I could use any or all for free.

The City of the Elder Things.

The Hyperspace Endpapers.

Hyperspace.

The bones of Brown Jenkin.

These are two thirds of what he showed us - the others just as fantastic.

I tried to make a Universal monster movie style poster out of the Elder Thing City drawing. It turned out TERRIBLE.

Mr. von Sholly made a few suggestions on this little mockup.

• Credit H.P. (I forgot)
• Don't put stuff all over it - let the art speak
• MAKE IT READABLE
• Remove cast names. Sounds kind of weak when everyone has the same last name

Here's the direction he suggested.

So I tried it out that way, arranging the words like Mr. von Sholly suggested. My only addition was the artist credit. It looks MUCH better, and Mr. von Sholly agreed.

But, in any case, I am eternally thankful for what Mr. von Sholly has given us.