#bogleech.com

[bogleech]

So I decided to turn that big bag of goodwill bugs into a proper Halloween article, with a couple of new photos and more trivia than the tumblr post!

[bynineb]

What pieces of media are your biggest creature design inspirations?

ooh how fun! let's see...

Pokemon Crystal (Ken Sugimori)

(src: Bulbapedia)

I had a Pokemon Crystal strategy guide with all 251 Pokemon in it that I studied religiously when it came to making monsters of my own. I love Ken Sugimori's illustrations so much - the dappled paint makes it so soft, gives everything the feeling of being struck by light dancing down from foliage above. The subtle implied detailing with line strokes and shadow allows the imagination to run wild. They, truly, feel like creatures to have adventures with. And of course, Pokemon is a juggernaut of an RPG, facilitating those childhood fantasies, and then there's a TV show showing them playing and shouting their name and fighting... No wonder so many people got hooked on it!

Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 (Akira Toriyama)

(src: Dragon's Den)

Since they're designed as enemies foremost, Dragon Quest's monsters can get a lot kookier & scarier than Pokemon can. And Toriyama gives his monster designs so much charm and personality! You feel like he always has fun coming up with them, and it makes every Dragon Quest game more delightful for having them be your foes (and sometimes friends). Also, all the English names are puns and portmanteaus and other fun word things!

After Armageddon Gaiden (artist unknown - dev is PandoraBox)

(src: Bogleech, who also wrote a wonderful article on these critters: https://bogleech.com/halloween/hall18-aagolem)

Uniquely grotesque beasts from a deeply obscure Japanese RPG named After Armageddon Gaiden, the second in a duology about player-controlled demons fighting alien invaders. Some of the designs get quite gory or disturbing, fair warning. But in a cool way!! The sheer strangeness of these designs are something to behold!... And they have the best names ever, like "Barabumblebo"...

YU-GI-OH early card art (Kazuki Takahashi)

(src: Yugioh fandom page)

Yu-Gi-Oh's early monster designs are something I think about a lot. I don't know what that says about me, but I do know they're unbelievably cool, a blend of genuinely scary Egyptian-flavored horror and wacky, tropey, cartoony fantasy. The fact that these ridiculous designs are frequently art for a card that's completely worthless in terms of winning duels, combined with their randomly specific descriptions about how unbelievably powerful they are, gives them a certain mystique. It's as if the creature you see depicted truly exists as a part of some greater fantasy world...

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

(src: me, many moons ago)

Seeing properly scary monsters inside a strange virtual world in Ocarina of Time was quite the experience for my young self. For example, I had nightmares about the Stalchildren who used to burst, endlessly, from the ground of the strangely empty Hyrule Field. But that also made it feel like such an adventure! The thrill added to the experience. And even many of the game's races are quite monsterlike; Gorons, Zora, Deku, and so forth. This had me imagine turning a "bad" creature into a friend, a concept I cherish to this day... hence Love-Love here.

Well that's that! Thanks for asking, this was fun to write : )

[thetalamhclisteach]

An entire decade of Awful Hospital.

I do feel a little disingenuous posting this one since I had only read the sum of the comic in April 2024, yet still I thought it was righteous to commemorate. I myself have been in the field of making webcomics for only a few years (or a handful of months publicly on Webtoon) so I find this dedication to the grim, grotesque, gesticulating, ghastly, gastrointestinal, gnarly and glorious to be of particular admiration. Go and read it all for yourself! (https://bogleech.com/awfulhospital/intro)

[bogleechrss]

You can use this blog as bogleech.com's RSS feed

Follow bogleechrss on tumblr to get nothing but site updates, or add bogleechrss.tumblr.com/rss to any RSS feed reader. This will also link to Awful Hospital updates, twitch streams and any other offsite content!

[loki-zen]

Have you read Bogleech's review of Pokemon designs? They're pretty good and thoughtful. You won't always agree with them but it's cool to see someone confident and defined in their own aesthetic tastes critique the most popular monsters in the world.

https://bogleech.com/pokemon/parchive

Oh yeah! I've definitely read some of these back when there were way less of them.

I find that I tend to agree with him when the principles behind the critique are simply good visual character design ethos, and then less so where it's more focused around his particular tastes within that - he tends to favour a particular sort of goofiness in the facial design that's a sometimes food for me.

Similarly, there's some loose agreement around this (eg his praise of sticking with quadruped designs during evolution) but in general I find that I have a strong but hard to define (except in the negative) notion of the sort of thing a Pokémon is and should be that he doesn't especially share.

Like for me fundamentally a Pokémon is a sort of critter or imp or embodied spirit or idk in a way that just doesn't work if it's too humanlike or too obviously referential of human creations (except in certain specific situations that basically come down to it actually being a haunted, animated object or a mimic).

As an illustrative example, the much-maligned Gen 1 anthromorphs I don't actually mind.

Jynx is based on a kind of ice spirit that imitates a young maiden to lure men to their deaths, and like, yeah, totally. It looks like something that is not human trying to look vaguely human for nefarious purposes, every aspect of its design from the shadowy lack of face to the animate wig to the weird dress-shaped body is giving that.

Mr Mime looks like an example of convergent evolution - it has an ultimately human-ish shape but it's entirely built out of Pokémon parts. I imagine it would be weirdly smooth and dry and a little bit too yielding to the touch. The 'gloves' are part of its body and the protrusions that this flesh covers are evolutionarily unrelated to human hands, perhaps cartilage or rigid muscle or something. It is a bit like 'why' but whatever mimes are eldritch you wouldn't want a lot of Pokémon to be like this but as a one-off its fine.

Both of these things are entirely distinct from being just like an anthro animal with no especial reason to be anthro, that's made of sleek lines and shit like it's supposed to be cool or even sexy. (Mr Mime is not cool or sexy!)

On a kinda-similar note one thing I've had a lot of scathing things to say about at home lately is the Vanillish line. (Pokémon shouldn't be food!) Like its ability and stuff suggests that it's meant to be an ice elemental so why on earth would it look like an ice cream that just makes no sense.

The only way they could save it for me is if it looked like an ice cream in order to get unsuspecting children to lick it, who are then stuck by their tongues and in danger of freezing to death and becoming its prey. Or something. (Same reason it's okay for Galarian stunfisk to have a protrusion that looks like a pokeball - motherfucker is a mimic, of course it looks like an item you could pick up!)

[humansbgone]

First update for episode nine!

First off, the storyboard is done, both drawn and cleaned up! Not only that, but minor fixes have been made to three of the models! Not bad for what's been mostly another break week as I finish up visiting family. Thanks to my husband at https://bogleech.com for help on some action panels!

Here, we see the last three panels of the board. Spoilers if you can make out what's happening, I guess!

This episode will see mostly a return to just me working on it, apart from DDX.exe for music. However, DarthTheMonster will do some modeling work!

Next week I'll be back home and ready to record voices and put together the animatic. Then, probably three weeks of work fixing existing models, making and rigging new models, and putting together background assets. Then, it's really just staging and animating, plus sound effects and credits, which should hopefully be pretty simple for this episode and altogether take two months at most. So far, tentatively scheduled for a total production time of just over three months...so, probably a release of sometime in early August. We'll see! Until next time!

[devi-town]

this is your reminder that if you love horror, gross stuff, the wonders of the human body and the best bacteriophage design ive ever seen. https://bogleech.com/awfulhospital read it. read it please. im fucking begging yo

[hungry-skeleton]

this is really pretty but, it's been driving me nuts so here:

https://www.tumblr.com/hungry-skeleton/700508074621960192/well-to-be-honest-it-wasnt-much-that-i-told-you

you said that you found bogleech because of his Pokemon opinions this drives me off the wall because before this I was telling you to look at them before hand

https://www.tumblr.com/hungry-skeleton/696684528028303360/mark-those-calendars-for-unpleasant-wal-mart-why?source=share

RIGHT HERE IT'S LITERALLY A REFERENCE TO THIS STUPID ASS APRIL FOOLS COMIC

https://bogleech.com/awfulhospital/278

I SPENT SO LONG TRYING TO GET YOU TO LOOK AT THERE WORK AND THEN GAVE UP THEN YOU FIND THEM AGAIN, IT'S SO FUCKING ANNOYING

Do you have like... A life

[worldsewage]

Hellooo I hope you're not an arachnophobe but this guide is meant to be safe anyway: https://bogleech.com/spiders/spiders28-mimic

Basically it's a spider species that mimics ants, and it immediately made me think of Struggle! The males even look like two ants, one carrying another one, and the second one is *just* its jaws, just like how Struggle's Inkling costume goes on their snout!

(Dw, I’m not) this is so neat…I’ve seen these spiders before (I guess namely just the females?) but I didn’t know the half of that… mimicry is such a wonderful thing really I love to see it… to be affected down to your bones to reflect those around you… as allies or adversaries… sighs wistfully. The males depicting two ants as a result of competition is so crazy to me, they are so VASTLY DIFFERENT but they’re still managing to keep up a mimicry facade…. Crazy stuff happening in the spider ant world…

[gengarghast]

Bogleech-inspired Pokemon cards!

TLDR: Ghost on the internet rambles about his fanboy obsession over a random blogger for an entire paragraph.

As anyone who's been my friend for long enough will know, Jonathan Wojcik's site and his work have taken up a decent chunk of my mental space ever since I first discovered bogleech.com back in 2020 when the pandemic was in full swing. Since then, I've been a huge fan of everything he's put out, in spirit if not in actuality (I am broke and cannot afford the merch as much as I wish I could), and when I found out about his own personal favorite Pokemon teams, I quickly whipped together my own tribute to his teams like the little nerdo I am. And here I am, still being a nerdo for the exact same goddamn thing.

sigh.

Anyways, here are the cards.

[creepypastabookclub]

Donate to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund: https://www.pcrf.net/

An all-you-can-eat micropasta buffet with Jonah, Wednesday and their guest Michael!

If you have a small horror or web fiction project you want in the spotlight, email us! Send your name, pronouns and project to

creepypastabookclub@gmail.com.

Music Credits: https://patriciataxxon.bandcamp.com/

Our Website: https://jawscast.neocities.org/

Our Tumblr: https://creepypastabookclub.tumblr.com/

Our Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepypastaBC

Featuring Hosts:

Jonah (he/they) (https://withswords.tumblr.com/)

Wednesday (they/them) (https://www.instagram.com/xx_wormsday_xx/)

Michael (https://www.tumblr.com/barbielore)

Recommended Reading:

White with Red: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/White_with_Red

The Statue: https://www.creepypasta.com/the-statue/

Wake Up: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Wake_Up

Sarah O’Bannon: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Sarah_O%27Bannon

Home Alone: https://creepypasta.org/s/333/home-alone

The Portraits: https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/wbovd/the_portraits/

Humans Can Lick Too: https://www.reddit.com/r/shortscarystories/comments/22rboj/humans_can_lick_too/

WHO WAS PHONE: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/WHO_WAS_PHONE%3F

Ghastlymacaroni Collection: https://bogleech.com/ghastlymacaroni

Man Door Hand Hook Car Door: https://www.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/r8jvq6/man_door_hand_hook_car_door/

Works Cited:

Lavender Town Syndrome: https://www.creepypasta.com/lavender-town-syndrome/

Russian Sleep Experiment: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Russian_Sleep_Experiment

Under the Bed Chain Letter: https://www.scaryforkids.com/hospital-bed/

Relaxing Car Drive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMgsFZ4rkEI

Just-World Hypothesis: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1979-26009-001

Power of Prayer: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alley-oops/

The Spire in the Woods: https://web.archive.org/web/20190426135153/https://www.creepypasta.com/the-spire-in-the-woods/

The Licked Hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Licked_Hand

A Gathering of 100 Weird Tales: https://hyakumonogatari.com/what-is-hyakumonogatari/

Further Reading:

Delmage A., John; Schnier, Steve; et al., “Freaky Stories”, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166432/

Dodd, Steven; Gaines, William; “Tales from the Crypt”; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096708/

Edgar, Patricia; Jennings, Paul; Storm, Esben; “Round the Twist”, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103529/

Gammell, Stephen; Schwartz, Alvin; “Scary Story to Tell in the Dark”, https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1325218

Narnia, Soren; “Knifepoint Horror”; https://knifepointhorror.libsyn.com/

Newall, Alexander J.; Sims, Jonathan; “The Magnus Archives, Episode 152: A Gravedigger’s Envy”

Stine, R.L; “Goosebumps”; https://kids.scholastic.com/kid/books/goosebumps/series/

[mxescargot]

hi

[Image description: a 3 by 3 grid of various digital artworks: a painting of the cake from portal, a portrait of a Star Wars OC, an infected Seer from Hollow Knight, a humanized Hornet from Hollow Knight, a simple drawing of Chinese-inspired Mandalorian armour, a chibi doodle of Cal Kestis and BD-1 from Jedi Fallen Order, a fullbody chibi of a person wearing hanfu in the colours of the trans flag, a painting of a cat in blue and purple, and a doodle of Mafuyu from Project Sekai. End ID]

tried to give a variety of things uhh im a chinese american digital artist who does a lot of fanart and my favourite style is digital painting but that's quite time consuming

tysm for doing this mr. wojcik!

If you're an artist and are having trouble building followers, especially if you're new on tumblr or back after leaving, reblog this with some of your art. It will be visible to everyone checking the notes. Everyone keep checking the notes and follow whoever puts their cool art in them. People keep telling me I'm Tumblr famous so maybe this helps!

[writerofweird]

Image ID: Yellow excavator with eyes, bow and lipstick in sunny forest with bunny under "Big Betty Saves the Day" title.

This story contains references to sexism and sex.

A sapient excavator ponders on his place in the world and wonders if there's something more for him out there. He may not like what he discovers...

Read along at bogleech.com/creepy/creepy15-Bigbetty

Read by @revretch

Also check out their series Humans-B-Gone: www.youtube.com/channel/UCLU-DFnb_Q1QhN88jlOFYDQ

@humansbgone

[thestalkerbunny]

https://bogleech.com/halloween/hall23-brutal

Though you like this.

Bog Leech out here giving bangers left and right.

[muckmagister]

https://bogleech.com/spooky/DONTGETSPOOKED.html

TOO LATE. ALREADY SPOOKED wait

maybe it's not all bad after all..,,,

[theflamingomancer]

See Strong Bad come up with new Pokemon for Generation 9's Pokemon Scarlet and Violet! Will he succeed?

Credit for the piece of the rant in this video goes to Bogleech and his review of Grapploct: https://bogleech.com/pokemon/p852clob...

If you like this video, please leave a comment and reblog!

You can also send a Kofi: https://ko-fi.com/A2754HCC

Alternatively, send some to my CashApp: https://cash.app/$TheBigDeepCheatsy