Forums / Fun! / Creative

So someone suggested that I make the monster forms Abby turns into more interesting than "vampire chick": here's some context

Monster forms so far (there's 13 though she starts with six)

The original 6
- vampire
- Frankenstein's monster
- werewolf
- fish girl
- ghost (has similarities to a onyro)
- mummy

Later on in the season she gains six addtional monsters

The secondary six
- goo girl or alien
- dullahan
- devil
- witch
- kitsune
- werecat

(also here's the premise: action horror comedy centered around the misadventures of Abby Ito, a 14 year girl with the power to turn into different monsters to fight crime.)

Talking about this?

Vampires are diverse. Depictions of them vary from the very human to the wildly inhuman. This is a very human depiction, but as such is lacks much in the way of anything to make it more interesting than just looking at a regular human.

A basic set of inhuman "vampiric" traits you can use are the ones employed by Stoker. The Count himself is notable for his red eyes, stony complexion, pointed ears, intimidating height, and wide, paw-like hands with talon-like nails and hair growing on the palms. His fangs also push down slightly on his lower lip when his mouth is closed, making them slightly visible at all times.

In the end, vampires afford a lot of creative freedom in character design, and while there is nothing delegitimizing about making a nearly-human vampire, at the same time is achieves little and doesn't leave much to remember it by. The current design works best if its aim is to achieve subtly and comforting familiarity, rather than monstrousness and discomforting strangeness as less human depictions may aim to.

I notice the image names "Ben 10" specifically. If this aims to be in the spirit of that, then it would be best to avoid having the transformations look like nothing more than mere costume changes. Rather, the aim should be to make singularly good monster designs that are not overly tied to human nature or the normal human shape of the protagonist.

One thing I could suggest is looking into the original mythology and the likes of the monsters. For example, the Frankenstein monster wasn't like the iconic monster we see in the silver screen but more or less a living corpse with yellow skin whose appearance was an abomination to all. Add to that, he was also swift and dangerous rather than just being a slow hulking brute.

With vampires, their mythologies range differently among cultures and honestly, the word vampire may as well be more of an umbrella term in describing nocturnal monsters and demons that would feast on blood. To add to what Nox said, vampires really do afford creative freedom in design since we have all sorts of nocturnal monsters that fit the criteria. You could have a monster that looked human in the day time but once night came, that human would turn into a vile beast that wanted to feed on the flesh of the living, it's form either being like a warped hound or even more of some withered corpse whose deadliness would deceive the eyes of anyone that gazed upon what should of been a shambling corpse.

Since Devil is one of the choices, one thing I could suggest is looking up medieval art. The designs of the devil were honestly refreshing compared to just a man with goat legs and horns. Imagine a demon who has eyes all over his body, even on his butt cheeks. Or just designing the character's devil form as a shagged being who has three faces on their body.

So jsut have them be kinda humanoid but not overly so? I guess I could do the later batches to be like this I guess.