Hi-Res Mortasheen, Notes & Art File: Squeekaboo (Patreon)

This monster actually hails all the way back to some of my concepts for "Noisy Tenant," the horror setting that also evolved into Awful Hospital. In "Noisy Tenant," one monster was a living toy mouse that existed only to lure and prey upon cats, dogs or other nonhuman predators that wound up in the monster house.

Early concepts for this Mortasheen version put the legs on the "head" of the mouse and gave it a much longer, winding tail and nose, but in the end I thought putting the legs on the "tail" gave it a more alien feel, even less like something that ever had any biological connection to a rodent or even any animal life as we know it.

One idea that I scrapped was that the insides of the ears would have glowing red targets in them; it wound up cluttering the design too much, and it just didn't look that good.

The hunting strategy of this monster is based on a cookie cutter shark. In the real world, these sharks are thought to deliberately entice larger predators, only to turn around and take a bite of their own. Their jaws are specially adapted to instantaneously carve out one good chomp of meat before they get away!

Making this monster a Joker was part of a decision to expand the class beyond just "creepy clowns," which I think have run their course.

Attached is a photoshop file for anyone who likes to analyze that kind of thing!