Hi-res Mortasheen & concept notes: Mattoon (Patreon)

https://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/mattoon.htm - Mattoon is technically one of the first Mortasheen monsters, and went through many more designs than I sadly even held onto over 20 some years. It's always been one of my favorites, and I originally thought of it as one of the "iconic" Bioconstructs, so I can no longer really remember what possessed me to recategorize it as a stinkbug Arthropoid for a couple of years. A real, proper stinkbug is in the pipeline, I promise!

Originally named Stinkweed, the monster later acquired the name Mattoon after a city in Illinois, because I first heard of this city in the context of an obscure urban legend, the Mad Gasser of Mattoon. The legend was in turn introduced to me as a young child through a toy line, Monster in my Pocket, which interpreted the gasser as an almost insect-like mutant creature I've also included a photo of, and is also kind of the inspiration for every other gas-masked Mortasheen creature. Collectively I think of them as a "family" of "Mad Gassers" and their eventual updates will better reflect a relationship with one another.

For Mattoon's new look, I combined characteristics I liked from across its past revisions as well as the Monster in My Pocket gasser, and decided I wanted it to look a little more dangerous than its previous incarnation without losing any "cuteness;" a creature that looks like it can mess you up, but also looks like it doesn't really want to.

I chose a specific kind of gas mask as the face model; the kind with both "nose" and "mouth" filters that result in a very strange fly-like yet anteater-like look. For its eyes, I used the deep sea fish Winteria telescopa as a model, actually a species of barreleye that's become harder to research as another species became so much more famous for its weirder, transparent head - understandable!

For the blisters, I used bubble algae as a reference, and spent an absurd amount of time fiddling with them. The art file, as usual, is kind of a mess of redundant layers, and the blisters alone are spread across multiple as I went back and decided I wanted more of them in a wider variety.