#podritak

[tyrantisterror]

ATOM Stop Motion Puppets: Ullawdra and Sombarvot

Since I’m working on the chapters where they debut, I figured I should finish up the puppets for the last two Martian monsters in ATOM, Ullawdra the red weed and Sombarvot the space lizard!  It’s fun seeing the full quartet together at last.

That just leaves the nine Beyonder Alliance kaiju left!  And since their chapters are coming up nest, I’d better get cracking.

[tyrantisterror]

ATOM Stop Motion Models: Podritak

It’s Kemlasulla’s close friend, Podritak!  The Rodan to Kemlasulla’s Martian Godzilla, Podritak homages the martians from the 1953 adaptation of The War of the Worlds, being a sort of organix take on their warships, having a three-part beak that vaguely resembles their three-lobed eyes, and of course sporting those three fingered, sucker-tipped hands that were made so iconic by one of the movie’s final shots.

This model was fun because it was one of those instances where my sculpture brain was super pissed at my drawing brain, because yeah, it’s easy to fucking draw a three part beak, TT, but actually making it is a pain in the ass.

Still, it’s nice to see some more bodies on the alien invader ATOM kaiju shelf.

[tyrantisterror]

ATOM Kaiju File #38: Ullawdra

Aliases: The Red Weed, The Mean Red Vines from Outer Space, “God Mother” (rough translation of her Martian name) Date Discovered: July 29, 1958 Place of Origin: Mars Notable Stomping Gr…

As we finish up the last dozen ATOM Kaiju Files, we climb into the heavens with twelve wonderful alien monsters!  Our first four come from our neighbor, the red planet of War, Mars!   Yeah, you know it’s old school sci-fi when aliens come from Mars.

Our first monster, seen in the link above, is Ullawdra, a red martian weed.  She’s inspired by both Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors and the red weed from The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.  Role-wise, she’s the Martian equivalent of Mothra - a kaiju that defends the native civilzation of Mars from other monsters.

Of course, like Mothra, she does not extend that protectorate to the civilizations of other races, which becomes a little problematic when she lands on Earth...

Next we have Kemlasulla, the leader of the bunch.  He’s the Martian equivalent of both Godzilla and Tyrantis - the first kaiju to be discovered by the native Martians, who went from “scourge” to “champion,” and who enjoys befriending other monsters as much as fighting them.  He’s a bit more manic than either of his terrestrial counterparts, but he’s a good guy.

Kemlasulla is basically an organic version of the tripod war machines from The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.  Or rather, my interpretation of what an organic version of those tripods would be, since, y’know, it’s a book and all.

Podritak is Kemlasulla’s chill flying ally, a monster who doesn’t really have a direct equivalent among the terrestrial cast.  Her personality is more designed to be a foil to Kemlasulla’s than anything - she’s the level head to his manic one.  They’re good friends despite their differences.

Her design is basically an organic interpretation of the flying machines from the 1950′s War of the Worlds movie adaptation.

Finally we have Sombarvot, who’s a sweetheart in a murder monster’s body.  Like Podritak, he doesn’t quite have a clear analogue among the terrestrial kaiju - we could say he’s the Martian Anguirus or, like, a hybrid of Bobo and Tricerak personality wise, but the comparisons would be a little forced.  His design is sort of a reference to the multi-limbed lizard horses from the Barsoom books.

For our final nine alien kaiju, we’ll be going to some galaxies far far away...

[tyrantisterrorart]

It’s been a while since I last drew some of my martians, and for a, well, a convoluted personal reason I won’t go into here, I felt the urge to draw them again.  So have some martian doodles.

Some of the older martians got a bit of a drastic rehaul.  There’s a lot of variance in the overall body plans of my martians - Kemlasulla, Sombarvot, and Podritak have wildly different limb and organ arrangements.  While that’s not completely unrealistic - there’s just as much difference between, say, the body plans of a human, a tarantula, and a starfish - it did feel like it was asking my audience to take a lot of conceptual leaps with regards to the evolution of life on Mars.  So I tried to see how things would look if they were all the Martian equivalent of tetrapods - so, y’know, tripods (or maybe nonapods?  I guess we should count the boneless tentacles along with the bony limbs).  I think Sombarvot got the best of it, while Podritak needs some refining to regain his elegance.