When trying to find inspiration for my monster design, a friend recommended I look in to Japanese folklore for inspiration and let me borrow The night parade of one hundred demons. (Mayer 2012) These are a few that caught my eye. I was particularly inspired by the absence of facial features of the Ohaguro-Bettari, the sharp nails of the Onryo, the dangling eye balls and reptile-like tongue of the Nuri-Botoke and the twisted bone structure of the Aka-Name. I also really enjoyed how a lot of these terrifying creatures have some sort of twisted back-story.
Ohaguro-Bettari
Translation: Nothing but blackened teeth
Appearance: Late at night s disturbing yokai can be seen loitering near temples and shrines, dressed in beautiful wedding clothes. She calls single young men over to her, who are seldom able to resist her charms. Until, of course, they see her up close...
From behind, an ohaguro-bettaru looks like a beautiful woman wearing a kimono. She appears usually at twilight outside of a temple, or occasionally inside a man's house, disguised as his wife. At first, her head is concealed, or turned away from any viewers... She turns to reveal her face: an ugly, white, featureless dome slathered in thick makeup, with nothing but a huge, gaping mouth full of blackened teeth.
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| Ohaguro-Bettari (Meyer 2014, p. 122) |
Onryo
Translation: grudge spirit, vengeful ghost
Appearance: The most dreaded type of yurei is the onryo. They are the ghosts of people who died with strong passions - jealousy, rage, or hatred - that their soul is unable to pass on, and instead transforms into a powerful wrathful spirit who seeks vengeance on any and everything it encounters.
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| Onryo (Meyer 2014, p.164) |
Nuri-Botoke
Translation: coated Buddha
Appearance: Nuri-botoke is a kind of grotesque zombie which creeps out of a butsudan that has been accidentally left open at night. It is a soft, flabby corpse-like spirit with oily black skin and a pungent smell. Trailing behind is a catfish-like tail connected to its spine. The most striking and disturbing feature is this spirit's eyeballs, which dangle wildly from its eye sockets.
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| Nuri-Botoke (Meyer 2014, p.192) |
Aka-Name
Translation: filth licker
Appearance: Aka-Name is a small, goblin-like yoaki which inhabits only the dirtiest homes and public baths. It is about the size of a child or a small adult, though it generally appears much smaller due to its hunching posture. It has a mop of greasy, slimey hair on top of its head. Its body is naked, its skin greasy like its hair. Aka-name come in many colours and varieties, ranging from a dark mottled green reminiscent of mould, to the ruddy pink colour of bedsores. They come in both one-eyed and two-eyed varieties, and can have anywhere from one to five fingers and toes. All aka-name have an extremely long, sticky tongue, with which they lap up the slime, grease, hair, and other filth found in bath houses and behind toilets.
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| Aka-Name (Meyer 2014, p.200) |
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
I've also been watching a lot of Buffy The Vampire Slayer recently and although a lot of the creature designs in this show can be super cheesy there's been a few who have been genuinely terrifying.
The Gentlemen are a group of demons who steal the voices of the town they are haunting before collecting the hearts of some of its inhabitants. They're extremely creepy in appearance, constantly smiling maliciously wearing suits and instead of walking they float. It's this uncanny quality of smiling, wearing suits in conjunction with the demonic qualities of floating and killing humans that made them stand out for me amongst the other monsters in the Buffy universe.
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| The Gentlemen in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) |
Another Buffy monster that really freaked me out was the Gnarl demon. He is goblin like in appearance with sickly green/yellow leather like skin and long razor like finger nails. It has the power to paralyze its victims by scratching them before slowly peeling their skin off. Watching the character Willow become paralyzed whilst the Gnarl slowly peeled off her skin was really hard to watch. I think the mix of this real world fear of paralysis and a demonic entity is really effective.
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| Gnarl Demon in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) |
Finally, in the episode "Conversations With Dead People" Buffy's mother, Joyce, is believed to be attempting to communicate from beyond the grave whilst a malevolent spirit tries to interfere. During the episode flashes of Joyce appear with images of a dark figure strangling her (I still can't believe this show was made for kids) and her face is twisted with pain, her eyes rolled back in her head. It was an extremely distressing image to see which I found genuinely scary despite it only being visible for a split second. I can't help but wonder if I could use a similar technique in my game and have distressing look victims appear around the player for split seconds at a time, as if to warn the player of the Big Bad they're about to encounter, which could add to an unsettling atmosphere.
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| The character Joyce Summers under attack in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) |
Owlman
At an abandoned children's hospital, someone dressed up as a half owl, half man creature and filmed the reaction of visitors there. The costume itself is pretty creepy with its claw like hands (reminds of the monster from the Don't Starve "The Screecher" mod actually) but it's amazing seeing how terrified people are of something just slowly walking towards them. The way the creature is just standing in the shadows watching them at 39 seconds in is genuinely creepy and it would be interesting to recreate this sort of behavior in the monster of my game.
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Kyle Cooper and American Horror Story
The opening credits to all the American Horror Story seasons are really unnerving. It's the brief moment of quiet crackling at the start followed by the burst of horrible Nine Inch Nails record gone wrong audio which plays 7 second in that gets me. These creepy, unsettling sound effects coupled with the horror-esque images flashing on screen really sets the mood for the show,
The sequence was created by Kyle Cooper (and his company Prologue) who also created the opening credits for The Walking Dead and the movie Se7en. I absolutely adore Kyle Cooper's work- he's like a modern day Saul Bass! It would be fantastic if I could include something like this for the opening sequence of my game as a way to get across the story.
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Lone Survivor, Five Nights At Freddy's, Knock Knock, Year Walk and Silent Hill
Of course I've taken influence from a much larger pool of games than this and some of these have already been mentioned in my 2D horror game case studies, however certain aspects of these games really stood out to me in terms of character design and gameplay which have really influenced my monster and level design to date.
Lone Survivor's "Mother" and "Daddy"
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| Lone Survivor (Superflat Games 2012) "Mother" boss. |
I've been particularly influenced by the monster designs of Lone Survivor. From first glance of a static image they seem a bit laughable, however their massive size and twisted anatomy really caught me off guard, especially in conjunction with the use of uncomfortable, screechy sound effects. The first of these boss monsters, "Daddy," chases you around the basement area which was definitely one of the scariest moments of the game - having one of these massive, messed up looking creatures charge towards you is extremely stressful and therefore very effective in a horror game. Moreover, the speed of "Daddy" is perfectly timed to catch up with the player just before they reach the door to the next room, creating an extremely satisfying "just in time" moment. This scene was so effective I definitely want to include a chase sequence featuring some sort of large scale, creepy creature in my game!
Five Night's at Freddy's Pacing and Uncanny Character Designs
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| Screenshot of Five Night's At Freddy's (Scott Cawthon 2014) |
I'll be going in to more detail about the PC point and click survival horror game Five Nights At Freddy's in my 3D horror game case studies however the game's character design and pacing is very effective.
This game features jump scares-galore however it's the build up to these that are most effective. The player has to constantly keep checking the lights and security cameras and the frantic nature of this is extremely successful in creating an uneasy feeling in the player.
The monsters of the game take the form of the animatronic animal mascots of a pizza restaurant. The dark circle around their eyes, black eye brows and ever so slightly sharper than you'd expect teeth are the only thing standing in the way of the cute kid-friendly robot you'd expect these mascots to look like, but these subtle features are enough to create that uncanny familiar-but-not appearance that makes these enemies seem so unsettling, creepy and almost demonic. I think this less is more approach to creating eerie, uncanny characters is really interesting and it's definitely something I should explore in my monster design.
Five Night's At Freddy's 2 adds the Freddy's Mask mechanic to the game, and while I've not had the chance to play it yet I watched some gameplay footage and it's extremely creepy watching one of the animatronics pass by the eye holes of the mask with the strobe light effect eerie noises adding to the atmosphere of sitting waiting, hoping its not going to notice you.
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| Wearing the Freddy Mask in Five Nights At Freddy's 2 (Scott Cawthon 2014) |
This is similar to the nauseating experience of hiding in a locker in Alien: Isolation and watching the Xenomorph actively hunt you. Something about having your vision obscured really gets to me and it's an experience I'd like to include in my game - Perhaps the player could hide in lockers or benches to wait out the monster, who has a random chance of finding them.
Ellen Ripley hiding in Alien: Isolation (The Creative Assembly 2014)
Knock Knock Enemy Gameplay
As previously mentioned, the enemies of Knock Knock will slowly walk towards you making them easy to escape from. However seeing an enemy slowly walk towards you causes stress, making simple tasks like opening the door to get out more frantic, therefore adding to the game's atmosphere. This is especially horrific if the enemy is slowly walking towards you and you've found yourself in a room with no escape. My issue with the Knock Knock enemies is that their designs aren't really scary at all, and I'd love to see this implemented with a genuinely creepy design which is what I'm hoping to achieve.
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| Screenshot from Knock Knock (Ice Pick Lodge 2013) |
The Art of Year Walk
The art style of Year Walk was my biggest influence for the current art direction of my game. I loved their illustrative, flat textured design and thought it would be interesting to try out a similiar style but with more depth to it. I found this really interesting post on the developer's website about how they went about establishing their art direction (they used tree tests too, which is pretty cool!)
Interestingly the game was originally going to be in 3D, inspired by German expressionism.
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| Early 3D style test for Year Walk. (Simogo 2013) |
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| Flat style test for Year Walk. (Simogo 2013) |
Later in the pipeline they created a very small prototype consisting of just two scenes to test out their controls and atmosphere. This has inspired me to create a similar short prototype in Gamemaker to test out a range of different atmospheric overlays and particle effects, controls and different perspectives.
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| Screengrab from early Year Walk prototype. (Simogo 2013) |
Silent Hill Monster Design
I don't think I could get away with working on a horror game without mentioning the infamous
monster designs of the Silent Hill series. After posting my monster silhouettes online for feedback someone mentioned I check out Cynthia, a boss featured in Silent Hill 4. I couldn't find any decent gameplay footage to post here but the clip below features her creepy reversed crying sounds which made me feel really uneasy. In combat she slowly floats towards the player or slithers on the floor like a snake and both movements are very creepy. There's a lot of evidence building up to support slow paced, floating enemies are very unsettling for a horror player so this is something I should take in to serious consideration for the animation of my monster.
The Silent Hill series is heavily influenced by psychological horror which is reflected in their creature designs. Protagonists in the series tend to be average men (and women) who are caught in their own personal nightmare, with the monsters reflecting this. Pyramid Head, for example, exists as the embodiment of the player character's wish to be punished for the death of his wife. Masahiro Ito intentionally designed him to be "a monster with a hidden face" with its triangular shaped head representing the possibility of pain. Pyramid Head also doesn't speak, but instead moans and grunts painfully (this reminds me of some of the feedback I got on my earlier monster silhouettes, where a monster who wants to hurt you in spite of its pain is inherently more terrifying.) I liked the idea of having a silent monster design with a hidden face as this sense of mystery potentially adds to fear - Why won't it speak to you and what is lurking behind the mask that it doesn't want you to see?
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| Pyramid Head design by Masahiro Ito. I read somewhere that Francis Bacon is one of his main influences, and you can definitely see the influence through these dramatic brushstrokes. |
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Jonas Berlin in "Amnesia: The Dark Descent: Birth of a Monster"
The developers of Amnesia have been very open about their development methodology and their character designer, Jonas Berlin, has shared some information about his process. The Amnesia monster design needed to avoid being zombie-like and fit the story of a demon taking over a human body. Berlin began by researching unusual anatomy then creating small, quick sketches and silhouettes of ideas. After receiving feedback from his creative director he worked on more detailed designs then showed these to the creative director again for feedback. He focused on the idea of a demon twisting the body, breaking bones and bending joints which I think has unintentionally influenced some of my silhouette designs. However I was most inspired by his design process as a whole, substituting a creative director for the feedback of my peers.
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| Early monster design sketches by Jonas Berlin. |
Abigail Larson
Abigail Larson's work always favours creepy and gothic subject matter and I feel her colour palettes are very well suited to these themes. I've found a lot of horror games tend to employ boring dull/grayscale colour palettes and that's definitely something I want to avoid with my game as I feel these can make a game feel very stale and boring. Larson's artwork is full of rich, complimentary colours that are always grungy enough to suit the horror genre and I've found this very inspiring for my environment design.
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John Kenn
John Kenn is another artist whose work I've been inspired by for this project. His style is reminiscent of Edward Gorey and work is the stuff of children's nightmare fuel. A lot of his drawings feature eerie floating entities slowly floating towards the viewer or a character and I can visualise the creepy way they would move so clearly in my head it's something I'd love to try out in the animation of my game's monster.
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References
Buffy the vampire slayer. 1997 [television show]. BBC 2. Unknown.
Berlin, J. In: Grip, T. 2011. Amnesia: The Dark Descent: birth of a monster - part 1. [online]. available from: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ThomasGrip/20110317/89186/Amnesia_The_Dark_Descent_Birth_of_a_Monster__Part_1.php [Accessed 24 November 2014]
Lordsoftearsmovie. 2014. Terrifying owlman stalks visitors at abandoned hospital. [online]. YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgEkDWRb9IM [Accessed 24 November 2014]
Mayer, M. 2012. The night parade of one hundred demons. Unknown: Matthew Meyer.
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