Potty Monsters

Loving the new kiddie book written by Kelly DiPuccio and illustrated by the brilliant Mike Moon, How To Potty Train Your Monster. The scans don't do it justice-- the art is shockingly day-glow! Mike is one of the few truly Creative Executives in animation. An Emmy-Winning Art Director (for Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends) and current VP of Animated series for The Disney Channel. From Line Boil..."...if a creative executive also happens to have some art chops, then by all means - hire that person immediately! And that’s exactly what Disney did several years back..."

The book would make a wonderful Hallowe'en gift for the pre-schooler in your life.

Cute and Really Creepy

Monsterama is all about cute creeps. I'm a big fan of scary stuff aimed at children. But I'm noticing a cultural trend towards exposing kids to the genuinely terrifying that puzzles and interests me. I mean, as a parent, I'm not sure I get the idea of gross-out kiddie cars, or making kids believe they are being attacked by a zombie. Not that I don't find it fascinating to look at. The awesome band MGMT really captures this vibe in their new video for Kids. What's going on, here? I'm interested in your opinions...

Little Monster Factory

Check out this wonderful Art Journal of Sruti and Abhishek Akula, two very creative kids. Abhishek has a penchant for weird monsters, and you'll find lots of exciting, inventive creatures by scrolling down the page.

Monsters And Children

I've always felt that young minds are more directly in tune with monsters than us older folks. And it appears that Arc Dream feel the same way. So much so that they created a roleplaying game specifically about kids and their monsters, called, of course, Monsters And Other Childish Things. Even better, they got a whole class of 5th Graders from Oak Mountain Intermediate School in Birmingham, Ala., to create a horde of monsters for the game, and will be posting a new creature every school day until Valentine's day. They've even gone so far as to open it up as a contest for gamers to create stats for the weirdos on display! Like the monster called 'Floog' shown above. Man I love everything about this whole thing.

Odd and Weird

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? My sharp-eyed daughter was perusing an online game site called Games2Girls when she came across Weirdville, a boring little game featuring a sorry-looking Jetcat knock-off, and quite clearly ripped off from my Oddville comics. I guess I should be either annoyed or happy that someone thought my comics were cool enough to 'borrow' from, but this just leaves me blah. I like a so-bad-it's-good bootleg as much as the next guy, but this is just plain bad bad.

Cute Creeps

Those of you who've been following my sporadic posting on all things monster-kid-ish know I have a soft spot for Things created by weird young minds. I totally dig a good monster doodle with a fresh perspective. Along those lines, The Guardian recently held a monster drawing contest, and here are the winners. The Hairgobbler above is by Reef Dorr, 7, and is descibed thusly, "It is 25mm long. It is very hairy. This creature flies around, landing on middle-aged men’s heads. It crawls around to either the forehead or the crown, then uses the pincer on its tail to pull out the hairs. Then it eats all the hairs up! And this is the reason men go bald." Wonderful! And I just love the UK children's ubiquitous use of watercolors... very old-school.

Awwww! Hell!

Good Ol' Devlie Thompson has been posting just the sort of stuff we here at Monsterama like to warm our cold hearts on-- juvenile horror drawings. You'll find Star Wars and Batman as well as more sketchy monsters on his blog.

Make-Up Monster

The previous post about my dear, old Make- Up Monsters book really seems to have struck a chord with you weirdos! Many of you wrote to wax nostalgic about these spooky old face concoctions. Here's a photo of me in the Werewolf make-up. Apparently everything in the '70's was brown, as this snapshot has the same diarreah tone of the book cover. The black cape at left was my kid brother as Dracula, but the '70's also had crappy cameras, and a lot of these photos came out with half the picture blackened. Dracula didn't make the final cut of this one.

More More Monsters

It appears that the previously blogged Mr. Rozum has gotten his charmingly creepy children Daphne and Dashiell into the family act. Monsters and More is another great gallery of kid monster drawings... some fiendishly familiar faces such as Hedorrah the Smog Monster (my favorite Kaiju, too, Dash) and the Creature from the Black Lagoon alongside some nasty new nightcrawlers.

Future Fiends

This site has a bunch of 'Monster Pals' (like Jeremy's, at left) created by Chicago gradeschoolers as some kind of pen pal project. As 'Kathy' says: "To make my monster you must draw an egg for the head. In the head near the bottom you must draw a curved line going down. Next, you put two tongues in it so it can look like a mouth. Then, at the top draw an eyeball, just one. After that, you draw one string of hair." It looks as though this is a growing phenomenon... kids everywhere are getting into the 'Monster Exchange' program. This 'Licorice Pirate' was created by Mohammed from New Jersey. Cute? A little creepy? Yes!

Cute Zombie Attack

Declan Skwarczek is the spawn of Eat Your Lunch. Declan is also the creator and star of the must-see short, Zombie 2: Darkness Of Dead. Mind blowingly cute undead film in the grand tradition of Monster Kid home movies. His dad tells me he's a big Tutenstein fan, too... awww...

Little Eyes, Big Monsters

My five year old son, Desi drew this awesome gang of monsters the other day, and I told him I liked it so much I would let everyone see it. The doodle got me thinking about Dave Devries and his delightfully deranged Monster Engine project, where creepy kids art is reworked by Devries into even creepier paintings.

Bloody Baby Boomers

Doktor Von Kreep from over at 1313 just gave me a shrunken heads up about this wicked new offering from PPS called Monster Kid Home Movies. Here's a little of what good ol' Horror-wood has to say... "This little gem of a disc collects 30 -- count 'em, 30 -- homemade monster movies. These are short films made by kids for kids, in some instances by youngsters who went on to became famous... At their best, these shorts are surprisingly impressive. The early stop-motion animation films by future Disney animator Frank Dietz and the elaborate makeup effects and costumes created by future comic book artist Kerry Gammill are minor wonders. Tinnell’s teenage Frankenstein (1977) shows enough directorial imagination – such as the use of a James Whale-like subjective POV shot – to hint at his future career. But for my money the single most entertaining picture of the lot is Weaver’s action-packed Up for Grabs (1980), starring Weaver’s late brother, John, who dreamed of becoming a Hollywood stunt man." Boy oh boy! I honestly can't wait to get ahold of a copy... this is pure Monsterama madness, folks. Here's another review over at Bleeding Skull, as if you need any more convincing.

My Brood

The family and I had a great Hallowe'en night. Desi was dressed as the Teen Titans version of Robin, and Nora went out as Queen Amidala... both homemade masterpieces by my Mother-In-Law (pictures later, I hope). When you are seven and five years old, this is how you might view the holiday. The Frankenmonster face and FatBat are Desmond's, and the Vampirette and Sleepy Jack are by Nora. The weather on the 31st was balmy, and we got a couple of full pillowcases, so the night was one for the books. The kids were braver this year, so we drove down to Queen Street in Guelph to hit the big old mansions and the popular 'Hallowe'en House' (a famously decoration-coated landmark). Daddy (dressed as a skeleton) also got some candy and stayed up to watch the Exorcist by himself. Wheee!

Baby Mummy

My seven-year-old daughter Nora is one of the finalists in a Hallowe'en story contest, and her tale is more than a little kooky! Scroll down to the last tale for some baby mummy action.