I know that I don't share much artwork here, but felt that this warranted some much needed feedback.
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This is among one of several upcoming attempts to design a Godzilla foe that never was, based on realistic conventions of the character's place in time, and additional educated guess work.
Here we have a beginning sketch of The Mutant Starfish, better known by its purely fan-made title of Hitoda, from an unproduced follow-up to "Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster" (1971).
Related information on the character:
http://www.angelfire.com/film/unmadekai ... rfish.html
http://www.tohokingdom.com/web_pages/lo ... itodah.htm
I didn't want to go down the simplistic 'normal starfish with a single eye in the middle' conceit that most fan art portrays Hitoda / the Mutant Starfish as (which is also way too similar to the Paira Aliens from "Warning from Space" - 1956). Nor did I want to fully get away from something that realistically looks like it could have been built at Toho Studios, circa 1971-1972.
I'm trying to invoke a design similar to those is 1970's Japanese tokusatsu series and movies (in or out of Toho), with monsters like Hedorah, Gigan, Megalon, Bemustar ("Return of Ultraman"), and the Terror Beasts from "Zone Fighter" fully in mind.
I know my Hitoda is a little too elaborate than said characters, especially with the multiple tentacles / tongues as legs and feet, but again, I really didn't want to do a simple, enlarged starfish.
I'm fairly happy with Hitoda / Mutant Starfish's appearance so far, but may abandon the two back tentacles, and maybe the Bemustar-style mouth in the center of his body, even if that's strangely true to the anatomy a real starfish.
I'm not going to go into powers and abilities (which is mostly fan-fiction malarkey), but if I had to...
Being a starfish, I gather this monster's two main abilities is regenerative healing that's on par, if not greater than that of Godzilla himself (even if that aspect to the King of the Monsters wasn't present until "Godzilla vs. Biollante" in 1989). And more fanciful, Hitoda / Mutant Starfish can absorb energy and physical strength from other monsters, trough his various tongues and tentacles.
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I will be inking and coloring this design before summer's end, and will share said updates as well. But I'm very interested in your thoughts on this design, and again, if I went overboard for something that's supposed to be from the seventies.
And just for the Hell of it, you guys can share any of your Hitoda art here as well, thus making this the all-purpose art thread of this obscure character unmade.