Check out this excellent set of kaiju illustrations, featuring Godzilla, Gamera and their over-sized mates.
The artistic style is consistent throughout so I assume the pictures are by the same artist, and the indications are that he is Japanese and their source a Japanese magazine. This site gives no indication of who did them, though, or where they came from, but I’m sure the more kaiju-art savvy out there will know.
There are even some anatomical illustrations of the monsters. The diagram of Godzilla’s inner workings (below) appears to be the one used in an article in the current issue of that definitive kaiju magazine G-Fan (#85), “The [Fictional] Science of Godzilla” by Timothy Lee Elliott.
You can view the full set here.
If anyone can source these, I’d be grateful.
- via Chris Green
“…kaiju magazine G-Fan (#85), ‘The [Fictional] Science of Godzilla’ by Timothy Lee Elliott.”
Thanks for the recognition, even if it was about the artwork and not the article. Truth be told, I felt fairly ashamed of myself after the article was published because so many of my points are just observations, and the Terry Rossio/Ted Elliott (no relation) script does a better job of providing an explanation for the big G’s breath weapon (as opposed to me offering none).
I had briefly considered doing a follow-up article focused on King Ghidorah but decided against it.
The artwork is handsome to say the very least. It always amazes me as to the number of extremely talented artists out there who do this kind of work for no pay. Especially the anatomically views of old Goji. There’s a reason why I didn’t bother to try and hint at Goji’s inner workings. To put it simply: trying to provide an explanation for a purely fantastic element in many instances can’t be done without contradicting some other element. For the few who can pull it off, the results are splendid.
Hi, Tim. At the time I hadn’t read the article, but after that post I did read it and I thought you did a good job, especially in light of the fact that it’s pretty hard to rationalise something like Godzilla. When you start with a creature that is essentially impossible, expecting to consistently rationalise its behaviour is probably rather Quixotic. And I thoroughly agree with you about the great work out there that is done for love not money — work that fortunately is at least gaining a wider audience thanks to the internet!