What would you call this little critter that looks to be part tiger, part squirrel, and part pussycat? I’m sure there are similar undiscovered species lurking somewhere on this earth or another. These names are culled from my Twitter feed, from the years 2017 – 2020. Imaginary Animals Mammalian predators Gray-marbled Tigral Bat-Eared Leopard …
Arthur Rackham’s version of a sea monster featuring some very wild dentition.
Never mind me, just passing through.
The plasticity of fairy tales is demonstrated by these illustrations of Beauty and the Beast from over the years. In the original fairy tale, the Beast is never explicitly described, so artists had to use their imaginations. From the top left, going clockwise, he’s a spotted hyena, a wolf-boar, a very weird walrus-mole hybrid, and …
Extinct prehistoric deer Sinomegaloceros, which boastged a triceratops-like frill over its head.
Not sure what this is or what it means. But it’s cool nonetheless.
Since it’s near Christmas, let’s look at the world of fantastical reindeer. This caribou man, opposite, was included in an AD&D manual as a decorative illustration. He wasn’t listed as a monster with his own stats, which was too bad. (He’s definitely Quebecois because of the hairy chest.) A homebrew gamer did decide to go …
Santa, and Father Christmas and Sinter Klaas before him, is the penultimate character representing Christmas spirit, but he has many helpers. In Germany, there’s his evil counterpart Krampus, and since 1823 (when A Visit from St. Nicholas — better known as The Night Before Christmas — was first published) his reindeer. In the twentieth century …
Innocent, disturbing, whimsical, and exact, all at once.