Dustin Parker's Monster Mania

When I started working on the Monster Mania series, I wasn’t expecting the series to continue beyond the first 10 drawings. I just wanted to draw some cool monsters for a Halloween themed art exhibition. I also never intended for the original Monster Mania logo to be anything more than a cool type treatment on a promotional flyer. It was just a tiny little graphic on a postcard that I quickly cobbled together in Adobe Photoshop.  It took me a few years, but I finally got around to designing a new Monster Mania logo. The new logo takes some inspiration from the original logo. I kept the big googly eye and the drippy / scratchy text for Mania. I wanted the logo to have the same vibe as the original Garbage Pail Kids Logo and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles logo from the original 1987 animated series. I wanted the new Monster Mania logo to invoke that same feeling. I was trying to capture the joyful weirdness of my childhood. I also took some inspiration from Matthew Allison’s logo t...

My original idea for this drawing was a super muscular hot dog with ridiculously huge arms. I was amused by the idea of a skinny stick of processed meat with hulking arms covered with veins and baby oil. And the hotdog would have scrawny little legs because he always skips leg.  I played around with the idea, but I wasn’t happy with the drawing. Sometimes a drawing isn’t working, and I have to choose between fighting the drawing or abandoning the drawing. In my experience fighting the drawing usually leads to more frustration and depression. A bad drawing day doesn’t get better with more bad drawing. It is often best to walk away to fight another day.  In this case, I decided to nuke the hot dog and start over. Instead of big bulging muscles, the hot dog would be emaciated like a zombie, and his buns would be covered in mold. I imagined a rotten hot dog languishing on the floor of a gas station restroom.  You definitely don’t want to eat this hot dog.  

This drawing of a disgruntled candy heart is my tribute to Valentine’s Day. This little heart-shaped sugar candy just wants to be left alone. Big googly eyes are a trademark of my Monster Mania drawings. I like the blank stare. I think it is super creepy. But sometimes I want to convey some emotion and I need to employ some eyelids or eyebrows to make the eyes more expressive. I started with googly eyes and then I tried angry eyes and then I landed on tired eyes. This poor heart is old and tired.  All of my Monster Mania drawings present the monster against a monochromatic background. The backgrounds are created by stacking 3 or more abstract drawings on top of each other. Each abstract drawing is made using hundreds of biomorphic shapes. I often adjust the opacity or apply blending modes to the drawings to allow the lower layers to show through the upper layers. This creates an interesting texture. I like the visual static. It is more interesting than using a flat color. On this p...