Monster Mania Artist Commentary - Kaiju

When I was a child I was obsessed with Dinosaurs. 

I filled dozens of spiral notebooks with ballpoint pen drawings of my favorite dinosaurs. One of my favorite books was “The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs” written by Dr. David Norman and illustrated by John Sibbick. I would copy Sibbick’s illustrations over and over and over again. That book never left my sight.

I had a Fisher-Price PXL2000 video camera and I would make dinosaur documentaries with my plastic dinosaur toys. I used my mom’s red nail polish to paint battle wounds on my Dinosaur toys. Sometimes the Dinosaurs would fight my Gobots and Ninja Turtles. I was inspired by Ray Harryhausen and Willis O'Brien’s stop motion animated dinosaur sequence from “The Animal World” documentary. I wanted to make my own dinosaur movies. 

I also had 3 giant inflatable dinosaurs and I would battle with them using my incredible wrestling moves. I also had dozens of wooden dinosaur skeleton model puzzles. I ate Chef Boyardee's Dinosaurs pasta. I slept on dinosaur bedsheets. I wore dinosaur underwear. I was a huge nerd for dinosaurs. 

My love for dinosaurs lead to my love for kaiju and cryptids and monsters in general. The creature in this drawing borrows DNA from the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Godzilla and Barney. I thought it would be funny to use purple and green as the predominant colors for the drawing. What if Barney got hit with gamma rays. 









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