Monster Design & CGs BTS

Hi hi! This is Polly, reporting from my pompompurin infested headquarters. I supported Onigashima in designing the monster/ghost forms for our cast of LIs, as well as in illustrating the game’s CGs.

This is my third consecutive year participating in Spooktober. You might recognize me as the Monster Artist for The Final Prize Is Soup by shino (2nd Place Winner of 2023 Spooktober Jam), or as an artist for The Stars Under Lockehurst by Null Jam Games (Honorable Mention for 2024 Spooktober Jam). Otherwise, I am a 2D Illustrator for indie game development, and work full-time in the video games and tech industry for digital marketing. I had the honor of working with AzurexTwilight and our incredible team for our entry, Onigashima!

When I found out that Azure was recruiting for her Spooktober entry, I was super quick to apply- I was a big fan of Intensive (S)care Unit, ESPECIALLY of its monster designs (it also won Best Monster for 2024 Spooktober!). It wasn’t before long where I heard back that the lovely Akua Kourin (whom I had the pleasure of working with for Endysis’s Trail of Stars for 2025 SWAK Jam) had vouched for my capabilities, and accepted me to join.

My biggest bless to Akua, I look up to her as an artist and creative- Was stoked to be collaborating with her again!

If you’re wanting to learn more about my creative process and the design decisions behind our monsters and CG illustrations, you’re in the right place. If you’re wanting to understand how Polly’s mind ticks for all things horrific, still in the right place. If you’re trying to figure out how someone that loves something as innocent and sweet as pompompurin is capable of producing nightmare fuel, well, you’ll have to shadow my therapy sessions. And in case you haven't gotten the memo by now:

***Content Warning: Descriptions and references to body horror, gore.***

Preparation & Early Concept

After reviewing Azure’s GDD and outlined concept for Onigashima, I was pretty excited to start ideating. I’m always tickled by concepts that involve heartbreak, gruesome monsters, and an exploration of moral compass and player’s choice. Azure passed me the reference images for our ghost form LIs and I instantly went, “Yep, this is gnarly. How can we lean into that?” There’s nothing more thrilling to me than creating a design that can disturb the comfortable (and equally, comfort the disturbed.) Let’s start with the monster designs.

Having consumed a lot of horror media, I knew where to turn for some inspiration. Apart from our character’s key design elements, we also had a baseline using their animal features, as well as their major plot points in Onigashima. I intertwined all of this into my explorations for Yamato, Hikaru, and Shiori.

There’s a brief description for each ghost form in our GDD.

• Yamato: “Many-appendage / tentacled samurai”
• Hikaru: “Face is merged with mask”
• Shiori: “Slit mouth, still loves Yamakui (haunts Yamakui cause she loves them)”

I did a rough exploration pass back in mid-August so we could discuss the direction and further the concepts. At the same time, Akua was helping to lead our stylistic decisions with our watercolor and ink brush guidelines. I owe it to Akua in supporting our style cohesion since we were working in different programs (Akua in CSP, myself in Procreate). I still laugh at how towards the end of the jam, Procreate decided to push out that huge update with, believe-it-or-not, a BUNCH of watercolor brushes. It made my life so much easier, hahaha. Akua and Azure also encouraged me to up the ante with the monster designs. This may have gone a bit too far for Yamato. Let’s talk about it.

Polly: Shiori unhinged fox jaw? Yamato buff man with slithering body vines? Hikaru spooky face?

Akua, Azure: Can we make them even MORE unhinged?

Polly: Y E S.

If you’ve played Onigashima, you know that Yamato prays to a god for more power. You know that he mistakenly prays to Yamakui, where the power granting him strength is corrupting his very being. I wanted Yamato’s ghost form to reflect the earth taking over his body, but not in a “nature reclaiming urban spaces” sort of feel, moreso in a “GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD” kind of way. 

One of the major inspirations for Yamato’s tentacle-turned-twisting-tendrils was the creature design of Ebrietas from Bloodborne. Bloodborne in any case is a super big source of creative intuition for me (apart from being an incredible game) and with Ebrietas, those spindly-like wings and appendages were carried over as cursed, wriggly extensions of Yamato’s corporeal body. 

Another source of inspiration, particularly for the idea of limbs extending, is the Japanese Yokai Rokurokubi, a free-flying apparition that is typically depicted as a woman with an extremely elongated neck. Knowing its cultural relevance to Onigashima’s roots in Japanese folklore, it was perfect.

Yamato’s second pass ended up being the farthest departure from humanoid in all of my concept art, where I double-downed on the horror factor. We decided that the transformation made Yamato barely unrecognizable, so I stuffed this poor creature back down into the mind vault. Perhaps I’ll go back and make creature designs of the same wavelength for the others. Maybe we’ll turn them into stickers. Marketable monsters!

Since the other two were bipedal, I granted Yamato his deer legs. I researched the effects of rabies on deer (and yes, studied from photography as well) to add other details indicating the wear of corruption, alongside some decay (exposed bone, festering flesh). I’m really into painting this kind of subject material, and adore the work of painters like Dusty (sloppjockey) Ray. 

Third pass for Yamato, and second pass for Shiori- The ghosts were finally coming together.

Hikaru was a collaborative workshop between Azure and I. Azure pulled from The Summer Hikaru Died and One Punch Man for some ideas on how we could play with the distortion of Hikaru’s face. I thought it’d be too surface level to just have the skin merge with Hikaru’s tengu mask, and wanted to instead think about how MC’s fragmented memories could be materializing in their shared grief as Hikaru haunts you post-devour. I became obsessed with the image of the skin pulling, warping, and sliding off from the jaw, and ended up implementing this into their design. Then I went forward with incorporating their crow/tengu elements into the arms and legs, and unravelled their bandages throughout.

Shiori’s monster design felt like a no-brainer to me. With her “yandere” character archetype, slit mouth for her creative brief, and plot points of giving up her own body to the Yamakui, I just wanted her ghost form to be the ultimate “I’ll devour you, too <3” Some of my favorite horror artists heavily “fed” (pun intended) into her mouth design, such as onctps404, as well as monster VFX artists like Chris (docmonsterfx) Richard Hanson. I carried over the idea of decay or zombie-fication into her fox tail, mirroring her main monster mouth.

Let’s pivot to CG prep now. Azure was thorough in her foundational work, so I had some pretty good starting ground in envisioning the scene. I took care to make note of MVP (minimum viable product) items so I knew which to prioritize- That being the CGs for Loop 1, Loop 3, and the True Ending. Unfortunately, that left out Loop 2 CGs, which were meant to be the ghost forms attacking MC/Yamakui. It’s part of our post-jam polish now, though!

The CG for True Ending involved the entire cast together, as it’s the scene where the LIs seal the Yamakui away, once and for all. I really wanted a fun, dynamic scene in front of the shrine where you could see each character fulfilling their unique role in the ceremony, with all their faces visible to the player/camera. To help myself, I used a tool called PoseMy.Art to position each character, with reference to their scale and angle. Once I was happy with the modelling, I exported it as an image to serve as a base to paint over.

Everything else either involved a really funny stock photo or an ordinary stock photo for posing Loop 1 and Loop 3. We’ll go over those process shots in the next section.

Production

This is the part of the dev log where I talk about the progression of all my deliverables. If any of you recall how work went for my last Spooktober, I mentioned that I was going to take it easy and be more mindful of my time management and well-being.

Then I hit send on this Bluesky post.

I’m going to be brutally honest here- I did this out of my own stupidity  will AND, because I cannot help but pour my love into a project like this. I was going through months of hospital visits, tests and labs this year, and it wasn’t until this October that my doctor confirmed “ok girlie, turns out all your atypical pain is because you don’t take care of yourself!” So, take that as you will. Let this be a BIG reminder to please, please, please put your health first.

I set aside my 5-9 for Spooktober Jam on my work days, and then just jammed for nearly all my weekends. I really like project management tools such as Trello and Notion for tracking tasks, and because it feels pretty good to mark something as “Done,” since the task on my Notion board goes from a dull grey to a serene green. I’d make it a habit to send updates as often as possible, so I could ensure that my vision aligned with Akua and Azure before proceeding.

So Polly, how do you balance jamming with your other commitments? Here’s my real, genuine advice:

1. Understand your bandwidth. Be super clear on what you can and cannot accomplish. Don’t wait until the end to communicate your needs, either.

I told Azure from the get-go that I was comfortable handling both CGs and monster designs, then later established a pipeline with Akua for monster sprites. This gave me peace of mind since we were all on the same page about expectations and work.

2. Please don’t crunch. Please pace your progress. It’s better for your blood pressure.

So, I mentioned I like to use Notion- It was my main tool for this jam. Here’s how my tasks and work sprints were structured, just to get an idea:

To help alleviate the feeling of a “mountain-climb,” I assisted my sprints using a method called pomodoro. It is a technique where you break your work up into intervals of time, and assign breaks that reflect the time spent working. I typically like to do 90/15 pomodoro, meaning 90 minutes of work with 15 minutes for a break. You repeat this until you’ve accomplished your set goal for the sprint.

3. Be kinder to yourself. You’re not a machine. You’re a human being. Rest.

I had several moments where I knew what I was doing was going to bite me back later on. I made sure to give myself time to pause: Check in with my physical body. Stretch the limbs, hold space for no screen time. Continue making time for hobbies and for hanging out with my loved ones. I actually also did a lot of body-doubling with my sisters this September, so it was a lot of fun working on art and chatting with them about their own projects!

All of this is sound advice- But I still ended up needing to crunch during the last week of the jam. Which is okay. I was still having a lot of fun.

You already know that I passed monster sprites to Akua for full render. She also helped me greatly in the digital watercolor technique we were utilizing, which lent me the confidence I needed to tackle CGs independently (read more about that in Akua's Dev Log!). A lot of what we were doing was extremely similar to traditional watercolor techniques; layering over and over to develop depth. 

Here, you can observe how each CG progressed in render. I would start with the base color and texture of the canvas, then the base color for each character, and layer in the details. Finishing touches placed emphasis on the watercolor medium, using splotches, brushstrokes, and other similar textures you would achieve if painting traditionally.

By the final jam week, the resulting delirium from sleep deprivation was starting to hit pretty bad. I look at my work now thinking, “Did I really do all of this?” It feels like my body went on auto-pilot, and a part of me was thinking the quality of my work was lacking towards the last asset (I was just tired, how shocking). But after seeing all the work implemented during playtesting, I began to feel a sense of relief. The work of our programmers in tandem with Azure’s direction and staging helped in giving myself grace for what I was able to accomplish.

Learnings

Welp. Before I perpetuate the cycle of “I’m gonna rest - Proceeds to not rest.” I’m scared to say I’ll do anything better next time around. All I know is that this year, I had a lot of fun. I got to work with new and old friends. I got to help in making a spooktacular visual novel game, while juggling life and work at that. I’m very happy about it.

I will put these down, for the sake of future Polly, and to anyone taking notes:

• Sporadic consumption of caffeine is not good for the heart. 
• There are so many free Procreate brushes online. Explore them. Add them to your repertoire. Akua links to the ones we used in her Dev Log too. Go check it out.
• Invest in ample wrist and hand support, especially if you do a lot of work with your hands/drawing. Do. Your. Stretches. Take BREAKS. Longevity = Ability to do the things you love for as long as you can. An artist glove really helps to reduce strain.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading to the end! I’m really excited for what’s in-store… a lot of fun things are on the way for Onigashima! I’m also planning to share some more BTS content on my Instagram and Bluesky, so feel free to follow along!

By the way, I’ve started a YouTube playlist of some Let’s Plays you can check out, in case you prefer to watch someone experience the horrors firsthand (I get it, it’s scary playing some horror games by yourself…) Please enjoy!

Thank you, and Happy Spooktober!