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Web of Love
The premise of this story is pretty much a rendition of the Dating Game but with urban legend monsters from around the world! We have our host who is a Jorogumo also known as a monster spider woman who snatches up humans to be apart of her dating show Web of Love. Where she forces her victims to pick which monster they're going to date, without seeing what they look like. What lucky monster will the terrified human end up with? The answer might surprise you.
Here are several iterations of how our lovely spider lady could possibly look, after some trial and error, I selected three silhouettes and explored different character styles.
For the spider elements her design, I was inspired by two particular spiders, the Northern Black Widow Spider and the Japanese Orb Weaving Spider. I took the body of the widow spider and the coloring of the orb weaving spider and mushed them together. My reasoning for choosing these two species of spider specifically, in Japanese mythology the Jorogumo is actually an orb weaving spider. So it made sense that her design would in someway be based off of that species of spider, as for the northern black widow they'er known for having hearts on their abdomens. Which again was fitting for the character, since she is a dating game host. As for the more human side of her design, it was heavily inspired by Bianca Del Rio, a famous drag queen who I felt fit the personality of Thera very much. She's snarky, sassy, and most of all shady. Her tongue is as sharp if not sharper than her perfectly polished talons, and her sense of humor can be quite dark but very comical.
Here we have the final rendition of Thera Bello, our lovely host. When making her character, I imagine that she lures her victims by disguising herself as a normal human. One so gorgeous that her prey are just captivated by her, until it's too late. By no means does she want them to be harmed, she just wants to be a matchmaker that brings humans and monsters together in the name of love.
On the left is a rough sketch of contestant 1 of 3 Morrigan Crom, to the right is her final render created in Adobe Photoshop. She's a Dullahan aka the headless horseman/horsewoman. Based of of fae folklore from Ireland, this sickly sweet (on the outside) character rely's on her beauty to get what she wants, but when met with rejection she might just take your soul whether it's your time or not.
On the left is a rough sketch of contestant 2 of 3 Fukō, to the right is her final render created in Adobe Photoshop. She's Japan's urban legend ghoul the Teke-Teke, she's a rather snarky girl who's quite bitter about the fact that everyone else has their legs still unlike her. Try not to point it out too much otherwise she'll make you just like her.
On the left is a rough sketch our third and final bachelor Monty Mothman, to the right is his final render. He's a bit shy and anxious, he's the literal definition of a gentle giant, but due to the fact that he's very large moth that's sentient, people are very afraid of him. He cannot speak human, but has taught himself sign-language. I based his design off of the Emperor Gum moth, found in Australia and New Zealand. Though the origin of mothman comes from West Virginia, who's to say that there isn't more than one?
Below is a down shot view and front view of the Web of Love stage. I took inspiration from the Dating Game where one of the four contestants is separated from the other three by a wall in-between them. Then from there made it spider themed, since the host of the game show is a spider monster. Hence it's her web of love.
Final render of Web of Love stage, created in Adobe Photoshop.
Storyboards and Animatic, created in Adobe Photoshop and configured in Storyboard Pro. Originally Thera's last name was "Webster" as shown in the storyboards, but has since been changed to "Bello".
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