Hello!

Hello!

Your art is so gorgeous and inspirational!

Do you have any tips on drawing body horror and character design? When I've tried to design some characters with body horror they all end up looking rather friendly 😅

Hope you have a lovely day and thanks in advance!

Thank you! I'm happy to hear that! Here goes!

NEZ GUIDE TO BODY HORROR

(Disclaimer; this is my advice, not rules. Break them as you wish)

Despite not doing it on purpose, a lot of my art is tagged as body-horror. I've embraced it. Here are my 3 pillars for frightening art. I don't have to follow them all at once, at least one is enough.

Nature

Get inspired by nature. Not necessarily by gore and wounds, but by things that look normal in one context but might appear unsettling in another. A great example is my pumpkin creature; everyone has seen the insides of a pumpkin but adding that texture to a living body made everyone react more strongly to it. I highly recommend natural things with strange textures and patterns (especially seeds)

Book Recommendation; The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel

I recently bought this for all the gorgeous pattern and creature drawings. It's a beautiful book for those who want to draw horror based on nature. Careful if you have tyrophobia, this has some INTENSE patterns.

Subtlety

In either execution or concept.

In execution; give the drawing other recognizable characteristics. The gore is NOT them, it's just part of them. An example would be my cowboy creature. They have the coat, the hat, the boots, the smile...and then you notice the heads. Give your character more than their frightening parts.

In concept; If you want the bright reds and obvious gore, follow one simple concept. In the example below, the concept was a wound surrounded by mushrooms. That is all. If I were to add 'but also mushrooms leave their eyes, and bloody tears fall from them, and they have gashes in their skin, and'' it would have made the impact of all of those concepts collapse. Like a bed of nails. The more nails you add, the less a single individual nail will hurt.

Feeling

It follows the theme above. I noticed horror works better when it's not an abudance but also when it's relatable. I've seen people react more intensely to an animated character brushing a line of yarn against their eyeball than an animated character having their head explode in blood, brains, and bone. You can draw from emotional feelings as well, turning your mental pain into a physical manifestation of it.

This is not a must follow because I do plenty horror art without being vulnerable nor making myself uncomfortable, I just notice people react when they can relate and feel it too.

I hope it helps anon!