THE DAILY MONSTER

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Good morning. How are you? I hope you're having a lovely, mellow fall season. I'm sorry to have been out of touch again. I just got back from two consecutive trips -- one to Baltimore, the other to Cincinnati. Talking and judging. I'll give you a little report about that some other time.

Last night I conducted a Monster Making Workshop at the Echo Park Time Travel Mart. You can see photos from the event on my Flickr page. As I was giving a little drawing demo this happy fella came through to say Hello, and I thought you might like to meet him, too.



I hope you'll have a great time tricking and treating tonight. Be safe, have an amazing time, and make sure to set your clocks back an hour before you go to bed Saturday night. And please, don't catch a cold or do anything that might keep you from voting on Tuesday! In the meantime, rest assured that 344 LOVES YOU

IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE... NO, WAIT... IT'S A BIRD.

Good morning. How are you? Thank you for visiting the creatures on a Wednesday.
I'm hard at work preparing for the new season of Monsters --- starting next Tuesday, April 1st --- but I thought I'd post a new drawing for you in the meantime, so you're not entirely monsterless all week. I hope you'll like my new friend here:

In addition to posting new Daily Monsters, I'll also be a speaker at the re:Charge08 conference hosted by AIGA Jacksonville next week. Their theme is "Feed Your Creative Monster." You can see how my presence is needed. If you're attending the conference, I'll hope you'll come say Hi.

For now I hope things are well with you, and that the week is treating you kindly. Southern California is basking in some lovely springtime sunshine. If you're not as climatologically blessed I'm sending some friendly rays your way.
Why? Because 344 LOVES YOU

PENELOPE'S MONSTER MASH

Hello again. Over the past few weeks Penelope Dullaghan has hosted a Monster Mash competition on her excellent site. She asked me to help pick a winner, and it was hard! There were a lot of cool illustrations to choose from. (I do apologize for not alerting all of you, so you could participate. By the time I found out about it, the competition was closed.) Anyway, take a minute to check it out. Lots of great work to be seen!

MORE MASKED MARVELS

Good morning. How are you? I hope the week has been treating you gently so far. I'm a bit unhappy about the end of Daylight Savings Time, but what can you do? The world seems to be run by AM zealots. As you can see from these new Monster Mask photos, us nocturnal people aren't giving up without a fight. Whether you ended up saving any daylight or not, you can count on the fact that 344 LOVES YOU

WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN, WOMAN, OR PET?

Good morning. You have no idea how much fun it is to see your inner masked marvel emerge. Just take a look at all this trickin' treatin' photo action from parts far and near. Thank you to everyone who concealed their identity the Daily Monster way. You're the best! It's no wonder 344 LOVES YOU

If you have a photo of yourself in the DM Mask,
please send it and I'll post another gallery next week.

THE MONSTER MASK IN ACTION

Good afternoon. Melissa Biever just sent me an image that blew my mind. She works at the Wonder Factory and everybody there has gone monster crazy. You have to see it to believe it! (You have to click on the image to see it bigger.) Is there any wonder why 344 LOVES YOU

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE MONSTER MASK NOW

Good morning again. While I'm tweaking the Halloween Monster, I thought I'd upload a little bonus gift for you. If you're like me, you may not have planned a Halloween costume for yourself. You may be considering a quiet night at home, just so you don't have to reveal yourself as shamefully undisguised. Well, let me save you from this grim and lonely fate with the exclusive Daily Monster Halloween Mask. (A big Thank You for the great idea to Stacy Rausch and Sam Berkes!)

Allow me to demonstrate:

(This is not a blurry photo, by the way. This is what I actually look like at 6.30am.)

The mask is formatted to print on a standard 8.5x11 sheet on any inkjet or laser printer. Minimal instructions are included on the sheet, but it's all pretty self-explanatory. You can download the PDF by clicking on this link or on the image below.

Now, if you're so inclined, I'd love it if you'd take a photo of yourself donning your monster mask, and send it to me. I'll post it right here on the blog. But you certainly don't have to. All you have to do to make me happy is have fun! Why? Because 344 LOVES YOU

BONUS MONSTER 03

LOOK FOR A NEW WEEKLY MONSTER TOMORROW

BONUS MONSTER 02

OPEN SOURCE MONSTER 12

Good morning! Before you head off into Independence Day bliss, it's my pleasure to post some truly exceptional Open Source Monsters that have found their way to me in response to Open Source Ink Blot 12. What a lovely variety of styles and ideas! Interestingly, all of you saw fishes. (Or aquatic mutants, as the case may be! I'm looking at you, Keith.)

Which takes care of surf, but what about turf? Maybe there will be a second wave of land-based monsters? Or a few birds perhaps? If you haven't sent in your monster yet, there's still plenty of room out there! (And if you'd like to do a fish, too, I won't hold that against you, either. :^) Please don't be shy! Use some of your free time this week and get in on the Open Source action.

Here's how it works: Download OPEN SOURCE INK BLOT 12, print it out, and have at it in any way you like: Draw, paint, origami, film, or sculpt. Just scan or photograph the result and send it my way at opensource@344design.com and I'll put the result on the blog right here.

Oh... and I thought I'd give you a little something extra, too:

Several people have told me that they miss the more free-wheeling monsters from the first 100 days. As you know, I've lately gotten into doing longer animations with the Weekly Monster. That kind of animation works really well if there are articulated limbs. Arms, legs, ties, and tails that can flail, hop, flap, and wag. But it does preclude some of the weirder shapes. It also takes forever. I often spend 12, 13, 14 hours on one of the Weekly Monsters. They're fun hours, no doubt, but sometimes hard to fit into the schedule.

So I thought I'd start a new little sideline of Bonus Monsters---going back to the original method of shooting the drawing process and putting the result online without any bells and whistles. Both methods are fun, and this will hopefully let me get more creatures out to you faster---especially in weeks when there's a lot of other work that keeps me from more elaborate affairs. What do you think?

You gotta know by now that 344 LOVES YOU