This week's photos are the most interesting of the series because it
will be dealing with the concept art and ideas that went into developing
the Demon Spawn in
Shattered World III: China. [WARNING: There are spoilers in this blog post so, if
you have not read the book, be forewarned.]
Unfortunately,
there is no concept art for The Seamstress (aka Bai) and the
decimators; they are a figment of my twisted imagination. I came up with
the idea of The Seamstress in
Shattered World II: Russia when I wrote the scene in which Dr. Ustagov performs an autopsy on a Golem
and tells Jason that it is made up of human body parts. Hopefully the
descriptions in the book provide enough imagery to create a clear
picture of The Seamstress and her demonic minions.
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| The giant worms that attack the Demon Hunters during the sandstorm are
based on the legend of the Mongolian death worms. I included two
additional sets of fangs to make mine more deadly and frightening. |
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| Another version of the Mongolian death worm. |
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| Uwe Jarling's epic interpretation of my vision from the front cover of the novel. |
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| hen I was developing the demons that would guard the portals, I came up
with the concept of using Golem, the animated anthropomorphic
protectors of Jewish ghettos. However, I wanted mine to be much more
intimidating and powerful than the man-sized guardians from Hebrew
folklore. To give the Golem a more gruesome appearance, I changed them
from being created from inanimate material, such as stone, to being a
compilation of human body parts. I stumbled across the above artwork
while researching other demons and decided to adopt the basic body
design for my own Golem. |
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| Are the flesh eaters zombies? Not in the traditional sense. I liked
the concept of hordes of shambling dead roaming through the countryside
and attacking the Demon Hunters en masse, but did not want to
turn my book into a zombie apocalypse novel. So I created the flesh eaters
as the desiccated bodies of those condemned to Hell who come back to
wander Earth because this is the realm they know. Yes, they eat human
flesh, which is what makes them dangerous, but they do not have the
other attributes of a zombie -- they are not rotting away, and being
bitten by a flesh eaters does not mean you will die and come back as one. |
