TGTFM volume 1: Behind the Scenes

Greetings, adventurers. Welcome to the magical world of ... well I don't really have a name for the setting yet. We'll get there.
Anyways, hello to my lovely tier 3+ patrons! It's time for another Behind the Scenes post. This time we're looking at the unlikely process that went into making The Guide to Forgotten Monsters volume 1.

Concept:

Like most of my comics, it all started with an idea I couldn't quite get out of my head and a doodle to entertain my friends. It was early January and I was in the middle of my first Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough. I had also just finished reading the dungeon crawling manga Dungeon Meshi. I was looking for a quick funny thing to post to socials, so I started doodling. Thanks to BG3 and Dungeon Meshi, Dungeons and Dragons was on the mind. I thought about an Intellect Devourer and how funny they are running around doing their little tasks, so what if there was a cock-and-balls that was doing the same thing. It made me laugh, but I thought it was too silly to post to socials. I showed it to my pals Grumpy-TG and NotZackForWork just for the laugh. They both told me to drop everything and post it immediately. I haven't gotten this far by ignoring their advice, so I did it and it became my most popular post on Twitter in an afternoon. That started the wheels turning.

One doodle became multiple as I started adapting multiple D&D monsters to the TG format. The Gelatinous Boob, a femme take on the Living Armor, the dreaded Pussy Whipper, and even some original creatures. This isn't the first time I'd had the idea to do horny D&D monsters, but this time I got it right and hit on a great idea.

I was in talks with a frequent collaborator of mine about what comics we would make together in the new year. I showed her the doodles and she came up with good story concepts for each of the creatures. I realized there was a comic story to tell here.

Of course, I had other comics ready before making TGTFM. The Dragon Queen's Thirst, my first fantasy comic of the year, was already written and ready to go so I made that my priority. There's a bit of a fantasy vibe happening in TG and smut spaces right now, so I decided to catch the wave and put out DQT first, followed by Love Space 2. Meanwhile, the idea for TGTFM was marinating and developing into something bigger and cooler.

Writing The Guide:

The Guide to Forgotten Monsters is based on one of my earliest mistakes in D&D. It was my first ever game, my first ever encounter. My rogue and the rest of the party entered a room with a hostile grey ooze. The thing lurched at us and I realized I had no idea what it was. Well I grew up as a Pokemon kid, so my first instinct was to look up the creature online and find out its weaknesses. My DM stopped the game and explained to me that my character would not know what a grey ooze's weaknesses are off the top of her head, so neither should I. I never forgot that lesson, but it did stick in my mind. Why wasn't there a guide to monsters in the D&D world that my character could have read? No one was writing this stuff down? 15 years later and it hits me. That's the concept for the story. There's a hidden tome of monsters that are so strange and rare that they've been forgotten and one of the characters has access to that book. From there it flowed logically that I should present the pages like the old Monster Manuals of the early D&D editions, complete with simple art, descriptions, and stats. The Guide to Forgotten Monsters was born.

Example of a classic D&D Monster Manual page:

The Comic:

I knew I wanted to challenge myself visually with this book and refine my process a little bit. I wanted to give it a bit more of an epic feel while still maintaining my relatively quick drawing process. I used screen tones to add a bit of texture to the panels and focused on a relatively limited color pallet so each character would stand out and be readable no matter where they were. I also knew it needed a killer first page.

Part of D&D's legacy is in its iconic designs for its various mazes and monsters. I took inspiration from the classic Yawning Portal face in the Tomb of Horrors as well as the cover for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook to come up with the dungeon's exterior. I wanted something that looks like it was carved either by someone a long time ago or possibly by magic.

The Bust Monster:

I had a few ideas for the Bust Monster. You saw the original sketch earlier where it was pretty much a 1-to-1 adaptation of the Rust Monster, a massive beetle that rusts adventurer's armor and weapons away with its magic tentacles. I decided that my monster adaptations should skew a little further away from D&D just so that I had more room for fun designs. The Masculinity Devourer isn't a little brain, after all. So the Bust Monster went through some quick design iterations. All I knew is I wanted a breast motif and tentacles.

I'm very happy to have landed on the octopus design, because it really tied a lot of aesthetics together for me. Future monsters will be better for having come after this design. I have big plans.

And that's pretty much how it happened. There are more volumes on the way. Currently there are 4 planned, but who knows what will happen in this unnamed TG fantasy setting. Oh right, the name. I don't really have a name yet, but I do know the name of the dungeon. This is a minor spoiler, so I'll just say thanks for reading now if you'd rather wait for the final reveal. The name I was thinking of using for the dungeon is an older concept from a few doodles I did back in 2021: The Dungeon of Lost Legends aka DoLL. Eventually in this setting adventurers will come to the dungeon to seek their fortunes in the dungeon and be changed by its contents. That's the idea for now, at least. Something I can return to in the future. I still don't know what the overall setting should be called. Something a little funny but a little serious would do. If you have a good idea, please drop it in the comments and I might pick it!

Anyways, that's pretty much everything for volume 1. There was more to talk about than I thought. The response to TGTFM volume 1 has been extremely positive and I appreciate everyone who liked and commented on the pages as they came out. Thank you so much for reading. More TGTFM volumes to come this summer!

P.S. If you want to find all of the sketches I did of the various TG monsters, check the Fantasy Stuff collection.