Monstruosité

Before starting anything, I ask the same few things: do you have visual references? Is there a graphic style you’re drawn to, or is it open? What’s the budget? With Dogma, those conversations are easy since we know each other’s taste well enough that even a vague answer tells me something. He brought the Toyen reference himself. Toyen was a French-Czech surrealist artist who made nine clandestine drawings in 1944, during the Nazi occupation of Prague, paired with a poem by Jindřich Heisler: raw, haunting images of war that don’t depict violence directly but make you feel it. That was the energy Dogma was after. He also described wanting something monstrous, a highly deformed creature with no real internal logic. From those two things, the direction started to take shape.

Early versions had a denser landscape, a more conventional axe, and a cannonball instead of the clock. Things got simpler and stranger as we went.

Sketches on recycled paper first, working through ideas directly on the page. Six days of reflection and production in total. Around ten back-and-forth rounds between client and studio. The final digital version was done in Procreate with 15.5 hours on the digital pass alone.

The global structure stayed consistent throughout. Many details shifted, but the core held.