Horror Shop: Toil and Trouble

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Toil?"

"Yes... and now I'm working out the approximately seventy-odd ways it will end horribly for at least one of us."

You'd think I'd have done more work here over the summer on arts-like stuff...

You'd be wrong.

Sure, I had a lot of free time, what with my job not really being all that labour-intensive, but you know what? It's my last summer as an undergrad, if everything goes to plan, so brain-off time awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

However, I did create a few works that folks might be interested in here when I was feeling more productive than "let's spend a day memorizing this wiki here." And this is one of those pieces! Huzzah!

So as the title indicates, these fuzzballs here are another creation for the Horror Shop comic, being illustrated by and written by this yahoo right right here. This is the shadow beast/closet monster/horror known as Toil and Trouble. Not two monsters, one named Toil and one named Trouble, no... 'cause when am I ever simple like that? This is actually one being (read sentient fear-driven shadow) suffering from such a drastic case of split personality disorder that it manifests two bodies, the mad genius Trouble and her put-upon "Igor" Toil. They're here to make the world a more horrible place - THROUGH SCIENCE! Cue ominous thunder and lightning and stuff.

They're also rather English... yes.

They're old friends of Grey and Gloom's from back in the 1800s (horrors age weirdly, don't ask), and serve as Grey's go-to "tech support" seeing as how they can create and power horrific steampunk-like devices using shadowstuff. Because they're fears of technology! Huzzah! They're going to be supporting characters in the Horror Shop comic, much like Gloom's sister Mist or Shade's heart-throb Melonie Dubois. Maybe they'll play a bigger role as the comic moves forward, maybe not... we'll see what the fans decide!

Anyhow, just a few notes here... they're based the design off of Neopet's mutant Ixi (which I stumbled upon while browsing the horror site Bogleech.com if you have to ask), mixed with the Second Life mad scientist species known as Crux, and then shrunken, warped a bit, and made a lot more rodentine, 'cause just like Grey is based off of megabats and Gloom off of red pandas and Shade off of some kind of canine/spider hybrid, these guys are lab rat monsters! Also, their left eyes are big and bronze/golden/metallic because they're members of the House of Technology, whose Bogeyman (head) is the sentient city known as Big Brother. Every member of the house has a brass eye somewhere on their forms, be it embedded in their palms or maybe on an amulet fused to their chest, or, as with Toil and Trouble, it replaces one of their own eyes. Also, Big Brother can see out of the brass eyes as if it were his own - thus Big Brother is always watching.

I didn't call them horrors for nothing, you know?

Right then! The horror species belongs to yours truly, , along with . If you've got any questions, comments, concerns or queries, feel free to send them my way, and I'll try to get back to you posthaste!