Evolution of the Monkey
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Most people who visit this website will probably be wondering what the heck that "thing" is in the top right hand corner. That is the Robot Death Monkey, an incredibly obscure Invader Zim reference brought to life through some nice software. On this page we'll show you how the monkey was created, step by step.
> Initial Idea
The first idea we had stemmed from the appearance of a SIR, note how the shape of the head and legs resemble GIRs. This design was a little more chimp-like than we were going for.
Concept 1, sketch 1
If you saw the "Coming Soon..." page of the site you'll be familiar with this image. Though nice and menacing it didn't scale well into a full creature, so this idea was dropped.
Concept 1, "coming soon..."
> The Scary Monkey
One of the weirdest recurring gags in Invader Zim is the Scary Monkey Show, a bizarre creation which inspired this second version of the RDM.
Concept 2, sketch 1
Concept 2, sketch 2
These sketches eventually became this:
Concept 2, final product
Nowhere near animated enough I think you'll agree.
> Release the Monkey!
The third and final idea came from episode 24 ("Future Dib"), in which Zim captures Dib and unleashes a particularly nasty monkey upon him. Content from various sketches ended up in the final product.
Concept 3, sketch 1
Concept 3, sketch 2
Concept 3, sketch 3
These sketches were ran laboriously through Inkscape to give us this:
Concept 3, inked
Colour was then added:
Concept 3, coloured
> Final Product
A little shading was added to give us the final design of the monkey:
Concept 3, shaded
Well, I hope that gives you a greater understanding of the Robot Death Monkey, thank you for your time.
