Godzilla Fanart - Old and New

Godzilla is my all-time favorite character ever (along with Snoopy), and one of my greatest inspirations. More than the avatar of atomic destruction he started as, children became connected to the monster for his iconic, dinosaurian likeness, great strength, and towering size. Some adults even liked him for his personality. So Godzilla eventually became a Bettelheimian (even Nietzschean) antihero throughout the 60s, and an anthropomorphic superhero in the 70s. This was the Godzilla I grew up with; the Godzilla that evolved into a hero, and was more developed than even the memorable human characters he shared the spotlight with.

An yet ironically, until now, I had a very difficult time drawing him the way I wanted!

You'll have seen some of my Godzilla fanart early in this blog, whereas you also saw them on my deviantART site. Nevertheless, I'll share them on this blog.

Some of these date back as far as 10 years ago.

This undated piece from 2000 was my earliest attempt at drawing the Mire-Goji (the incarnation from Godzilla 2000: Millennium), which I got the Bandai figure for (along with Orga) on Christmas Day of 1999. I drew this using the Godzilla figure as a model.

This one was, I believe, my first drawing of 2002, while at the Outer Banks. I like this one a little better.

Drawn May 8th, 2002, I had heard of a new Mechagodzilla film in the works! That film, ultimately, was Godzilla X Mechagodzilla. Before any of us saw any pictures, I did my own concept art of the monster, called Mechagodzilla Omega. This would be a more "organic" version of Mechagodzilla (and would be a HAL-9000-like AI computer that would rebuild itself until it became more "real" and very much like Godzilla himself, as seen above). I showed this drawing to some friends at Asian Fantasy Film Expo 2002 (my personal favorite convention ever), and they were impressed.

This pic, drawn on January 3rd, 2003 (again, while in the Outer Banks), was my own variation of the Red Ronin, the Super Robot-style giant robot seen in Marvel's Godzilla comics, as a substitute for the Shogun Warriors, like Great Mazinger (Mazinga), Getter Robo G (Dragun), and Raideen (Raydeen). This version combines the look of Mazinger Z and ComBattler V (called Combattra in Shogun Warriors), with any giant robot from older Super Sentai shows, like Battle Fever Robo from Battle Fever J. I'd like to do this design again, in a more refined way!

Looking back at this drawing, it looks really strange. But I had to include it. Know why? I drew this while at Borders on November 3rd, 2004 (Godzilla's 50th Anniversary)! This drawing looked rather rushed, compared to the others above. I emulated the "50th Anniversary" emblem, made for Godzilla Final Wars (the 50th Anniversary film).

I did another Godzilla drawing, which I'll share for another post (because it involves something I want to share later). Right now, I want to share my most recent one...

I drew the following on New Year's Eve of last year (not the last drawing of 2009, though)...
Although what few Godzilla art I did had improved up to this point, this drawing is where I really schooled myself. The above drawing is a personalized basic study of the head of the Shodai-Goji (from the original 1954 Godzilla). This is the first case where I did a how-to-draw lesson on someone else's character! I'll get to doing the rest of the body at some point. Otherwise, I'm much more satisfied with the way I drew Godzilla's head/face in this study!

More fanart of other characters in the next post.