"Shuffling toward him in the darkness was the gigantic, blasphemous form of a black thing not wholly ape and not wholly insect. Its hide hung loosely upon its frame, and its rugose, dead-eyed rudiment of a head swayed drunkenly from side to side. Its fore paws were extended, with talons spread wide, and its whole body was taut with murderous malignity despite its utter lack of facial expression."
"Coward—you could never face the dimensional shambler whose hide I put on to scare you—the mere sight of it alive, or even the full-fledged thought of it, would kill you instantly with fright! Iä! Iä! It waits hungry for the blood that is the life!”
H.P. Lovecraft & Hazel Heald, The Horror In the Museum
Much like the byakhee, the dimensional shambler has worked its way into the stable of common Lovecraftian monsters, despite being mentioned once. Even odder, it's in one of HPLs revision stories, ghost written for Hazel Heald.
Like some of these others, I still really love my original design. I tried to tighten up the linework, color and rendering.
This one is an odd creature because I do feel like I was inspired by previous illustrations rather than the text alone. For instance Tom Sullivan's shambles from Petersen's Field Guide To Cthulhu Monsters and Michael Komarck's shambler from 2006. Both of these depict the creature as more ape than insect and both, thankfully, ignore HPL's racist tendency to make monsters black. I leaned on these interpretations more than the original text. It should be more insectile. I could stretch and say, like my byakhee, this is meant to be a larval insect, but that's not entirely true. I just like this idea.
I did want to make mine more twisted and distorted. As if traveling through dimensions really altered its body. In the comparison of the old (left) vs new (right) you can see I dropped some unnecessary lines to streamline the design. I also don't think I completely ignored the insectile aspect. I think the face has some insect qualities maybe like Brundlefly in The Fly?
Again, I love this guy but it is truly bizarre to me that it's become a staple of Lovecraftiana. It's literally mentioned twice in once story and it's just the hide of a dead shambler. We never see the living one or find out what it does. I know the RPGs and subsequent authors have tried to fill in those gaps but it's still a bit perplexing.
Next week we're back at it with a mix of classics and really obscure creeps!
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