Premise: Initial Character Exploration

Using Facebook I found out from a range of 5 - 9 year old children exactly what they thought a scary monster looked like. I intended for the raw data to feed directly into the creation of two of my monster characters for the animation as it is my intention for it to be visually accurate of a representation of children's nightmares.

In the survey, it was found that 18 independent children aged 5-9 thought that the largest contributing factor to a scary monster arguably from a nightmare was that it required large, pointy teeth.

6 independent children thought that a scary monster should have long, sharp claws.

6 independent children thought that a monster should be large, relative to the protagonist.

6 independent children thought a monster should have glowing red eyes, (the data shouldn't provide a specific answer to how many eyes a monster had as the data ranged from no eyes to 50)

5 independent children thought a monster should be hairy/furry.

4 independent children thought a monster should have green skin.

2 said it should be slimy, other incomplete data suggested traits like horns, long arms and legs, the colour black, antennas, wings, disfigurement and distortion of body parts, wonky teeth, a range legs from 2 - 4, scales, tails, spikes and long, snake-like tongues.

below are some preliminary drawings of monsters influenced by this data.

(except the skeleton)