Super Godzilla Sketch Study 2

warning lo, massive TL;DR artist introspective ahead

Alright, I'm pretty sure that people are either going to love this design or utterly loath it...either that or think it's lulztastic. Some people love the idea of Godzilla going the equivilent of super saiyan, others think the concept is completely retarded. In many ways it is completely retarded. Godzilla is such a stable and powerful design on its own that it is incredibly difficult and almost ludicrous to really improve on it. There really isn't much you can do to him that hasn't already been done before. Showa introduced him first as a terror inducing force of nature and mankind's foolishness that later became a hero of sorts. He was fast, flexible and creative in his movements. Very expressionate in those days. Heisei made him bigger, meaner and what one would assume to be more muscled but it came out looking like marbled fat instead. Shinsei made him agile and predatory with more sharp edges than an Iron Chef knife rack. In the end we want a little bit of all three to make that quintessential Godzilla. This is pretty much what my Godzilla 2K sketch process was like but cranked to eleven.

I kept looking over the three I'd chosen something admittedly was missing. There just wasn't all that logical a way to go about this. Huntie's design had big ass bladed spines everywhere and it was pretty a-typical in retrospect. The Neo had the usual features of comic exaggeration and it was pretty showy, the shoulder horns are pretty damn ornamental when all is said and done. Then of course there is the original idea, where apparently the artist's idea of increased mass meant expanding like cake batter. I think the Heisei art department back then all had an expansion/BBW fetish or something. I felt that no matter where I went I'd be treading old ground again. Then I started really looking at the in game model and history of the character.

Super Godzilla, technically, is just Heisei Godzilla with Ghidorah cells added. What he gets out of the deal is increased size, increased strength, more power and more ways to use that power. That's pretty much it in a nut shell. This was all the give the player equal footing against the chimeric end boss Bagan who is literally built like a freaking mountain of pain. Strangely all the designs never really focused on the Ghidorah angle, it's just Godzilla evolving at level 50 or some shit. So I figure, the only real thing that changes with Super Godzilla is the base Godzilla used and how much Ghidorah is present. Since I'm tasked with somehow combining the best of all into something respectable, I decided that I'd take an earlier sucess-the hybrid Godzilla 2K-and use the Ghidorah cell treatment on it with iconic Ghidorah and Super Godzilla features in order to make a unique Super Godzilla Hybrid. This is the result.

From what I read from the commentary of the last study, a lot of people felt that Super Godzilla should be just a further mutation of the G man. Nothing overtly fancy about it really, just Godzilla being even more like himself. I took a look at Burning Godzilla, a creature that is pretty much a canon take on the premise without the genetic work. Level 5 and beyond by most counts and seemingly so powerful that his body could hardly contain it. Super Godzilla would be something of more stable version of that as it has more means to regulate and use its power. The main features in Super Godzilla seem to be the shoulder spines, belly core, tail claw/spines and generally increased mass. So basically I have to make a bigger, stronger, slightly ghidorah influenced Godzilla with a Guyver core and tail grasper. Interesting how that turned out.

The major thing I started with first was the face. Since I heard that I don't draw Goji's face in a recognizable way (I agree, Godzilla's face is the hardest for me to draw) I tried to keep that mixed chimeric look the Heisei did. Once I had the skull outline sit up, I added the ears so they'd be noticable and began mapping out his features bassed on my earlier hybrid's face. The neck is broader and thicker so made sure that was apparent. The Ghidorah influences are the most notable here as I decided that the face was the best way to make this design unique. Ghidorah had jaw spines or somesort of tri horn arrangement in it's Heisei incarnation, I figured that would be a good replacement for the cheek mandibles which honestly should have stayed Biollante's feature from the start. Goji has a tri row of spines that starts at the tip of his head and my hybrid had this feature as well. Neo had a literal large tri crown which is neat but we aren't going for royalty here, we just want intimidation space dragon style. So we got two modest horns with the moon crescent from Ghidorah Shinsei or Showa starting the usual tri row down his neck. The middle row of spines is actually the highest like with the Slayer design despite the side horns in front being bigger than the crescent. Massive eye brows, big cat eyes, twelve fangs, the works. On the bottom jaw it gets interesting. The 2k hybrid already had two chin spikes so I figured it was natural to add a third in the middle. Then you'll see I have facial hair there. Why? Showa Ghidorah had a mane around each of his heads. What better way to continue that connection then to give Goji something similar. It might strike a lot of you as freaking odd, I'll admit that it is. But think of it this way, he's effective meme inducing badass now. How else is he supposed to compete with Chuck Norris?

The Godzilla 2k hybrid's chest design is merged with the general idea of Super Godzilla's. I perfered the two rib ring idea to the five one that took a shit load of space. Where the texture used to be pebbled it is now like Ghidorah's scales and this trend continues down his belly and tail. The core has a not so vagina-ish plate supporting it. Generally happy how that came out. The shoulders of course are something to talk about. The 2k hybrid had three spines on the shoulders already, I just made them a bit bigger. They aren't too big nor too small and can be used for shoulder checking mooks. I also figured that perhaps they could channel circulating energy around them so they act like buzzsaws. We all love buzzsaws these days. Super Godzilla has the ability to punch really freaking hard, this is a major point of his character. Godzilla's mutation follows the trend of becoming more upright and versatile compared to that of a normal dinosaur. Only makes sense that Super Godzilla continue that trend so he has longer arms. In general they hybrid hass increased mass but I decided to show it as defined muscle. Thus we get an image of power rather than just a bucket of lard waiting to get tipped. The legs are a sore point for me as they aren't as long as I might have wanted. It took all I had just to get them to fit on the page the way they are. It does make him look stout and solid though so it's not a total loss. Feet look big and supporting, increased size means no digitigrade stuff. The tail is pretty simple, 2K hybrid's tail given the Neo's claw clasper thing.

So with all these features what can it actually do? I think can come up with some decent stats:

Name: Super Godzilla
Classification: Supreme Gojirasaurus Maximus
Height: 110 Meters
Weight: 80.000 Tons
Faction: Earth Defenders
Powers:
-Nova Beam, twice as strong as the Spiral Heat Beam
-Energy Tail Whip, charges a volley of energy at the tip of the tail and then cracks it in the opponent's direction.
-Nuclear Pulse
- Spines on shoulders can oscillate energy, making them fuction much like buzzsaws. Usually used defensively or by ramming the opponent.
- Navel Blast, AKA the 'Dragon Cannon' fires a powerful beam from the navel core that has a tip resembling one of Ghidorah's heads. It has the power of 100 Atomic Breaths.
- Powerful Teeth and Claws
- Hyper dense muscles allow for even greater feats of strength and endurance.
- Long, flexible and razor spined tail makes for a powerful bludgeon.
- Can charge it's fists with energy to such a concentrated exstent that delivering a punch afterward causes a titanic explosion. Often refered to as the 'God Fist'.
- Hide is extremely resiliant to damage, even by kaiju standards. All conventional and most anti kaiju weaponry are pretty much useless.
- Still posesses a powerful regeneration factor.
-Tail claw is strong enough to pick up and fling smaller kaiju and restrain larger ones.
-Has a minor effect on gravity, localizing it around itself to the point where it can move faster and leap higher than it's size would normally permit.
-Facial hair of GARdom intimidates lesser beings.
- Absorbs raw energy for sustainance (life force, solar, nuclear, etc.)
- Capable of space travel and surviving in space.

Weaknesses
- Massive size makes it an even bigger target.
- Susceptable to having it's energy siphoned due to the sheer quantity of it.
- It has effectively traded some mobility and agility for massive power and brute force.
- The Navel Blast takes a large toll on its energy reserves. It can only fire around three of these before becoming very fatigued.
- If energy is drained too far it will revert to that of a normal Godzilla again for a time until it recovers.

Now that all said and done, I still think Super Godzilla is freaking ridiculess. Don't get me wrong I think I succeeded in making Super Godzilla respectable at least and not such a Gary Stue in training. Gotta realize that you'd need something like this to take down a beast like Bagan. Probably the reason Toho never used Bagan is because of the lengths they'd have to go to convince people that Godzilla could take a combination of himself some third party and his greatest nemesis. The SD will make use of the design but it will also lampoon the shit out of it too. I have quite an awesome joke for this one that I've been saving for a long time. I just hope I have enough room the paper to make it look right.

Oh and before I forget, I'm thinking a deep dull green/almost black for the skin and face with gold being used for spines, belly and armored sections. Probably some purplish tint near the base of the spines and shining blue core. Orange eyes as per usual for Goji.

-RenDragonClaw