Embedded Files
To be honest this year has kinda gone in a flash, and its gone so quickly that I've nearly forgotten that Creepy & Crawly, the horror adventure series I've been working on for years, is just a tich over 10 years old (which explains the anniversary-eqsue treatment its getting with old excerpts and behind the scenes work as well as new illustrations for my first Inktober). So in lieu of more excerpts, I thought it might be interesting to check out the inspirations for the series as well as a few of the characters and locations within. Some are gonna be painfully obvious, and a few are a little more subtle (I hope XD). Image below was inspired by a manga illustration from Matantei Loki Ragnarok (which inspired another series, but that's for another time....XD)
The Big 3
Since I wanted to make a survival horror series, I had to go to the Big 3 of course: Fatal Frame, Silent Hill, and most importantly Resident Evil. It was around 2006, and we were all spoilt for choice when it came to survival horror. My leanings were of course more in the Fatal Frame style: I loved yuurei, japanese folklore and the like, so I started from there. But I can't discount the impact Silent Hill had on me, especially the second game. I was a fan of the RE series, but it wasn't my strength. I died on the first zombie in my first playthrough! I suck at tank controls XD. That was a spectator game for me.
So I figured the Big 3 were a great place to start. It covered yuurei, zombies and body-horror-esque psychological horror. I needed a little more to round out the cast, and I needed something that involved demons. I went outside the genre a little by also referencing Devil May Cry because, face it, spectacle action games were tops. Demon hunters were in vogue.
Yeah, I watched hella anime. I still do. XD
I didn't forget the outliers of the survival horror genre, so I also pulled a little from Alone in the Dark (particularly the Lovecraftian horror angle), as well as the Clock Tower series (I'm also a fan of Dario Argento). These were my starting points for reference material. I knew what I needed and liked.
Other Universe Inspirations
Definitely Unsolved Mysteries made a huge impact on me as a child, unsolved cases, aliens and ghosts. What more could a kid ask for? XD I've always been interested in ghosts, though I do get scared of horror movies. I'm kinda funny like that. Directors that have had a huge influence on me are Dario Argento, Sam Raimi, of course early George Romero, the masterful John Carpenter (especially his music), Alfred Hitchcock, Lucio Fulci (Zombi), and Roger Corman.
The series also started as a spin off from my original Daemon universe, created when I started my paranormal private investigation series Pot Sticker, which was HEAVILY influenced by Yoko Matsushita's Yami no Matsuei (the undead/immortal investigators, pretty men, magic, and the idea of immortals needing to work in teams/pairs to prevent abuse of power), but since then, Creepy and Crawly has become the mainline series within the universe, and the original series Pot Sticker has now become more of a "spin off". XD
The Main Cast
A lot of the cast has evolved through the years, but I'll be mainly talking about the main characters and a few side characters that are quite important to the series. Some have been imported from my other co-author/collaborator Decon, and others were crafted and retroactively inserted when they were created to make a more detailed reference field.
Mei Asakawa
I'll start with the character who has seemingly had the least amount of evolution, mostly because she came to me pretty much whole and complete. Mei is the Fatal Frame homage character and it shows. The short bobbed hair is reminiscent of Mio, Mayu, and Rei, her outfit is pretty much a simpler version of Miku's outfit from FF3, along with the choker detail. Even her house, where much of the series springs from, has a similar floorplan to Rei Kurosawa's house from the 3rd game in the franchise (only with a few more extra rooms). She's the ghost expert (before series, a lonely girl because she could see ghosts when no one, even her father or brother, could), and uses a camera to exorcise ghosts and help in investigating past events. She has an extensive camera collection (much like her creator XD), and like many of the heroines from the FF series, has a name starting with the letter M; in fact many of her family members do: Mitsuru (brother),
Makoto (father), Madoka (mother), Misaki (grandmother). Her brother and his friends, the twins Mia and Mai Kurosaki, actually predate Mei and the series--another example of spinoffs predating the mainline. XD Called Mumler Club, they were californian college students who investigated ghost cases, but Mei eventually was transplanted back to Japan without her brother, and then became part of the "newer" series.
Also of note, her last name is supposed to use the same kanji as, and is reference to, Asakawa Kazuyuki (the protagonist of The Ring novel) and Asakawa Reiko (protagonist of The Ring film).
As you can see, her design has changed precious little, though her hair has become a bit more distinctive. Originally, Mei was supposed to end up with Henri, but changes in the cast shifted that to her sort of 3 way relationship with Henri and James (discussed later). As you'll see, Mei was created technically first, but is the 5th member to join the team. A lot of her story, design, and powers are sourced from Fatal Frame, but her personality is a little more "Westernized", with her being a bit more feisty, speaking perfect english (because I of course don't even remotely speak japanese XD), and has a little more awareness of her position/role in the team (its constantly joked, even by herself, that she is paid the highest because she is a folklorist, a position in the FF that is almost always fatal). As I've said before, I've probably drawn Mei the most of any creation I have, and as such, can draw her quite easily. She's easily one of my favorite characters I've ever created. You'll never meet a sweeter, harder working, earnest and genuine character.
Henri Bitner
Henri is based on the series Silent Hill, and as such, his horror basis is fueled by demonic possession, and most of all, geographic "shifts" between foggy/obscured landscapes and the hellish, bloody flesh like environments his series is known for. Henri has changed a little from his first sketch (left), but what remained the same was that he was a young blond kid who wore a big green jacket, as his primary inspiration was James Sunderland from Silent Hill 2. His outlandishly demonic powers are a reference to Alessa/Cheryl/Heather, as is his ruined hometown Oak Hill, Illinois (linguistically similar to Silent Hill, but this is also the name of a huge and beautiful cemetery in my hometown; additionally I chose Illinois because I have family in the Quad Cities).
The jacket has remained constant through the series, one of the pieces of clothing given to him by Alestor when he was rescued in the ruined town. I purposefully made him young and frail looking because it made his powers and his fortitude all the more impressive to me.
The idea to make him the vessel of The Legion, a 1,000 strong set of demons that needed to be housed in a pure soul to prevent them from wreaking havoc, came from needing an analogue to the Alessa=God angle from SH. His first pass was rather generic, so his second pass (right) solidified the look, with the 2 strands of hair and swept over-the-ear bangs. Amusingly, it wasn't until his final pass that I decided his eyes would be green, and it was because I forgot what color they were supposed to be in the painting up top (the chibi styled one), and used phthalo green because it was super vibrant. Its canonically his eye color now, though it sometimes is described as having flecks of gold in them.
Henri's backstory with a murdered twin brother was a slow evolution, and the backstory is still somewhat in flux, though I have decided that its a sort of changing story depending on the point of view you take. Its got its roots in SH2's plot mostly, especially with the references with camcorders and video tapes, and presciently, the
sort of scattered and incompletely remembered past has a nod towards the Wii's Shattered Memories reimagining of the first game. Funny how that works out.
Henri's name originally was spelled with a y, but I changed it to an i at some point, then worked in the name change as a plot point later. His name was originally Toby Henry Townsend, a nod to the protagonist from the 4th SH game, but I ended up making the name Toby his brother's when I established he would have one. His personality was meant to be more somber and dour, but he quickly evolved into a sort of feisty, humorously sarcastic and sometimes more-mature-than-the-adults kind of kid who takes a lot of the big supernatural stuff in stride. He had to keep Alestor in line after all. He ended up developing into a more upbeat character, though he was prone to really deeper, sadder feelings as well.
The last name of Bitner is a LONG story, but here goes: once a long, long time ago, a young boy named Nathan Bitner won a He-Man design-a-figure contest and won with a character named Photog. Nothing ever came of it, no figure, and the whole thing would have just disappeared into the ether, if Matt at X-Entertainment hadn't brought up the old contest and wondered what happened to him. As it turned out, his readers BLEW UP THE GODDAMN THREAD with sightings, news and other theories on Nathan Bitner after the contest. Did they ever find him? I'm sure they did, but I couldn't keep up with the thousands (yes, THOUSANDS) of comments to the original story, but what I did come away with it was the meme of "that's so Bitner", to suffer obscurity and misfortune after making an insignificant windfall. And that's when I decided to choose that as Henri's surname. Funny how the weirdest things become the basis of important stuff. XD
Anyhow, by Henri's 3rd pass, he'd solidified into the boy we all know and fear and love to fear. There's a lot to be said for his evolution, though its not nearly as extensive as some of the other characters. Side note: many of the Ritual Professors at Miskatonik share names with characters in the SH series (more on that below).
Leo Griffin
Oh man....Leo. Leo Leo Leo, the man we love to dump everything onto, our constant comic relief, and if he'd appear in any other work, he'd he the hero. XD Shocking as it may seem, Leo's original design was that of a young Asian police officer from San Francisco who was a spinoff character from Pot Sticker actually; he was in the same department as the officers what worked with the Pot Sticker Detective Agency.
He was, to put it bluntly, rather bland. You can see I was going for the Leon Kennedy vibe from both the namesake, his occupation, and from his original sketch (left).
Thankfully I changed tracks rather quickly to the Las Vegas born Marine we all know and love to torture. Doc and I were the original creators of the series, and we quickly made him a military man, who was a staunch skeptic to a lot of paranormal activity outside of the sci fi routes his inspiration series, Resident Evil, is known for. His second pass depicts a tattoo I never designed and thankfully excised from the design in a 3rd pass. He still dual wields, though its much more rare. His design was, oddly, pared back to be much more simple in attire, white tank top and camo bottoms with boots. To be honest its one of the more bland designs for a default outfit (next to Bass and Treble in E.Q. but that was my laziness XD).
More RE references are more in his backstory where Leo's parents and his aunt take the names of Alice, Chris, and Jill, some of his companions, the name of his school's mascot (the Raccoons), his ex-girlfrien's name is Claire, and weirdly, his gardening thumb (its a reference to the herbs, I swear). These references are mere glances more than deeper connections as I haven't personally played all the games, something I do regret. As to why he's used as the series butt monkey, that I also have no explanation for other than it seemed amusing at the time to bring the "what has science done" angle to a more paranormal cast, and what the implications are.
Still, Leo is responsible for most of the cooler action pieces of any action oriented episode, and is also the bearer of a lot more physical violence than a mortal character should (especially when you think of Alestor's immortality).
A lot of Leo's personality quirks and traits were organic in response to the paranormal angles the series mostly focuses on. This is an earnest, if sometimes close-minded guy, but he's a good guy. He also is responsible for me whining about how I can't draw guns. I still can't very well.
Some things many people don't know about Leo that are leftovers from his previous incarnations: he speaks Cantonese, though its mostly because he watched A LOT of Hong Kong martial arts films. He does know a measure of Jeet Kune Do, a nod to Bruce Lee. His middle name is Marion, which if I remember correctly is also Edd's middle name in Ed, Edd & Eddy. Like Henri, is an expert sweets chef. His specialty is cheesecake. And sometimes, VERY RARELY, Leo is right and it IS aliens. Or science. Sometimes a combination of the 2.
James is another character who has some RE influences but those are for later.
Alestor Crawly
Alestor has probably gone through the most changes in his design of all the main cast. This was due to the fact that he started as a reference to Devil May Cry. We even had his name be the same spelling as the sword in the first game. This ended up changing slowly, as having a character like Alestor being badass and acrobatic not only made the group dynamic hard to work with (there was no need for someone like that to have a team), but also made him too OP and capable. We quickly scaled him back, giving him more reference and homages to Lovecraftian horror and nods to Alone in the Dark. But I did end up keeping a few references to Dante: the white/platinum blue hair, and his image color/wardrobe color being primarily reds, browns and blacks.
In the scale back, we gave him a clothes style akin to a 1920's detective, which is where his trademarked fedora came into play, and has stayed ever since. We kept a few of his alternate outfits in reds with trenchcoats, or both, but his default outfit quickly became more business like.
In addition, his personality went from a smooth talker with abilities, titles, and powers that went with it, to having all the wit and smoothness with NONE of the back up in power. This made him more flexible in his characterization; it forced us to think of him trying to solve problems through trickery and outsmarting his opponents rather than overpowering them himself. There were times it made him rather unlikeable, but eventually it evened out to the kind of man who makes/acts like an asshole to cover up his kindness and compassion, like Blackjack.
There were times he had a more serious take, but we lightened him up, made him sometimes the bearer of violent acts like beheading and getting comically crushed. Alestor can sweet talk his way through a lot except a punch to the face. By demons. XD He does have an immense reputation but a lot of it is embellished, or even encouraged to be more outlandish to help his bluffing capabilities. The 4th pass of Alestor hadn't yet had his heterochromia (actually a nod to one of my favorite actors, Lee Van Cleef), and he still had a lot of facial scars that I dropped later. The cane replaced his sword rather quickly--the 2nd-3rd pass), and his guns were replaced with one.
Still pulling from DMC were his murderous sister Elycia (a nod to the Vergil-Dante rivalry but moved up a notch or 3), and Ransom Creeps, the character that ended up taking on all the stuff we discarded from Alestor. The alcoholic side of Alestor came from developing his backstory from the fact he had little to no magical immunity, and needed something to shield his mind from the horrors of the more bigger magick side of the series, and so the hip flask was added to his design. He's pretty much a functioning alcoholic to the point that becoming sober actually causes insanity. We dropped the smoker's habit and gave it to Yoko. The action oriented style he had was given to Ransom and Leo.
Alestor and Henri organically became a sort of father-son relationship when we wove the backstories together, and the paternal relationships extended out to Arkham as a pseudo-grandfather and Yuuchirou, who took the place of an older brother. Alestor is probably one of the worst father figures out there on paper, but he's extremely devoted to Henri. By Alestor's 5th pass, he'd stabilized into the crafty, witty, sometimes heartless, absolutely shameless, mostly jovial, occasionally serious head of the office we know and love. Most of the DMC references are lighter now, and more design choices than outright homages, and next to Yoko, its not as easily discernable where his roots come from.
Yoko
Yoko's roots are of 2 minds, and are many years apart. She started quite simply as an homage to CLAMP's manga series XXXholic, which is where her name is derived from, her initial style, and her mediumship/magic. Her dress style was also quite similar to Yuko. Her very first pass was more mature, dour, serious.
She shared a lot of points of overlap with Mei, so things needed to change rather quickly. I abandoned the sort of part time member status she had and made her more of a main player in the group, as she originally only appeared in a few episodes as a story driver rather than an actual protagonist .
Weirdly, her second pass was also a different sort of character. I aged her down to high school and made her a high school medium, a sort of big sister type to Mei, who showed her how to use her exorcism powers. Originally she had green eyes, wore a uniform, and used ofuda to do her spells. Like Leo's original concept, this Yoko didn't stick around very long because she had a major overlap with Mei's character. Still, some sketches of this still exist:
While she didn't have as many references to Yuko outside of her outfit sets, I ended up changing Yoko again to suit a more mature style. I wanted a more sexy character, frankly. XD So I went back to my basics, gave her a little black dress with some flowy sleeves and aged her back up, but gave her an indeterminate age. She was now ageless, immortal to an extent, and had a background change again. This time, she was an avatar for the collective "saviors" of mankind, a power pool of previous souls
that would come to save humanity at crucial points of its evolution/development. This has more than a few nods to the same idea in the Wildstorm universe in comic books. She and Alestor have now known each other across the centuries, and its now Alestor's fault her powers went into a minor decline. Still, she's probably the series' most powerful character, which also makes her the most difficult to write since she's essentially an "I Win" button. We put a lot of limitations on her immense pool of powers, such as the Collective being actually quite petty occasionally, and revoking her access to it. She still has a lot of internal magic, its just with her Collective back up, its much more OP.
Her second, retroactive inspiration is also the game series Bayonetta, which Yoko actually tends to have a little in common with. I've begun to overhaul her outfit sets to match up more with the witch character, and to be honest, the fit is quite nice. There's a lot to pull from Bayonetta, so its good to have fresher looks on a character, and more variety of ideas to pull from. In the meantime, Yoko continues to be my go-to for cheesecake pics, sexy pics, and basically anything to do with sex proper. XD There's room to introduce more Bayonetta flavor into the series, as Yoko can sometimes be underused for her appearances, since we're careful not to overuse her abilities. That and its kinda of fun to, like Alestor, have her have amusing deaths, because I'm all about equal opportunity.
First Pass Sketches:
Finalized Designs:
As you can see, the finalized cast is quite varied, and has had its share of major overhauls in the way its come since 2006.
The Secondary Characters
Rebecca Helice
Rebecca was meant to be the 6th member of the office, and is directly an homage to Clock Tower, specifically the "first" one, and Ghost Head. From the start, she had a split personality due to possession of a murderous spirit, a nod to Ghost Head. Her weapon of choice was a pair of oversized shears, a nod to Scissorman. Her specialty was the ability to make traps and have strategic encounters with the paranormal. Additionally, and humorously, she was yandere obsessed with Alestor, to the point of comically killing him at least once an episode in her emphasis that they get together.
In the end, obviously, she was shifted from the team because she had a similar load out to Mei, and it was difficult to work in that jealous girlfriend angle when Mei wasn't even interested in Alestor in the first place. XD I transferred her to Ransom's office, since I didn't want to totally discard her, and felt her obsession could be tempered y being with his doppleganger; she funnily enough doesn't care much for Ransom anyhow. XD She got as far as a 2nd pass with the main cast before I created Ransom and dumped her off in the London office.
Her expertise is now in running the office as a secretary, and cryptid knowledge. Her original surname, Odelle, was a reference to an Apple-II game called Odell Lake (did anyone play it??), but her new last name reflects her possession, Helice which comes from the word "helix"; its a reflection of how her and her spirit are intertwined. For the longest time, her spirit was unnamed until I decided on Lily. No real reason other than it sounded pretty. The name of her school, HG Prepatory, is a reference to the game Haunting Grounds, which has a similar bent to CT.
James Marcus
James was a later addition to the cast by Decon when we started collaborating. He was a new medium, who could pull spirits to him for a possession, and had a small entourage of spirits at the ready to assist him. It was kind of a smaller, more controlled spirit riding possession than Henri's Legion Riding.
He had a short relationship with Mei, but ended the relationship due to not wanting to hurt Henri's blossoming feelings, though one could say, since the sequel series ends up with the 3 of them in a relationship, it wasn't much of a break up. XD
He's actually an on-loan character from Decon's series Heaven's Order, where he has a similar relationship to Gabe Shooter like Henri has to Alestor.
Decon provided the original design, and I worked out 2
designs for him to choose based on what I saw. In the end, like Decon ALWAYS DOES, he chose the harder, messier one. XD
His inspiration was rather minimal to existing series, though the name, his love of leeches (seriously), and his weapon of choice--the beretta 9mm--are homages to Resident Evil, like Leo. But other than those minor touches, James organically evolved to who he is today through a lot of workshopping.
But damn if that boy don't love his leeches. XD!!
Titian
A member of Ransom's office, he was meant to fill a similar position to Leo, in that he was the butt of the jokes and was hard working, yet snarky at his boss when he needed it. I created him to be a homunculus, with the ability to augment his body with things like wings or even tentacles and scarier upgrades to get things done. They're always temporary, so they slough off after a certain time. He's constantly bemoaning his fate of this ability, since his experiments on himself ended up obliterating his genitalia. Still, there are times he does have pride in his origins, even the temporary additions, and has come up with some seriously useful, if frightening, body mutations when the need arises.
His design was rather haphazard in the first time I drew him for an Advent Calendar illustration, so when I had the chance to redesign him, I made more androgynous and good looking. XD Still, he's not the member of Ransom's office that went through the most radical change.
Elizabeth "Liza" Bel-Monte
Liza was also a character that went through a radical physical change, though her background itself is mostly unchanged from her conception. She's an homage to the Castlevania series through surname (Belmont), and is the series' vampire hunter, since I didn't have one in the core team. When first drawn, like Titian, in the original advent pic, she was a blond haired woman. I changed her ethnicity, much like Leo, and wanted her to be more buxom and beautiful, leading to her current design now. She wields a whip, of course, and occupies a similar position to Yoko; one would assume Ransom populated his team with analogues to Alestor's because he needed the help, but unlike Alestor's team that requires them to work together to be at their best, Ransom's piecemeal team can work independently quite splendidly. As a consequence, their group dynamic isn't exactly the same or as family-feeling as Alestor's, though they cameo a lot more.
Ryan Shepherd
Ryan was shipped off to the Pot Sticker franchise for 2 reasons: 1) he wasn't highly developed as a character since all he was good as was alchemy and being a terrible shot, and 2) he was replaced with James, who was also good at alchemy and was a much BETTER shot (in addition to being just better developed). ^^;;;
Yuna Asaka
Also on loan from Decon (this time from the series Barnballows Estate), Yuna makes a cameo to the series in the Miskatonik episodes as a student of Arkham's. She's been aged up a bit, still a college freshman, but studying more in depth about the phenomena that causes reality shifts, and thus a lot of her studies are concerned with Henri and the Legion, as well as many of the campus rituals that go on.
I mainly asked to have her cameo because she's one of my favorite characters Decon has XD. She's a little like Mei, in that she uses cameras, but she's not so much an exorcist with them as she is an investigator. She does have access to a camera like Mei's, on loan from Arkham.
Her outfit sets in the C&C universe are also sourced from Fatal Frame, so i use some outfits from some secondary characters in the series as well as the discarded outfit from the Fatal Frame 2 wiimake, though there are touches of the Zero manga found in there too.
Her original source material is shared with Rebecca, Clock Tower, though Yuna was a much more faithful homage than Rebecca. To that end, a lot of her ingenuity in the C&C series comes from that game, as well as the slightest touch of Sweet Home in the use of the camera for investigation. So really, Yuna has 3 sources: Clock Tower, Fatal Frame, and Sweet Home.
Yuuchirou Kiriyama
One of my other favorite secondary characters is the homage to the totally BRO guy from the 4th Fatal Frame game, Choushiro Kirishima. Yeah, pretty obvious, I know. XD More than the fact I wanted to commemorate such an awesome character, I also wanted use of the awesome flashlight that appeared in both the 4th game, and in the 5th game (though only as a side story with Dead or Alive's Ayane). I wasn't all that subtle with the name, and even occupation and origins: like his source material, Yuu was a police detective and fell to his death. As a Daemon, he has some remarkable mind reading abilities (though he did have inklings of that in life).
As it stands, he's an important character worked into Henri's past (a brother figure for him), and is Arkham's right hand man, since working in the paranormal racket can get dangerous.
The flashlight is pretty much exactly what you see on the tin for the flashlight in the game for Fatal Frame, and even takes some of the camera abilities as part of the design.
Many characters in C&C actually inspired by Fatal Frame and Silent Hill primarily since they're both some of my favorite games of all time. I think they offer a good spread of horror with a distinct japanese flavor (yes even SH XD). Its also because those games really touched emotions in me that resonated well. A lot of the scariest parts of the game aren't the jump scares but the implications of the dark parts of humanity below the surface.
That and I just like the interesting mechanics. XD I owe a lot of my Splatoon 2 skills to Spirit Camera and Fatal Frame 5. And my camera collection.
Harold Peter Arkham (and the Miskatonik Ritual Professors)
Speaking of SH, the professors at Miskatonik are also flavored a bit from their Lovecraftian homages. Arkham and the other professors at the university (most importantly Kingsport, Innsmuth, Newberryport, Worchester, Merrimack, Aylesbury, and of course Dunwich) are named for towns in Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos--some of them are americanized of course XD--but also have first names that come from SH characters (as Arkham is primarily a part of Henri's backstory): Dahlia, Edward/Eddie, Vincent, Walter/Wally, Irene (similar to Eileen), etc. They're introduced rather slowly in the series, and all are responsible for keeping Hell Mouths on the campus nice and shut.
The running in-joke of the series is that the families, being old and have passed down the ritual keeping through family heirs, were in contact with H.P. Lovecraft and he essentially "stole" the surnames for placenames. Perhaps its only funny to me XD.
Locations/etc
As stated, a lot of places in the series are also inspired by many of the aforementioned series/games/etc. Weapons are referenced as being the same as many of the protagonists in the series; cameras in Mei's collection are typed by names derived from the FF game protagonists (Miku, Mio, etc), and Henri and James run with weapons that their source counterparts do in SH and RE.
Places like Miskatonik are obviously borrowed; as stated, even Mei's house's floorplan is essentially the same as Rei Kurosawa's. The floorplan to Ransom's office is modeled on Hisoka's house/shop in Fatal Frame 5. Some placenames are similar to established series: Oak Hill, Minakami General Hospital, Via Dumary Island, etc. I also have the tendency to have 3 placenames I use in a lot of other series that's a throwback to the protagonists/characters in the RPG series Mother: St. Paula, Santa Ana, and San Lukas usually appear as places (St. Paula General Hospital appeared in a Heaven's Order x Creepy & Crawly crossover episode and the name also appears in my fantasy series Boulevard of Distance as a character's hometown).
Everyone in the Department of Paranormal Defense are named for characters in Alone in the Dark, and retroactively, episode 4's mascot for Uncle JD's FUnland is modeled to be a dilapidated jersey devil animatronic in the style of 5 Nights At Freddie's. Every little bit I can throw into the series as a homage and reference is a little easter egg, though I found a lot of enjoyment letting characters and objects, and even the spin offs, to take root and grow past the original homages they were based on. Recently I added to the universe were a Weird West styled series based on the american old west with 2 cowboy exorcists that have US states as names; both of the main characters Ohio and California make cameo appearances in C&C as well as Alestor making a minor cameo in their own series. Misfit Monster Manor has a minor reference to C&C with a low power version of the spirit flashlight that Yuu often uses. Both ideas sprang from totally unrelated ideas I got while dreaming, yet they also seemed to fit in the ever expanding universe. Even music has an inspiriation, as the above image was the cover image for the first HOxC&C crossover episode, which was based on the Meg and Dia song "Yellow Butterfly"; the story takes the song as part of the narrative.
Decon and I have often crossed Heaven's Order characters with C&C's, as they have lots of analogues between the 2 and share a great deal of their universe settings, though they technically operate under different universes (HIkaru, Tai, Yuna, and a few other HO characters do make appearances in the C&C sequel series).
After writing this glut of information I realize a lot went into this series, spanning just over 10 years in development and still growing. Its one of my prides and joy (next to of course E.Q. XD), and I can't wait to see what new inspirations and the coming years will bring to it. Here's to another 10 years, Alestor and gang!
One of the original paintings done in the series' development; a still life of all the things that made Alestor...well, Alestor, from the cane, to the flask and alcohol, to the trademark fedora. 6x6 acrylic on strathmore board.
--Dio (10/24/17)
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