Part 4 - Goblins in a Natural World
In Katharine Briggs’ “Faeries 101″ book, An Encyclopedia of Fairies, she describes goblins as:

“A general name for evil and malicious spirits, usually small and grotesque in appearance…”

Using what few visual descriptions I could find, I began thinking and designing. From the start, I made them less human and more animal-like. As I’ve said before, there were plenty of great examples of humanoid goblins, and my designs would break no new ground down that path. Besides, I wanted my designs to speak to readers who may not be fans of fantasy. So I attempted to create for a broader audience and I tapped into more primal and instinctive imagery based on general ideas about goblins.

General Goblin Belief #1:
“Goblins are usually active at night”

Okay, so what animals do we know of are active at night? I could give them large ominous eyes like a bush-baby, or I could give them pale, pupil-less eyes like those found on deep-sea fish. That’s much spookier. In fact, anglerfish in general are creepy looking. Their fleshy skin tags and patterning are ideal for camouflage- something a goblin would need to use to avoid detection. I bet they can change this pattern like a flounder to blend in seamlessly with their background so they can’t be spotted easily even with a seeing stone.

General Goblin Belief #2:
“Goblins are ugly creatures”

Hmmmm. As are toads and frogs (at least by most human standards - think of the cursed Frog Prince), so that was a good starting point. Bat’s faces are usually grotesque and conjure up images of nocturnal activity, plus they’ve plenty of extra-sensory whiskers which may prove handy - especially if these guys are blind. How about extra simple eyes for motion detection like those found on insects and spiders? That would be creepy.

General Goblin Belief #3:
” Goblins are mischief makers”

To indicate that they weren’t just ignorant bipedal frogs, I showed that they knew how to fashion tools and weapons and even understood artifacts gathered from humankind’s wake of refuse - hence the discarded scarf which I thought added a somewhat humorous contrast to such a gnarly critter.

Lastly, I wanted to add something interesting to the folklore. Nowhere did I read that goblins are born without teeth. In fact, it would probably make more sense if they were born with teeth, perhaps even shedding them like a shark. But, I wanted to create an unusual and memorable natural feature to them…Besides, glass, bone, and metal shards were much more gruesome than just plain old teeth.

Part 5 - I Finally Add Something to Goblindom

Some day the Spiderwick goblins may be remembered in the annals of faerie lore, perhaps not from my book illustrations, but from the film adaptation - I suppose only time will tell.

However, to see my designs brought to life in the hands of master animators who understands how muscle, fat, and bone should move in a convincing manner is a dream-come-true for me. And I think the fact that Phil Tippett used a literal translation of my goblin designs is the highest praise this movie FX Jedi could give me. I know the 12 year-old Tony would be very happy indeed.

Part 3 - Designing Between the Lines

Living in New York City, and contributing regularly to Magic cards, I was working hard to expand myself on becoming a “more painterly” illustrator and not just be bound by pen & ink.

That in mind, I took a lot of life-drawing classes, and frequented the Museum of Natural History where I copied many of the mounted animal specimens. It was here that I began to seriously think about goblins and fairies viewed through the eye of a naturalist as my next big book.

The idea was not new to me: As I’ve mentioned before, I created a field guide to fantastical creatures when I was 13. I returned to that idea in my Planscape heyday and thought of selling the idea to TSR (who published the games). I continued doodling on the idea and began the list of creatures I would like to attempt rendering with John James Audubon-like detail…but I still was not satisfied with my technical ability, and the project was re-shelved until my children’s book career began to take off and I was feeling more confident with my drawing and painting skills.

But another aspect had been added to my problem solving which would prove to be integral to arriving at my final gobliny designs. During my years of illustrating for D&D, I had learned how to use the art descriptions that were assigned to me, yet re-invent them in a novel sort of way.

I started by isolating the exact points that were stated in the art descriptions. For instance: “this creature is large, blue skinned, and has yellow eyes”, and then exploit what was not said, what was between the lines of text - so its large, but is it obese large? Or muscular large? Okay its blue, but is it a subtle de-saturated blue like a faded flower? Or brilliant like a tropical fish? You get the idea…and I always attempted the unexpected.

This thinking worked great - it allowed me to exercise myself creatively while still satisfying the game designers who really had rules and technical aspects in mind more than neat designs. After all, these images were aspects for a game.

In prepping for Spiderwick, I took that same thinking and applied it to whatever folklore I could find. You see, I didn’t want the Spiderwick goblins (or any creatures for that matter) to be contrary to the rich stories and tales that had preceded them, but contribute to the long-running folklore.

The project slowly came into focus and I set a challenge for myself: Could I take a bunch of well-known, hackneyed, and trite fantasy creatures (many of which I had already illustrated) and redesign them to be fresh and exciting to the savvy CGI-movie-watching-video-game-playing 10 year-old of today?

Part 2 - I Contribute to Goblindom

Well, not really. My early work for Dungeons & Dragons and even my work on the card game Magic the Gathering is just a regurgitation of goblins I had seen before. Simple, iconic images intended to be instantly recognized for what they were.

In the case of the illustration for 1994’s Monstrous Manual, I (very crudely) re-interpreted Trampier’s goblin, however mine fails by lacking any action or movement of its inspiration.

Goblins also made infrequent appearances in the Planescape role-playing game. Though they were pretty close in appearance to their D&D cousins. I think the only difference here is that my technical skill was clearly improving.

By the late 90’s, I started contributing regularly to the Magic the Gathering card game. There, goblins seemed to abound, and I was assigned to create them myself…

…or use pre-existing designs from the team of conceptual artists. In all cases, I felt the design needed to be simple and immediate due to the function of the art: “This is a goblin and it can cause X to your opponent’s hand”.

At this time I was also seriously working on my first children’s books and my sketchbooks began to fill with doodles for kid’s book characters right alongside my fantastical Magic sketches.

It was the first image completed (and is one of the designs I am most proud of) in Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide - and it was brought to life by the magic team of movie FX wizards at Phil Tippett’s studio - the Spiderwick goblins. Or Diabolus vulgaris from the family Adentidae, as Arthur identified them in his Guide to the fantastical world.

But how did I arrive at a new design for a creature that has been rendered countless times in books, movies, games and toys?

I’d like to share some of the thinking that went into it as it exemplifies the philosophy I used when designing many of the creatures in the world of The Spiderwick Chronicles. My hope is only to inspire others to think out-of-the-box in keeping fantasy alive, fresh, and evolving through exciting design.

Part 1 - Goblins of my childhood

I know I was introduced to goblins and fairies at a very young age through fairy tales read to me by my mom, like those of the Brothers Grimm and Andrew Lang. But one of the first images of a goblin that stuck in my mind was David Trampier’s pen & ink illustration for 1980’s Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual (something I’ve already reminisced about in previous posts). In fact, I still have a drawing I copied from that book when I was 12 years old.

The D&D goblins were impish and combat attired. My guess is that they, like many of the D&D humanoids, were inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s world of Middle Earth. Yet, C.S. Lewis also mentions goblin-like creatures of the night in his Narnia books…though they may be more demon-like when one looks deeper into Lewis’ thinking behind those stories.

Even movies of that time, like Legend and Labyrinth, have goblins that are similar in nature - the latter, of course, were designed by the faerie mastermind Brian Froud. Brian’s goblins are more silly and humorous grotesques, possibly inspired by gargoyles that adorn many of the churches and ancient buildings in England. Or, perhaps, the British grand master of fey illustration, Arthur Rackham, inspired him.

In most cases, even in images earlier than these examples, designs were built upon a small, ugly humanoid (usually green) creature whose motivations run from no-good mischief to malicious intent. Even the Green Goblin in the Spiderman comics pretty much falls into this category - and he was really just a maligned human.