About the time that I started working on my Bigfoot project (Guess Who's Back), I developed these intrusive thoughts about a Mothman project. I was fully in my cryptid era, so this wasn't surprising.
I had a very distinct idea of how it would look– textural, blotchy, a little messy.
I kept returning to the idea and telling myself, you should draw up some storyboards, but I never did. I saw it so clearly in my head and I feared that committing the idea to Procreate would dilute it. Or it would spiral into something much bigger than it needed to be. I could sense that the project was more a vibe than anything else.
By the time I found myself procrastinating at my desk when I was supposed to be doing admin work, I opened Animate and said, let's make this Mothman thing happen. I didn't lay in key frames, instead I just started roughly animating straight ahead. We weren't going for something narrative so much as something atmospheric.
What appeals to me about Mothman is that he's really sort of a neutral. He's neither good nor evil, but his presence suggests an impending chaos. He's an omen, a lurker, a watcher. (And then maybe Indrid Cold will show up, or other equally strange Men in Black, but we're less concerned with them.)
Once I had maybe half of it roughed out, I started looking for music. Something to keep the enthusiasm going and to flesh out that atmosphere so much so that it became fully realized. I can't explain how I settled on this surf rock stock track, but once I heard it, it just felt right. I tried out more characteristically spooky tracks that could have worked just fine but they simply weren't the vibe that the surf track brought.
Background painted in Procreate
The background was going to be just as much of a character as Mothman. I wanted something dark and nebulous, less a location, but more a time of day and weather. Mothman isn't lurking on placid sunny days, after all. There needed to be a suggestion of a coming storm, or a particularly foggy evening.