MONSTERS, MURDER SCENES AND A VERY BAD DAY AT THE WAREHOUSE

There is a wonderfully disreputable sweep to Brad McDevitt Stock Art – Horror Collection 2.

It has traditional monsters, modern nightmares, cosmic horrors, witches, vampires, cultists, grisly discoveries and a demonic clown. It also has a mad scientist and a strangely coloured surgeon, because medical professionals in horror seldom appear merely to recommend rest and plenty of fluids.

The download contains 25 distinct illustrations: 24 TIFF files and one PNG. There are no obvious duplicate variants padding the numbers. Each file brings a different character, creature or scene to the collection.

The result is broad enough to serve several projects rather than requiring you to cram warehouse deaths, alien fungi, murderous bandages and a headless horseman into the same adventure.

Though, now that I write that, it does have possibilities.

THE CONTENTS

The collection includes:

• Warehouse Death

• Pierced Vampiress

• Dumpster Discovery

• Murderous Wrappings

• Headless Horseman

• Interrupted Cultists

• Troll

• Monster Gator

• Oni

• Lavinda

• Mutated Hand

• Torn-Up Zombie

• Extreme Cyberpunk Pierced Girl

• Laughing Witch

• Modern Punk Demon

• Dire Wolf

• Byakhee

• Grey Surgeon – colourised

• Super Vampire

• Elder Being

• Mad Scientist

• Savaged Remains

• Elder Thing – no background

• Mi-Go

• Demonic Clown

Those are the supplied filenames, tidied for display. They are useful labels, not instructions carved into stone. Rename the characters, alter the context and make the artwork serve your project rather than the other way around.

DEATH LEAVES A MESS

Several pieces show the discovery, aftermath or inconvenient continuation of violent death.

Warehouse Death, Dumpster Discovery and Savaged Remains can all carry crime scenes, chapter openings or the initial revelation that something has gone horribly wrong.

Warehouse Death is well suited to industrial horror, modern investigation or an incident in a place where the machinery provides ample opportunity for both accident and concealment. The title tells us where and roughly what; the particulars are yours.

Dumpster Discovery gives you the classic urban opening: somebody has found something unpleasant among the rubbish. A body, part of a body, evidence of feeding or the discarded remains of an experiment all fit. It is the sort of image that can start an investigation before the first game statistic appears.

Savaged Remains suggests violence of a less orderly sort. Animal attack, monster feeding, ritual mutilation or a crime staged to resemble any of those are all plausible uses.

Then there is the Torn-Up Zombie, for situations where death has already occurred and proven insufficiently decisive. It can illustrate a bestiary entry, outbreak, isolated undead encounter or a corpse that keeps moving despite having lost several persuasive arguments with edged weapons.

The Mutated Hand works well as evidence. A whole monster announces itself. A hand on a mortuary tray raises questions. Was its owner human? Is the mutation spreading? Is the rest of the creature still alive?

More importantly: where is it?

THE CLASSIC MONSTERS HAVE NOT GONE AWAY

The Headless Horseman, Murderous Wrappings, Troll, Dire Wolf and Oni give the collection a solid grounding in recognisable horror and folklore.

The Headless Horseman can ride through gothic horror, dark fantasy, historical adventures or modern supernatural stories. He may be a revenant, curse, omen or singularly committed road-safety problem.

Murderous Wrappings points towards a wrapped undead creature without binding you to one particular mythology. Tomb guardian, animated mummy, strangling bandages or a curse taking physical form would all suit the image.

The Troll and Dire Wolf can go directly into bestiaries, wilderness encounters or darker fantasy material. Both are useful crossover pieces: horrific enough for a monster book, familiar enough to require little introductory fuss.

The Oni gives you a Japanese folkloric presence for games drawing upon supernatural Japan, urban fantasy or broader collections of demons and ogres. It can be used traditionally or transplanted into a modern setting where its appearance is rather harder to explain to the authorities.

None of these creatures require an elaborate new cosmology before they become useful. Sometimes you simply need something large, violent and already on the wrong side of the door.

HORROR FROM OUTSIDE THE HUMAN ARRANGEMENT

The Byakhee, Elder Being, Elder Thing and Mi-Go give this collection a strong cosmic-horror contingent.

They suit ancient alien races, forbidden expeditions, things summoned from elsewhere and creatures whose biology makes the human body look almost sensibly designed.

The Byakhee can serve as a flying servitor, extraterrestrial predator or summoned creature. Put one above an isolated farmhouse, inside a ritual chamber or circling an archaeological site and the scene immediately acquires problems.

The Mi-Go belongs naturally in stories of alien surgery, stolen brains, hidden colonies and scientific knowledge acquired at a price no university ethics committee would approve.

The Elder Being and Elder Thing offer broader, stranger creature art. They can populate a bestiary, illustrate recovered records or appear as the moment when investigators finally see what all the impossible tracks belonged to.

The Elder Thing is the collection’s single PNG file and is labelled “no background”. That makes it particularly handy for flexible placement in layouts, though the licence should still be checked before any alteration or redistribution.

Cosmic monsters tend to be difficult commission subjects. Too specific and they look like somebody else’s interpretation; too vague and the artist produces an angry squid. Having several ready-made creatures available can save both money and an awkward sequence of emails concerning the correct number of appendages.

VAMPIRES, WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT PEOPLE

Three very different vampire pieces appear here:

• Pierced Vampiress

• Super Vampire

• Lavinda

The first brings vampirism into a modern alternative or countercultural setting. She can be a predator, player character, nightclub regular, gang member or somebody who has had several decades to perfect her look.

Super Vampire suggests something more physically formidable: an elder, transformed predator, combat-oriented bloodsucker or creature that has abandoned subtle feeding in favour of direct assault.

The file named Lavinda appears to be another female horror character, but the filename does not define her nature. She might be vampiric, undead, cursed or entirely human. This is precisely where stock art earns its freedom: use the mood and appearance without inheriting an unwanted biography.

The Laughing Witch can be sinister, triumphant, deranged or simply delighted that the investigators have performed exactly the ritual she needed. She fits occult horror, dark fantasy, urban witchcraft and stories where the apparently harmless local eccentric turns out to have been right about everything.

These characters give you monsters who can talk, negotiate, deceive and enter places without knocking the wall down first. That generally makes them more dangerous than the large ones.

PUNK, CYBERPUNK AND THE MODERN DEMONIC

The Modern Punk Demon and Extreme Cyberpunk Pierced Girl drag the collection firmly into contemporary and near-future territory.

The punk demon could be an actual infernal creature, a transformed club-goer, a member of a supernatural subculture or the sort of entity that treats summoning circles as invitations to gigs. It suits urban fantasy particularly well because it looks adapted to the world rather than freshly imported from a medieval manuscript.

The cyberpunk figure can become an augmented street character, investigator, ganger, mercenary or survivor of technological body modification. The artwork can work in science fiction, modern horror or settings where surgery, fashion and self-defence have become difficult to tell apart.

These pieces pair naturally with the Grey Surgeon and Mad Scientist.

The colourised Grey Surgeon could be an alien physician, underground operator, experimental specialist or supposed healer whose methods explain why the consent form was several pages longer than expected.

The Mad Scientist needs no defence. Laboratories, reanimation, mutation, unethical surgery and attempts to improve humanity against its wishes are all available.

Together, these images can furnish a medical-horror adventure almost by themselves: altered patients, illicit procedures, strange remains and a surgeon whose species remains uncertain.

CULTISTS AND CLOWNS

Interrupted Cultists captures one of horror gaming’s perennial pleasures: bursting into a ritual halfway through and trying to work out whether stopping it would make matters better or worse.

The illustration can introduce:

• A sacrificial rite

• An occult gathering

• A summoning

• A secret religious ceremony

• An operation the characters have comprehensively misunderstood

It is useful as a scene rather than merely a portrait. A scene gives the reader activity, context and several unanswered questions at once.

The Demonic Clown, meanwhile, requires almost no salesmanship. Clowns already sit close enough to horror that adding demonic qualities feels less like transformation and more like administrative clarification.

It can work in carnival horror, urban fantasy, nightmare sequences, occult satire or a monster book requiring something unpleasantly cheerful.

The clown may be possessed. It may be a demon wearing the form. It may simply be a terrible person with supernatural abilities.

None of the options improve matters.

BUILDING A BOOK OUT OF THE COLLECTION

This is a particularly practical assortment because it contains more than isolated monster portraits.

There are scenes, bodies, evidence, human-scale characters and full creatures. That lets you vary the look of a book rather than presenting twenty-five consecutive suspects against empty backgrounds.

Use Warehouse Death or Dumpster Discovery to open an investigation. Drop in the Mutated Hand as evidence. Introduce the Grey Surgeon and Mad Scientist as suspects. Let the cultists provide the first explanation, then reveal that their ritual was intended to keep the Elder Being asleep.

The vampires can populate a modern faction, the folkloric creatures can fill a bestiary and the cosmic monsters can occupy the later chapters where everything becomes considerably less manageable.

Or scatter the files across separate publications. A Headless Horseman adventure has no obligation to share a page with the Mi-Go. Stock art exists to be useful, not to enforce editorial unity by threat.

For an independent publisher, 25 distinct illustrations can cover a substantial part of a modest book. They can break up dense text, give memorable characters a face and leave the commissioning budget free for the cover or those handful of images that must match the manuscript precisely.

Bespoke art remains ideal.

Being able to afford the rest of the book is also quite nice.

THE PRACTICAL COUNT

The download contains:

• 25 distinct image files

• 24 TIFF files

• 1 PNG file

• No duplicate colour or greyscale variants apparent in the preview

The Elder Thing is the PNG and is labelled as having no background. All other listed pieces are TIFF files.

Some illustrations may also appear in other Brad McDevitt collections where they fit more than one genre.

LICENCE

The collection is supplied for personal and professional projects under the attached licence.

Read the licence before publication, particularly its terms concerning credit, modification and redistribution. Purchasing stock art gives you licensed use of the images; it does not generally mean you can repackage the raw files and sell them to somebody else with a jaunty new folder name.

You can find more creatures, characters and assorted visual misfortunes in the wider Brad McDevitt Stock Art range and the other horror stock-art collections.

The cultists have been interrupted.

The scientist has lost control of the experiment.

The clown is still smiling.

At least your layout no longer looks like a legal document.