I don’t know why, exactly, but it seems like most adolescent boys, including the ones that remain in charge of some part of us as adults, love a good monster. A lot of girls like monsters too, of course, but it seems much more ingrained in boys.

Perhaps it’s some primal urge to slay the demons threatening our family/village/tribe/species that compels our fascination with monsters, or maybe it’s just the gee-whiz wow cool factor. Regardless, most of us, even as “responsible adults” have to admit that we like to see a good monster now and then.

Daryl Mandryk paints good monsters, as well as nasty zombies, giant ice warriors, menacing mecha, rampaging bots, evil aliens and all manner of deliciously threatening beasties. All of which, of course, make for the ideal stock in trade of today’s gaming market.

Mandryk is a concept artist for the gaming industry, and has worked on games like Def Jam Fight, SSX on Tour, Need for Speed Underground 2, and Def Jam Vendetta for EA Games. He is currently a senior concept artist for Propaganda Games where he is working on a new game listed under the working title of Turok, which I hope means it is a version of those great old Turok, Son of Stone Indians and Dinosaurs comic books.

Mandryk has also done illustrations for fantasy and gaming publications and his work was the subject of a recent feature article and tutorial in Imagine FX Magazine.

Mandryk started out working with 3-D modeling, but has shifted into direct digital painting in Painter and Photoshop, as well as working in traditional media.

The galleries on his site are arranged by date, and include sections of older work, sketches and figure drawings from life. The highlights, though, are the nicely scary monsters, demons, and otherworldly nasties that crawl out of his electronic paintbrush.