MI-GO

MI-GO

"They were pinkish things about five feet long; with crustaceous bodies bearing vast pairs of dorsal fins or membranous wings and several sets of articulated limbs, and with a sort of convoluted ellipsoid, covered with multitudes of very short antennae, where a head would ordinarily be."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Whisperer In Darkness

When I first started this blog way back in 2008 I had started with some essential Lovecraftian monsters; ie shoggoth, deep one, elder thing etc. Of that first batch, the mi-go gave me the most trouble. While elder things have the longest & most complicated description, I just couldn't land on a design for the mi-go that was satisfying for me. My first attempt (at a lot of these creatures, not just the mi-go) was way more loose. My second attempt I paid more attention to HPLs description (ie he never says they have mouths) and in my third attempt I leaned more into the fungus aspect rather than the crustacean aspect. 

All that is to say, I finally landed on a design I liked with the 3rd and this final redrawing is simply a new pass at cleaner lines, brighter colors and crisper rendering. Of all these redrawing, this one is probably the most unnecessary and the differences will only be noticeable to me. Above, you'll see the newest version on the left and the older version on the right. The linework has been slightly simplified, the rendering less fussy and some atmosphere added to push the far set of limbs back in space slightly.

The Whisperer In Darkness was first published in Weird Tales in April 1931 with an illustration by C.C. Send. I depicts Nyarlathotep's costume but not the mi-go. That's not to say people haven't taken a stab at it. 

The first illustration above is from The Call Of Cthulhu RPG (unfortunately the illustrations are hard to attribute since the artists are simply listed in the front of the book without specific credits), the second is a Tom Sullivan illustration from Petersen's Field Guide To Cthulhu Monsters and the last is a still from the excellent film adaptation of The Whisperer In Darkness by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.