User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-6032121-20181225225131

So, Channel Pup, on YouTube, released a video a few days ago entitled That time I created a Doctor Who Villain | Love and Monsters Retrospective Review, wherein they got William Grantham (then-9-year-old designer of the Abzorbaloff) to share his thoughts on Love & Monsters. I can't link to it because policy, but it's quite an interesting watch.

Aside from showcasing Grantham's opinions on the episode — of which a summary might, I think, be of interest on either his page or the Love & Monsters one — the video also gives more details about his original conception of the Abzorbaloff. He confirms the "double-decker bus-sized" assessment, describing him as "King Kong-sized". The monster was also, again in his original conception, meant to be "fluid-like" and to be a nonverbal monster of pure rage; the 'cane-wielding businessman' depiction of the finished episode really took him aback, though he liked it as a creation in its own right. The video includes a recent piece of concept artwork (I think by Grantham? it's not made clear) recreating his original vision with more polished artistic skill than the old nine-year-old-kid sketch we're all familiar with.

Fun fact, Grantham also mentions that Clom was originally supposed to be "Zom"; it was changed to Som, and eventually into Clom, at some point into production without input from, or explanation to, him.

But anyway, the problem is that I'm not entirely sure this video passes our policies for adding to our video library. It features quite a lot of stills from the episode and I don't think they were licensed to the BBC. And what's more, Tardis's policy is that you can't link to off-site videos that you're not allowed to upload to begin with. So how can we source all these interesting facts that really deserve to be added to the relevant pages?

(Along the same lines, I honestly have no idea how whatever "contract" they got Grantham to sign at the time works; does he have the right to make his own Abzorbaloff painting? Because if he doesn't, I don't think we're allowed to post the image I mentioned, even though it really is quite interesting…)