Grosse Augen was clearly an Ultraman analog. It turns out the design work that went into him is really neat as it digs into the original concept for Ultraman.
Concrete Revolutio has this cool Ultraman analog with an interesting name: Grosse Augen. I looked it up and it might just be German for “Big Eyes.” Cute. His design stems very much from the initial design concepts for Ultraman.
The Ultraman Wiki sources a lot of this information for August Ragone’s Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters.
The original design was a cross between Garuda, a mythological Hindu/Buddhist guardian bird, and Tengu, a Japanese folkloric crow-goblin. Eiji Tsuburaya found the early versions of Ultraman’s design to be too alien and sinister and requested that production designer Tohl Narita draft something more benevolent, despite teleplays already being written. Narita took inspiration from classical Greek art, ancient Egypt, the European Renaissance, and Miyamoto Musashi.
This article on Den of Geek contains Ultraman concept art. I can’t tell where it comes from and I can’t read the Japanese on it, but the design to the far left does look like a Garuda to me. I can see the similarities between it and the Grosse Augen design.
Official Concrete Revolutio Website
Visit my RedBubble store for some designs I have made. I am working on making a whole series of Comic stuff that I think you’ll like.
MJ Muñoz 