I’ve been a fan of Undertale since mid-2021. A few months after downloading Undertale on dad’s computer, I created my own original characters for use in my custom area for my cancelled Undertale fangame, 256!Underlove, which is Rock Avenue.

To give some background, Synthesia’s mother and Alistair’s father both worked on a project called ‘Rock Avenue’ in the 2000s while they and other monsters were still trapped underground. The purpose of this project was to serve as a luxury estate where monsters can enjoy authentic human culture, including human technology, human cuisine and music made by humans (examples include credit cards, kimchi and K-pop). Rock Avenue would be inspired by the Italian cave city, Matera which would be mostly composed of rocks and caves, complete with modern and luxurious buildings and houses. Since then, the project leaders had became mayors of the new estate.

Synthesia and Alistair, the children of Rock Avenue’s project leaders serve as Rock Avenue’s tour guides. Synthesia and Alistair had been best friends since Synthesia’s mother and Alistair’s father met to collaborate on the project. Synthesia (left) is a female hyena-like monster who is basically a Koreaboo as she enjoys Korean culture such as kimchi, K-pop and K-dramas. Synthesia is also creative whenever she cooks and likes to dress up in a fancy manner, her favourite accessory being her glitter jacket. Alistair (right) is a male lion-like monster whose favourite country is Italy and as such, he enjoys pizza and making Renaissance sculptures, even of himself. Alistair also enjoys rock music and carries a guitar everywhere he goes.

Unlike most monsters, Synthesia and Alistair love humans and had been hoping to meet one to showcase their parents’ project, Rock Avenue. Despite this, Synthesia’s mother and Alistair’s father highly disapprove of their liking towards humans, given that some of the previous fallen humans had killed Synthesia’s father and Alistair’s mother prior to the Rock Avenue project leaders meeting each other.

In this artwork I am showcasing the six monster friends of Rock Avenue and for each character, there will be one version which is my original design from December 2021 and another which is my recently remade design (October 2024). The monster friends are:

1. Synthesia (top left) - A female hyena-like monster who is basically a Koreaboo as she enjoys Korean culture such as kimchi, K-pop and K-dramas. She also cooks in a creative manner and likes to dress up fancily, her favorite accessory being her glitter jacket, along with her green belly button gem. For some reason I thought of her name being "Synthesia" when the said name went into my head. Although "Synthesia" was also a name for a MIDI piano software, I still think that this name suits her since it sounds feminine and that it shares a common root with the word, "synthetic", which can mean imitating something natural. And besides, even though monsters do not necessarily have nationalities unlike us humans, Synthesia likes to think that she is Korean (which is a human nationality by the way). Synthesia also goes by the Korean name: "Habseong" (Korean: 합성).

2. Alistair (top right) - A male lion-like monster whose favorite country is Italy and as such, he enjoys pizza and making Renaissance sculptures, even of himself. Alistair also enjoys rock music and carries a guitar everywhere he goes. Additionally, he likes to show off his "sexy" abs to seduce others in his surroundings. The name "Alistair" was the first thing that came to my mind when trying to think of a name for the character. Despite the character's Italian theme, his name, "Alistair", as specified by Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair) comes from a Scottish origin, not Italian.

3. Lalacorn (formerly Lolicorn; middle left) - A female unicorn-like monster who has a passion of music and dancing! Occasionally she would visit random places within Rock Avenue to ask others for a dance, even strangers! She is also a skilled ice skater and could do impressive tricks with her roller blades. When coming up with the character's name back in 2021, I went with "Lolicorn" for her name as it is a portmanteau for two words: "Unicorn" for what she looks like and "Lollipop" for her sweet appearance. However, this year I altered her name because the "Loli" part of the "Lolicorn" name may have pedophilic undertones. The new name is now "Lalacorn", a portmanteau of "Unicorn" for her species and "La La Land" for the 2016 American romantic musical comedy, which fits the character's interests.

4. Monetic (formerly Monatik; middle right) - A male monkey-like monster who enjoys playing sports and dreams of becoming a popular athlete in the Underground. However, he is known to be overconfident and sometimes clumsy. Regardless, he is very determined and regularly practices to subside his flaws. Back in 2021, while thinking of a name for the character, I came up with "Monatik", which was already a stage name for Ukrainian singer, Dmytro Serhiiovych Monatyk. I thought "Monatik" as a name would be suitable since it has the same first three letters as the word: "monkey", which is what the character is. This year, I made a slight alteration to the monkey monster's name, which is now "Monetic", a portmanteau of "Monkey" for his species and "kinetic" which is defined as motion and relates to sports.

5. Shyliac (formerly Shybat; bottom left) - A female bat-like monster who is timid and shy. In contrast to Monetic, Shyliac has rather low self-esteem and she can be emotionally sensitive. If there are some things she likes, that would be blowing some balloons and being tickled! When coming up with the character's name in 2021, I opted for "Shybat" as the character is basically a shy bat. I realized that the name I came up with came off as rather lazy for a monster's name. The new name is now "Shyliac", a portmanteau of "shy", which defines the character's core personality and "Liliac", the Romanian translation of "bat".

6. Mingli (formerly Kungfur; bottom right) - A male mink-like monster who dreams of becoming a popular movie star of the Underground, much like Mettaton is for the Underground's "sole celebrity". Despite his dreams, his family pressures him to pursue medicine instead, which Mingli would consider annoying and rather manipulative. His hobby is perfoming Kung Fu stunts in public, usually to impress everyone around his surroundings. My reason for choosing "Kungfur" as the character's name in 2021 was due to the fact that the name is a portmanteau of "Kung fu", which is Chinese martial arts and "fur" because the monster has fur like animals do. I thought I could do much better than a lazy name like that, so I changed his name to "Mingli", a portmanteau of "Míngkè" (Chinese: 明克), the Chinese translation of "mink" and "Lee" (Chinese: 李), a Chinese family surname which I have and it could also be a reference to Bruce Lee, a martial artist from Hong Kong.

What do you think of the characters? Do you prefer their original designs from 2021 or their remade designs?

© 2015-2024 Toby Fox
© 2013-2024 Fangamer
© 2017-2024 8-4 Ltd.