omg i love dis question hehe thank you first of all!

coming up with them is really not too complicated of a process depending on what i already have to work with particularly in terms of the members representative animalsonas or mascots and personas!
riize’s were the most fun ive had to date, because their mascots are a combination of several elements of their idol images! for instance, when i created rock-hopper for eunseok, i was able to carve out a character that wasnt just a humanoid rock (lol) based off of the fact that aside from rock imagery being tied to him, his persona in the group is one that from the outside is a bit enigmatic, but for those who know him is one of stability, consistency, kindness, comfort. so i wanted his monster design to echo those things, hence why rock hoppers danger level is so low and it is im fact seen as a benevolent but silent protector rather than an antagonist.
sometimes, though, design choices and danger levels are purely just totally new concepts that reflect or heavily exaggerate really understated elements of the idols, their personas, and/or their mascots, like urak-bam and red duck.

enha was MUCH more difficult for me to monsterify, i will say. this MAY be because
ive only been with the group for a month now and theres still things i have to learn about them, so i jumped the gum instead of waiting for more lore to come out to help substantiate their creature design, but either way. i didnt want to repeat a bunch of design choices i made with riiz, which was very difficult and still happened, and i also had to make non-human and non-anima creatures just based off of HUMAN traits and ANIMAL sonas 😭 so to be quite honest with you their designs may go back in the oven to bake a little longer. i still dont even have jay figured out 😭 its been an uphill battle with them a bit.

funnily enough, i dont draw from actual korean folklore when designing monstersonas, which would be cool! but i stick strictly to creating entirely new mythos with little apparent basis in existing monsters except minute elements like sunoo’s many tails or the fact that heeseung, eunseok and jake could all be considered variations of the -taur monster. i think ive only broken this streak with manticat, however all of enhas monster designs suffer from being very derivative as at the time i was designing them i felt like i had nothing to work with (this is my fault, i couldve definitely tried harder if i wanted to 🥲)

lastly, monsters arent a big interest for me, at least i dont think so, based on how i define “big interest”. i dont know much about them from culture to culture, i could only name a tiny handful of well-known ones off the top of my head 😭 my actual big interest i would say is just creature design. i did a lot of it in my courses in college since at one point i wanted to be a concept artist, and ever since then ive been hooked! i have a fascination with the animal anatomy aspect of it, hence why my monsters typically feature recognizable animal traits. i am trying to make creatures whose combination of traits Works, as in they don’t look TOO much like theyre just a bunch of noticeably disparate elements smashed together. and another huge part of it is the speculative biology. of course bc theyre essentially cryptids, im allowed to introduce concepts that go against our understanding of biology + physics (like red duck’s ability to make its wings look like a cloak, or bear-hare’s ability to disguise itself as a bear just with the use of a little mask).

anyways im sorry if this reply ran long 😭 i LOVEEEE when ppl are interested in my creature design—at the moment, i’m more
proud of my designs and backstories for riize as i put the right amount of effort into them to make everything complex cohesive and believable. im workshopping enha, but its still a LOT of fun and im so soso happy when my little side interest in creature design/speculative biology is noticed hehe