I. M. Meen - The Many Faces of Meen

I. M. Meen is very, very egotistical.

He constantly cheats, steals, and deceives in order to make himself look like a better magician than he really is. He hastily writes self-aggrandizing, self-insert fiction that is bad enough to cause physical harm to its readers. All of the bosses in the game are either I. M. Meen himself or his special creations, which all bear his likeness anyways. His magic labyrinth is covered with portraits, be they busts or stained glass windows.

Something interesting starts to emerge when you look at the ways that I. M. Meen depicts himself throughout his labyrinth and creations. It appears that his design gradually changed throughout development, and there's enough examples of his mug to make a timeline of his theoretical evolution.
Let's check it out.

Categories:

First Design (concept) -- Weird Transitional Design (earring only) -- Second Design (drooping hair) -- Third Design (hair w/o sideburns) -- Final Design -- Menu Oddities

First Design (concept)

The best place to start would be the earliest known design of I. M. Meen himself. That would be this piece of concept art:

This art was posted on Twitter in 2018, alongside artwork for a nearly-finalized Gnorris. It shows a radically different, much creepier version of I. M. Meen's design. The source of the artwork was never publicly stated, and I haven't been able to find it in my many travels and searches. Let me know if you find the source!
(I also had to approximate its original .PNG/.BMP/.GIF appearance from a 2x .JPG, which probably doesn't help...)

Obviously, this design was greatly simplified and "cartoon-ified" into the I. M. Meen we all know and love. But was this design actually used for any of the in-game Meen depictions?

I believe it was, and it was the basis for all of Meen's "special creations" that the player encounters throughout the game. Other from Trollmeen, the creations share an identical bald head that looks more like the concept art than I. M. Meen's finalized design. However, they don Meen's signature earring which isn't present in the art...

...though there are a few instances where the earring is missing. Vegemeen (left) uses a creepier face for his walking and melee atttack animations, while his projectile attack animation uses the stock-standard bald Meen head w/ earring (more on that later). Frankenmeen (center-left) has more sprites that lack the signature earring than the ones that actually have it. Meenotaur's death frame (center-right) lacks the earring. And, finally, Count Meenula's bat attack and first death animation frame (right) have a missing earring.

It becomes apparent that these sprites were made without the earring at first - taking inspiration from the original concept design - and only had them added when Meen's design was overhauled. But as you can see, the process was not perfect. On that note...

Weird Transitional Design (earring only)

The rest of the boss sprites (minus Trollmeen) are stuck in a transitional state where they have the realistic bald-headed design of concept Meen, but have the earring of finalized Meen. Here they are:

From left to right - the sprites for Batmeen, Count Meenula, Frankenmeen, Meenmouth, Meenotaur, Sludgemeen, and Vegemeen

I don't think that this "bald + earring" design was actually an evolutionary step like the others listed on this page. Rather, it fees like a slapdash attempt to make the bosses look more like Meen's final design. Special note goes to Vegemeen (furthest right), who sports an entirely new face when throwing his thorns but uses his creepier face for the other animations. I wonder how this inconsistency was left in the game...?

Let's move onto a more familiar I. M. Meen design!

Second Design (drooping hair)

Finally, we have a design of I. M. Meen that resembles the one we all know and love(?)... though something feels off. Did he get a haircut?

From left to right - I. M. Meen's in-game sprite, Trollmeen, the purple Meen stained glass texture, and the statue item on its pedestal

Not only does this design of Meen lack his trademark sideburns, but he appears to have a different hairstyle. It's longer and droops down to his shoulders and chin, instead of being somewhat short and ending around his ears. This feels too different to be a slightly stylized version of his finalized hair. Meen's second design appears in a few prominent points throughout the game, most notably Meen's in-game sprites and the purple stained glass portrait seen in many levels.

Trollmeen's placement here is a bit debatable, as he could honestly be based off any design listed on this page (none of his sprites show an earring).

Third Design (hair w/o sideburns)

The next step in the evolution of I. M. Meen's design was changing his hair to the messy, slicked-back style he dons in the final game.

From left to right - the red Meen stained glass texture, the Castle bust texture, the Meenwall texture, the Meenwall floor texture, and the Laboratory bust texture

All of these examples are textures featuring Meen's portrait in some way, and are all really, really close to the completed design. All they need to be considered "finalized" are those wild sideburns. Speaking of...

Final Design

From left to right - cutscene Meen (I. M. Meen and Chill Manor) and Meen on both of the cover variants of I. M. Meen

Here's the finalized design of I. M. Meen, featuring those gnarly sideburns! This variant of Meen is only ever seen in the cutscenes for I. M. Meen and Chill Manor as well as the cover art for the former game, but it's easily the one everyone knows and remembers. Mainly because of those cutscenes.

But we're not done yet.

Menu Oddities

There are two more depictions of Meen that haven't been brought up yet... mainly because they're somewhat of an anomaly.

From top to bottom - the Meen face used as the menu cursor, and the Meen face used to access the main menu

As you can see, both of these depictions of Meen lack his earring and have a hairstyle that matches up well with his second design's cut... but they have the sideburns, too?? It's a real hodge-podge of design elements, and I have two possible theories for why they look like that:

1) These depictions are the only surviving evidence of the actual transitional design between the first and second designs, and the sideburns were drawn on much later to make them look more like finalized Meen. The 'burns do look a bit out of place compared to the rest of the graphics, especially on the second example.

2) There were miscommunications between Animation Magic's artists, and there were only intended to be, like, three designs of Meen total (the initial concept, sideburnless, and finalized). Which would make a majority of this page's comments on Meen's evolving design pointless. Oh well.