You’ve probably seen that red, paralyzed face staring back at you from a CRT screen. It’s Phenomenon, the entity from Doctor Nowhere’s analog horror series that has basically taken over the internet's collective nightmares. Most people just call him "The Boiled One." He’s unsettling. He’s static. And honestly, trying to figure out how to draw the boiled one is a lot harder than it looks because his design breaks almost every rule of traditional character illustration.
He isn't just a monster. He is a psychological trigger.
Most fan art fails because it tries to make him look too "clean." You can't draw this guy with smooth vector lines or perfect digital brushes. If he looks like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, you've already lost the vibe. To get him right, you have to embrace the mess. You have to understand the specific, anatomical wrongness that Doctor Nowhere baked into the design. We’re talking about a creature that looks like raw meat stretched over a nightmare, and if your sketches don't feel a little bit gross to look at, you aren't doing it right.
The Anatomy Of A Digital Paralysis Demon
Before you even touch a pencil or a stylus, look at the proportions. Or the lack of them. The Boiled One is characterized by an elongated, almost tubular torso that blends into a head that shouldn't exist. It’s not a skull. It’s more like a sack of fluid and muscle.
The eyes are the most important part. They aren't symmetrical. In the original "PHENOMENON" video, his eyes are wide, glassy, and slightly offset. One often looks a bit higher or more dilated than the other. This triggers a "uncanny valley" response in the human brain. We are hard-wired to look for symmetry in faces; when it’s missing, we feel an instinctive sense of dread.
Don't draw circles for the eyes. Draw shaky, irregular ovals.
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Then there’s the mouth. It’s a permanent, lipless grimace. You see the teeth, but they aren't monster fangs. They’re human teeth. That’s the kicker. To master how to draw the boiled one, you need to render those teeth as small, crowded, and yellowish. They should look like they belong in a mouth that has been held open for forty years by a pair of invisible surgical retractors.
Nailing The "Boiled" Texture
The name isn't a coincidence. He looks cooked. Not like a steak, but like something that’s been submerged in scalding water until the skin became translucent and tight.
If you're working digitally, ditch the airbrush. Seriously. Toss it. You need grit. Use a charcoal brush or a "noise" brush to create that grainy, low-res texture that defines the analog horror genre. When you’re shading the neck and the torso, don’t use smooth gradients. Use hatch marks. Use stippling. You want the viewer to feel the "static" coming off the page.
Color Palettes That Actually Work
- The Red Base: It’s not a bright "fire engine" red. It’s a desaturated, brownish crimson. Think dried blood or raw liver.
- The Highlights: Use a pale, sickly peach or off-white. This represents the "shine" on the stretched skin.
- The Shadows: Never use pure black. Use a deep, muddy purple or a very dark burnt umber. This keeps the drawing from looking flat.
When you start layering these colors, keep them patchy. The Boiled One’s skin shouldn't be a uniform color. It should look bruised. It should look like the blood is pooling in some areas and drained from others.
Composition: Why The CRT Filter Matters
You can draw the best version of this entity in the world, but if he’s standing in a sunny field, he’s not scary. Part of learning how to draw the boiled one is understanding the environment. He belongs in a 4:3 aspect ratio. He belongs behind a layer of scanlines.
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If you’re a traditional artist, you can mimic this by drawing very fine, horizontal lines across the entire piece with a ruler and a thin technical pen. It mutes the details just enough to let the viewer's imagination fill in the gaps. That’s the secret sauce of analog horror. The less we see clearly, the more our brain freaks out.
Try framing him so he’s "too close" to the camera. Cut off the top of his head. Make him feel like he’s trying to push through the paper or the screen to get to the person drawing him. It’s about claustrophobia.
Common Mistakes People Make With Doctor Nowhere’s Style
I see a lot of artists try to give him muscles. Like, a six-pack or defined biceps. Stop.
The Boiled One is weirdly lanky and almost gelatinous in his torso. He doesn't go to the gym. He’s a manifestation of a broadcast signal that causes "Paralysis Syndrome." His body should look weak and fragile, which contrasts terrifyingly with the intense, predatory stare of his eyes.
Another big mistake? Making the background too busy.
If you look at the source material, the background is usually just darkness or a very simple, grainy room. If you add too much detail to the room, you take the focus away from the entity. Keep the background dark. Keep it simple. Let the red of his skin be the only thing the viewer can really lock onto.
Step-By-Step Workflow For A Horror Sketch
- The Silhouette: Start with a long, drooping bean shape. This is the head and neck combined. It shouldn't have a defined chin or jawline.
- The Eye Placement: Place one eye slightly lower than the other. Make the pupils tiny. Just pinpricks of black in a sea of wet-looking white.
- The Mouth Gap: Draw a wide, horizontal slit. Don't add lips. Just start sketching in those tiny, square human teeth.
- The "Meat" Texture: Use short, jagged strokes to define the tendons in the neck.
- The Glitch: Take an eraser (or a smudge tool) and pull the edges of the drawing horizontally. This creates a "motion blur" or "signal interference" effect that makes the drawing feel alive.
It’s easy to get frustrated because he looks "messy." But the mess is the point. If you find yourself over-thinking a line, just scribble it out and start over. The Boiled One is born from digital decay. He is the visual equivalent of a scratched DVD.
Final Touches To Make It Pop
To really sell the look, add some "chromatic aberration." If you're drawing digitally, duplicate your layer, turn one layer red and the other blue, and shift them a few pixels in opposite directions. It gives that dizzying, "broken screen" vibe.
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If you're using colored pencils, lightly trace the edges of the figure with a bright cyan pencil on one side and a bright red on the other. It’s subtle, but it makes the figure look like it’s vibrating.
Most importantly, don't try to make him look "cool." Make him look "wrong." When you're looking at your finished piece, if you feel a slight urge to look away or turn on a light, you’ve successfully mastered how to draw the boiled one.
Actionable Next Steps
- Gather Reference: Re-watch the "PHENOMENON" video by Doctor Nowhere and pause on the frames where his face is clearest.
- Study Anatomy: Look at medical diagrams of neck muscles and human dental charts to get those "human but off" details right.
- Experiment with Brushes: If using Procreate or Photoshop, download a "True Grit" or "Vintage Texture" pack to get that 1980s broadcast feel.
- Practice Symmetrically-Challenged Faces: Spend an entire sketchbook page just drawing eyes that don't match; it's the fastest way to get used to the "uncanny" style.