The contest specified a couple of vampires - a big shield-using bruiser and a rogue type - in black and white. I figured that most of the other entries would still have the vamps be really appealing people, so I wanted to go the opposite direction, a little like all the parts of Lost Boys or Buffy where the vamps are really predatory and ugly as sin. I thought having the rats/bats as a compositional element would really "pop" the figures.
Thank you! That's what I was hoping it'd look like. I sort of wish I'd been around for the publishing boom of the 80s - I think I'd have really fit in and done well then. Now, though, I'm not so sure.