April MOTM: from deep in the caverns below - concept sketch + design commentary // sfw (Patreon)

thanks again to nak for suggesting a monster that lives in the deepest caverns! <3

it's been a while since i used a specific habitat as the starting point for a design, so that was fun. the very core of this MOTM prompt is that this monster belongs in a cavern. i immediately pictured a labyrinthine system of tunnels and chambers, a sprawling subterranean hunting ground for this monster to roam. it would be dark and damp, partially filled with water, and a ceiling and floor that's spiky with stalagmites and stalactites. 

i actually love being underground. i love the smell of cold, wet stone and damp soil and dark water, and i love the metaphorical weight of the earth above my head. that said i've never visited a cavern quite like the one i choose to depict--the kind where you can only get so far by walking, where instead you have to swim and dive through tunnels filled with water to reach the pockets of air in the hidden chambers beyond. as a disclaimer, i'm no expert at caverns and i'm sure there's different types that aren't all the same. but i never meant to depict any specific kind of cave--i simply went for an aesthetically pleasingly amalgamation of underground areas i've seen in photos, movies, and real life. the caverns he lives in may not even be situated on this earth or in this reality, so this was one of those cases where i simply cared naught for accuracy.

in any case, the easiest way to establish this monster's subterranean origins would, naturally, be to give the painting a proper background depicting a cavern. but rather than settling for that simple solution i also wanted his habitat to clearly influence his design. basically i wanted people to conceivably be able to deduce what kind of area he lives in by considering various aspects of his appearance, even if there would have been no background to clue them in.

so i started reading up on creatures that live in caverns. the prompt established that he comes from "deep below," so it's not that he temporarily shelters in caves, like a bat or bear. rather his design should make you think of those mysterious creatures in the deepest parts of the earth and the sea that humans still don't know much about. a cavern far below is not the same as the deep ocean, of course, but it's close enough in the context of designing a monster that lives somewhere dark, cold, and wet.

one trend i noticed was that there's plenty of underground or deep water creatures that lack pigment, making them appear milky white or even semi-transparent. of course it's far from the case for all beings that live in lightless environments, but i like the pale, fleshy, and spooky vibes of a colourless aesthetic.

as for dealing with the lack of light, different creatures have evolved in different ways. some have huge eyes--nocturnal primates and deep sea fish come to mind. some rely less on vision and more on other senses, like touch or smell. some use specialised techniques like echolocation, or sensing bioelectric fields, or detecting heat. some are nearly blind, fully blind, or lack eyes completely. even though i run the risk of sounding like a broken record, i'm gonna say the same thing i said last month--i love eyeless designs, so deciding on his eye situation was a no-brainer. why bother having eyes if it's so dark you can't see shit anyway, right?

while i was researching i was also thinking about what type of basic anatomy to go with, and if there was any real-life creatures could get inspired by. i wanted him to be amphibious, so he should be able to move freely through both the flooded and above-water areas of his cave system. that ruled out giving him a merfolk type of tail. i could have given him a classic were-type anatomy, of course, perhaps with webbed feet or a big tail with fins, but for some reason i felt a need to pursue something different this month.

and then, as i kept looking at underwater cavern critters, i came across remipedes. a remipede is a crustacean but the first thing i thought when i saw one was underwater millipede?! they live in watery caves, are a semi-transparent milky white, and they're blind. in other words: bingo.

that said, this monster is not simply an anthropomorphised remipede, and was never meant to be. i quickly decided to draw inspiration from remipedes, but primarily in terms of aestheics and visuals. discovering remipedes gave me a conceptual starting point and helped me decide what direction to take the design, but i never meant to directly turn a remipede into a monster man. i didn't sit down to research exactly how remipedes function or the details of their appearance, because i didn't want my design choices to be "restricted" by how a certain real-world critter works. in my tutorials i regularly talk about drawing inspiration from one or several real-life creatures but mixing, matching, and tweaking their features until it looks like something uniquely monstrous, and i think this guy is a good example of that approach. 

with remipedes in mind, i constructed him like a naga, with a humanoid torso merging into a long tail. the tail in question is lined with legs that both allow him to move on land (like a millipede or centipede) and to swim through water (like a remipede), rendering him amphibious. his tail ends with a big fin that propels him through the water with more force and speed, and the legs closest to the tailfin are more for swimming than for walking. the big 'legs' at the level of his hips, on the other hand, function more like an extra couple pairs of arms to manipulate his surroundings, and the shape of them are a mixture of crustacean claws and spiderlike pedipalps.

i was initially on the fence about whether he should be semi-transparent or a more opaque milky white. i like the idea of semi-transparency but i was honestly intimidated by the idea of trying to render a relatively detailed design (what with all the leggies) against a relatively detailed background (since i knew i wanted to paint a cavern setting). i'd like to explore semi-transparent designs but i decided to save it for a monster that ... doesn't have as many parts, if that makes sense. instead i chose a milky white with a yellow undertone, almost like the spongy foot of a mushroom, or mouldy cheese, or chalky rock. basically the pale, scaly skin and exoskeletal plates that cover his body lack pigment and have never once seen a ray of sunlight.

to hammer home his amphibious nature i gave him gills inspired by a frilled shark. as i was working on the painting i decided to echo the look of his gills with some frills along his back as well, although they're mostly decorative. the same goes for the 'slits' on the back of his neck--which are visible in the painting but not at all present in the concept sketch above, because i hadn't had the idea yet. i ended up using a 'sickly' yellow for the frill details--i initially hesitated to use that word to describe the hue, but let's be real, his colour scheme isn't exactly supposed to be cute and cozy. imagine exploring a pitch black cave, wading through pools of water, your hand on the slippery rock wall, turning the cone of your flashlight to the left when suddenly you glimpse a huge shape, pale like a ghost, scurrying away and disappearing into the water with barely a splash. yeah. he's a sweetheart, i promise, but makes a chilling first impression.

let's end with a funny insight i came to towards the end of the process. the shape of his head had come to me from out of the blue--i just kept having this mental image of a rounded pale snout full of sharp and relatively small (but numerous) teeth. i decided to go with it and it was only halfway through the painting that i realised i had been subconsciously inspired by the exogorth of star wars fame--you know, the giant space slug that almost swallows the millennium falcon... 

aaanyway. if you have any questions about this design, just comment below! 

// art + character © me.