There’s a concept that I’ve probably mentioned once or twice when doing this sort of character design/conceptualizing exercise: Keep drawing the same character over and over again, and details that aren’t as important will “fall away” as you get closer and closer to the “essence” of the character. One might compare it to polishing a stone by rubbing it with sand.
Which makes me surprised about the evolution of the Interloper so far, mostly its face. Granted, I’ve been trying to fool around with different ideas and concepts, and at one point I even admitted that I might have gone haring off in the wrong direction. But at the same time, little things, little things that, given the nature of the process should have either stayed the same or changed to more closely match the original intent, have actually shifted in the opposite direction in several cases.
The silhouette, for example, has become less and less streamlined the more I’ve drawn it. The sensory organs have slowly migrated to the top of the head, and the antennae have grown exponentially larger since the initial incarnation, and I’m not sure why.the head’s gotten larger, too.
Then and Now.
(Click to Enlarge.)
Although the armor plating has (purposefully) disappeared from the underbelly, the head isn’t as smooth as it first was, and that seems to make the silhouette not as… elegant as it first was.
Also, the teeth have multiplied almost exponentially, while the teeth have also become more needle-like. Considering my previous statements about the visual implications of sharp, pointy objects in a creature’s headspace, this is understandable, but the point that I’m trying to make is that the first version seemed to do it better with less.
Other not-fully-intentional shifts of note:
- The neck has become considerably shorter.
- The shoulders have moved higher.
- The tongue changed into this acre-long, prehensile not-quite Hentacle, probably because its mouthparts are so rudimentary.
What does all this mean? I’m not sure. But I was sketching tonight and realized that this had happened, and felt like I ought to go into some detail about this realization. The sum of its parts is pleasing to me, but it’s the details that suddenly seem to be pulling it in a strange direction. I might take a couple days to think on this and try tackling it again.
Anyway, this is the sketch I was working on (the top one) before I had all these epiphanies:
Like I said, I had done the top (or about half of it) then I realized just how different it was from the original (somehow without looking at it). Then I did the bottom one while working from the original, and thought about why it might be diverging so far. Unfortunately, I haven’t come up with a satisfactory reason, only the ways that it has diverged.
Oh, the split mandible, swoon.