Mermay 2026: Apollo Justice (Mantis shrimp)
Ver with diff background + close ups
He's a smasher mantis shrimp, not exactly sure what kind of species but I did mostly look at the peacock mantis shrimp when drawing.
It would've been cool if I could figure out a way to change sort of the make up of his arms to be better suited to the punching ability of the shrimp, ie giving it an exoskeleton as protection against cavitation bubbles, but im lwk not invested enough to try and figure that out 😭 but here is a very scuffed hand wavey diagram take w grain of salt where I did try to see how the saddle might work in human anatomy
Realistically I think it'd only work on uppercut, bc normal punching includes a sort of twisting motion(?) And comes more from the shoulders? Idk ive never done martial arts, this is me spitballing based on how stuff feels when I was going through the motions to try and work it out
But yea if polly punched phoenix as a mantis shrimp it's be highkey over for phoenix bro 💔
Why shrimp? His little chicken hair bangs (lol) and also shrimp colors is a cool sort of accompaniment/stand in for his perceive ability. Idk if i'll draw aa mermaids for a bit bc 1. It's gonna be June tmrw lol and 2. Idk just depends on how I feel. But I will share sort of what I had so far in terms of ideas
Polly, trucy, and klavier mermaid
Franziska is an orca, mia is a whale, pearly + maya are seals, Morgan, dahlia, and iris are jellyfish. Trucy and lamiroir are flying fish. Also the species of offspring follow Pokémon rules in the fact that they take the specie of one of the parents, instead of becoming an infertile chimera
And since lamiroir is a flying fish it's like trucy has nothing left of zak to remember him by 😂😂 doesnt have his colors (the pink hat + cloak), doesnt even look like him/not the same specie, the only thing left she has is that transferral of rights. Also smth smth siren of the ballad which brings to mind the abyss and her whole theming with the shadows. But her nature as a flying fish is to be free from the depths.. to soar above and see the light. Also I chose flying fish bc fish arent supposed to fly (METAPHORS we ignore all the fish that can walk on land for this) but trucy and lamiroir can, which adds to their general feeling of distance and magic from the general populace.
This was genuinely just supposed to be a silly fun self indulgent character design thing to do when I was bored but I got anxious and came up with some ideas anyways. Not fleshed out/explored and I dont want to expand this into an au.
Kristoph is a sea witch (no one knows), and is sort of the economy in the sense that he both makes the problem and sells the solution (mer lawyers exist probably to mediate deals between common folk and sea witches). Lwk thats all I got scratches head
