Can I be real for a second?
To understand the root of the problem, one thing you should know is that when I am imagining me in a fictional sense, you should know that I don't imagine myself as human.
For example, lets take dnd for an easier analogy. Everyone in the base game is basically humanoid with almost every character taking a bipedal form of locomotion. And sure, thats a good compromise for the people who don't want to be just human,
but thats not enough for me.
No, I don't want to be a dragonborn (wingless and tailless in some versions).
I don't want to be a loxodon (elephant people).
I want to BE the dragon. I want to BE the elephant. I want to BE whatever abomination Rex sai is in League of Legends. Not some diet coke human with some extra appendages.
I want the kaiju, the monsters, the creatures.
NOT a human in a animal trench coat (a note to literally every person who's told me to just infinitely wildshape as whatever the frick creature I've asked about), nor an animal wearing a human skin.
I want a clearly non-humanoid, intelligent life form with their own set of biological skills, morals, abilities, and restrictions.
I'll say this time and time again, but I am already stuck being human 24/7, why the frick would I want to be playing just a human fighter?
Where are my quadruped races, blind burrowing monsters, literally just godzilla level kaiju with varying levels of intelligence and flexibilities?
Do you know how much cooler it'd be theoretically to work around a world that was clearly not meant for you? Doors you need to break through, mouse holes to traverse, theres so many more possibilities than tripping on weak human legs.
Ugh. It all seems so boring to me to just be stuck with only "halfway" creatures as a compromise.
No shade to the people who enjoy it btw. I'm mostly ranting about how creature art seems to be skewed towards anthropomorphic or bipedal body shapes (to the point where the arms could be human centric: but theres 8 of them edition) when it feels like there are WAY more possibilities. (Ex: Instead of 8 human anatomy arms, why not insectoid????)
A part of me understands that its easier to study the anatomy of what you know, ergo I can take a look at my left arm and surmise how to draw it in this pose or whatever. Hell, I did this to practice posing and what not.
But even as I look at my own artwork, I can't help but be disappointed in how I draw the creature that is supposed to represent me.
Because in my quest to become more anatomically accurate, on this day I feel like I have ended up with a character art style that's stuck in the weird middle ground I hate so much.
And its knowing this about myself that realize that is why I haven't been happy to see my little creature persona in a very very long time.
(older artwork below the cut)
My older art of this guy is more horrendous in my opinion lol but the only reason its not up is because I am Too Lazy to deal with editing out the sketches found in my literal middle school notes lol.
So here's the crap I could find just digging through old art folders.
For those of you still here, thanks for reading despite not having any connection to this whatsoever.