Took a Creature Design class with Lars West-Grant last semester, which was the absolute highlight of the year. Just reminded me over and over that all I really want to do is draw monsters~. That, and coming up with biology and habitats and generally developing full ecology.
This bug's actually my final piece for the class, the assignment being to design an alien. I'm a BIG fan of aliens looking "truly alien". The idea of life evolving in an utterly different way from what we see on earth is really appealing. Alternate chemistry! Different structure! So the focus on this guy was making a creature with radial symmetry instead of lateral. Additionally, I have been enamored with the idea of a head that doesn't actually contain a brain, so I... Did something kind of like that.
These guys are a fairly intelligent reverse-amphibian race that live in something akin to an alien mangrove tidal swamp. Their young are entirely land-dwelling, clinging to the above-water roots and branches, while they become mostly aquatic at adolescence. They don't really swim, so much as scuttle around in the mud, and have proper lungs instead of gills, thus their weird head arrangement.
They're at a basic tools stage of their development, and have some simple cultural stuff, but are still just starting out.
I might revisit them someday to imagine what they'd be like after a few thousand years more cultural development.
