#hrhhrhrgrgr work is eating up my braincells so i cant be creative as much as I used to 💔

[maareyas]

Hey hey hey its been a hot minute, i hope life is treating you well? (It better - if not ill fight life for you in the ring)

I’m giving you the opportunity to info dump about anything. And i mean anything be it something to do with one of your aus (we love lore) or even about any interests you may have (i know you like the fun-guys, whats your favourite shroom👀?)

Sidenote i just thought of this when typing the shroom question, i really thought that during feb that you mightve dabbled with the funguary prompts. Idk i thought you’d really like those. Like pair up a shroom with a character or something and go wham with it. Idk where i was going with this… yeah

I JUST STRAIGHT UP FORGOT to answer this ask hhdhdhdg whoops. I lost whatever idea I had to ramble about so I'm going to use this as an excuse to ramble about my thought process thus far behind the merhog Shadow I'm working on

(I keep forgetting Funguary exists and my database of Fungi Knowledge is unfortunately not specific enough for me to parcipate ahfhjdjsjsj)

Anyways. With merhog designs, I tend to have a "speculative biology" approach to it, i.e the different merhog design elements make some sense in context. I think I mentioned before that designing Creatures and Robots scratch a similar itch in my brain; and this is why. You can tell a bunch about how a Creature moves, eats, and lives just based on their physical traits. Same goes for robots!

Of course, I'm still an artist first and foremost. So when it comes to creature design, I still put aesthetics and Vibes™️ first before realism XD

with that out of the way, here's the rambles about the In-Progress merhog shadow design. No images because I'm lazy ahdhdjs

My first thought with the merhog shadow design was that "I have to throw a little bit of Godzilla inspo in there". I've had Godzilla on the brain since I watched the new movie with Kong a few weeks ago lol. And bc I like bioluminescence way too much, he's gonna be a glowy boiiiii.

I'm thinking he does actually have atomic breath and can subsist off/absorb nuclear energy. In the hypothetical au this design is from, the ARK would be an underwater facility that was destroyed in a nuclear explosion of some sort. Shadow was the only survivor and he "haunts" the spot to this day.

Shadow's concept isn't as clear to me as Silver's was. Vaguely, I want him to be more reptile-adjacent as a callback to the Biolizard and the Black Arms. I feel like going full reptile would make him look too bulky and slow so I'm still working it out.

This is the current iteration of the design so far:

barely anything, but it's what I got XD

I like the idea of merhog Shadow having two huge front flippers that can sort of act like extra hands. the flippers were partially based by a winged Black Arms enemy I forgot the name of + humpback whale fins. the little bumps on the front side of the fins? they're for speed, like with actual humpbacks. The little claw is NOT biologically realistic at all, but it looks cool and im already planning to take inspo from godzilla anyways so. yeah.

In general I think I might just take a more fantastical approach to Shadow? It feels fitting with his canon origins being weird.

For his head, I decided to turn his quills into tentacles, specifically of the Vampire Squid. There are spikes underneath to protect the back of his head from roundhouse kicks (bc he's the only one allowed to do that lmao). I'm thinking he might also have a false eye pattern in the center of the tentacles? A deterrent to potential predators + as a callback to Doom's Eye.

His eye markings get a little change too. They can emit red light, just like Stoplight Loosejaw (yes that's a real fish name) which have organs underneath their eyes that emit red light to hunt prey with. I imagine merhog Shadow would also have its extremely messed up jaw configuration ✨ I don't know how I would draw it though ✨✨✨

As far as solid inspiration goes, that's what I have so far. I'm considering giving Shadow more whale-adjacent features. With how huge his front flippers are, I think it'd make sense that he'd be more of a power swimmer? aka he has a big tail that does most of the work propelling him forward, and the flippers are to reduce the energy cost while also increasing speed and maneuverability. It would be a close enough analog to his skating, maybe????

He doesn't sound very fast but then again, I imagine neither is merhog Silver lol