i don’t see a lot of people questioning the inkling squid anatomy, which is why it has been my personal hell trying to figure out how exactly the transformation goes.
for people like me who actually KNOW abt squid anatomy; what would normally be the back and “torso” of the squid, the mantle, is the front and THE HEAD in Inklings as it’s shown in the Inkling evolution scroll that during evolution it shrunk, and the torso stretched out from between the head and tentacles.
with THAT out the way, the order of which arms correlate with which tentacles is probably up to preference… although anatomy-wise HERE, the front would be the limbs while the back tents would be the hair. however THIS is what the game tells us:
…when turning back into humanoid, the limbs ARE present but there are still tentacles on the face. so this brings us to THE QUESTION TODAY
how do they transform exactly.
POINT A. pulls direct game-sourced information but also raises some questions
the inklings faceplant and their eyes pop out on the BACK OF THEIR HEAD.
Now this is straightforward and simple aside from a couple things:
1. This means the squid form is a mirror image of the Inkling (for example if looking from the front, a dent on the left tentacle would be on the right)
2. How on earth do they rotate their eyes like that? Or do they have multiple sets of eyes? (I know i rotate the siphon similarly in my headcanons but that isn’t nearly as fragile as EYES)
3. If they drew eyeliner on this morning….it won’t carry over. Sorry squiddo but your wings are on the back of your head for a while.
THIS is actually very likely based on what we see in the game:
screenshot of a squid morphing back into Inkling form, and the eyes are kinda….reforming on this side
In this art the Inkling kinda just gets up and keeps running.
However not everything needs to be dictated by the game, which is why I’ve added another option:
..basically the possibility where Inklings transform exactly as they are, JUST compressing their body and NOT popping their eyes out from the back of their head. This also means they’d have to do a sick flip in and out of squid form to be in right position for whatever they’re doing though…
..but it also means that their face is ACTUALLY their face and they’re never a mirror image.
While drawing these, I remembered that Inklings are BONELESS squid, and thus you guys get to see this third, secret, cursed option:
