wormlizard on a string

Call me Wormlizard, or Worm... or Lizard | they/them | I do creature and character designs |

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PROJECT INTRODUCTION

Multicolored Coral Champion is a personal project I'm currently working on. It's a story about our relationship told through crustacean characters in the Eclipse Reef, a struggling coral atoll city fighting deterioration and invading creatures. I plan on making it into comics although everything is still in very early development. Four books are planned, each one with a focus species from our real life marine issues.

CHARACTERS

The main trio line up!

Bubblegum Synalpheus(Synalpheus sp.) is a biophysists pistol shrimp interested in all things noisey with a "fieldwork only" prosthetic left arm that also doubles as a music box.

Piki(Odontodactylus scyllarus) is a peacock mantis shrimp with an explosive personality, and fists! They rush into action and crave adventure, though most of the time it ends up as misadventure.

Pan Gracetail(Panulirus ornatus) is an ornate spiny lobster who spins with acrobatics and ribbon whips, he's there to pull the other two out of trouble, which they get into a lot.

MCC: where fish have legs and shrimps wear bones

I force myself try to keep every appearing creature and character based off of real life species and fit the biogeography. The reef is inhabited by humanoid crabs, shrimps, lobsters, hermit crabs, marine isopods and amphipods which made designing them off of their real life counterparts very satisfying for my marine biology conditioned brain.

SETTINGS

Map of Eclipse reef(left), a convict surgeonfish(Acanthurus triostegus) with a saddle based off of Sampan/舢舨(middle), hydra based off of the crown of thorns starfish(Acanthaster planci, right)

Eclipse reef is based off of the real life dongsha atoll, hence all the animals are from tropical west pacific. The coral city is under threat of environmental pressures, with the coral-eating hydra-starfish being one of them. The story starts with the trio joining the biorangers, an organization tasked to cull biological threats and managing the wildlife(dw I love my echinoderms the real monsters are poor management and false understanding of sustainability that further strengthens exploitation.)

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So guess who's being playing tomodachi...

I made the In Stars and Time gang. Had to edit Siffrin in cus I couldn't get all of them in the height edit together. Also ignore the man on the far right.

Siffrin and Bonnie is so hard to make right without their silhouette defining hats. Will probably make Loop and the head housemaiden next

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Elysia, the sun eating slug.

Calling this a quick one to excuse my horrible mess of shading. I also don't know what to do with backgrounds, like ever. The frills and folds are fun to do though.

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MCC Mega Dump 2: Beloniformes fish

Flying fish! Even more sketches and explorations that's right I'm not done. Originally I just needed to design the flying fish cus it's the only one with story importance in MCC, serving as a fun way of transportation. But then I figured why not do all the other representatives of the Beloniformes order(minus Adrianichthyids, the ricefish) and ended up spending way too much time on these. I wanted the flying fish and all the other beloniforms to look like some kind of insects, I think it's quite fitting for how weird they can get. I took inspiration from dragonflies and damselflies for the flying fish and small headed flies for the halfbeaks. I tried to integrate elements from lanternflies(especially Cathedra serrata) for the saury(third image) and stick insects for the sea needles(fifth image) but they ended up looking uncoordinated and now I don't like them anymore.

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MCC Mega Dump: Various Characters and Random Lore

Been doing mostly just sketches for MCC lately, got lots of ideas but not enough energy to finalize them all so here's a huge sketch dump of various MCC stuff. I'll go through them in detail from top to bottom, left to right.

Sketch 1: I was pissed about something one day and then I went to a sushi place and chomped a bunch of raw squids. After that I felt immediately better and thought "hm now how can I implement that into my characters…" So Bubblegum eating raw squid arms whenever she needs to blow off some steam was then made canon.

Sketch 2: So a fun thing about spiny lobsters and other Achelate crustaceans is that they have a long distinct larval stage called a phyllosoma larva. It's a predatory planktonic stage that can last for over a year. Not really important to the character or the story but I just thought it'd be funny that Pan had a demon child phase.

Sketch 3: More spiny lobster lore! The antennae of spiny lobsters are indicators of their wealth and status. They're meticulously kept and maintained through every molt. A spiny lobster with no antennae is usually frowned upon in the lobster high society. I wanted it so that it's a contrast to Pan, who rejected his connection to the lobster aristocracy, and left the reef crest to live with Piki and Bubblegum down at the benthos.

Sketch 4: Map of Eclipse Reef, where the story takes place. It's drawn with some notes from the perspective of Piki. Eclipse Reef is based off of the real life Dongsha atoll.

Sketch 5: These are just random character explorations for funnsies. Top left is a pea crab with oyster shells as a cloak. I drew them way back in october last year, and then they announced silksong and now I can't unsee them being a crab version of hornet.

Sketch 6: Even more characters! Although these I do intend to integrate into the story, none of them have proper names yet. The top left swimmer crab is a Pelagic Paladin, worshipper of the moon. The toothpick shrimp on the right is from the gorgonian forest. The gorgonian forest is a deeper part of the reef further outside the walls of the atoll. The residents there wears the gorgonian eye on them to ward off evil. And bottom left is a girlboss gall crab in her coral throne, carried by her sponge crab body guard.

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What if instead of april fools it's called april pools in the crustacean world...

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Anyway I bawled my eyes out in cinema. You can't make his design so much like a spider/crab and do this to me man. You can't do this to me(<- intense crab and spider enthusiast.)

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Haven't posted anything in a while cus I'm dead busy with uni but here's a little thing with some props I made for a student exhibition for my department's museum.

Animals from left to right, top to bottom: Woolly mammoth(Mammuthus primigenius), short-faced bear(Arctodus simus), dall sheep, muskox, brown bear, saiga antelope, mastodon(Mammut americanum), Scimitar-toothed cat(Homotherium serum).

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The Nue(鵺)

Legendary yokai in japanese mythology with the head of a monkey, haunch of a tiger(the tiger is not in the room with us) and a snake head for a tail.

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MCC art dump, mostly Zozy redesign and some of his lore

Zozy Zosimus is a devil reef crab(Zosimus aeneus) and what is known as a befouled in crustacean society, which means toxins accumulate in his muscle tissues. While not dangerous to himself, much of the reef associates venom/poison as evil and forces befouled crabs to be under endocrinal suppression. He is in charge of scientific development for the reef rangers, which mostly involves producing antivenom against hydra and antidote for several other toxic reef creatures the rangers would encounter. A toxicologist who himself is toxic, perhaps his endeavor is to redeem his image, or that he took empathy on the hydras who too are feared upon for their toxins.

Exploration on befouled crabs and suppression suits. The condition only happen to a handful of crab individuals in specific lineages. Toxins like tetradontoxin and saxitoxin accumulate as they grow and pose no threat to themselves and the only exposure is through open wound. Befouled crabs sometimes exhibit traits like unique facial patterns or odd eye colors. Befouled individuals under coralition authority are to be installed artificial suppression systems, which extract the toxins to dispose manually.

The whole thing is mostly based off of several species of real life poisonous crabs like Zosimus aenues, Atergatis floridus and Carpilius maculatus, the latter two are the heads above. They don't really pose much threat unless you eat them.

This post is NOT about him but here's Carcini, another character I updated the design recently. He's based off of a species of decorator crab, Cyclocoeloma tuberculata, and he's the owner of West Pacific Carcinate Companie. He's rich(ew I know) and dresses with anemone. He is the "ringmaster" of the circus mob characters I made a while ago.

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New fish alert! Another creature planned to appear in book 1 got its proper design! The blackspotted tuskfish(Choerodon schoenleinii), a wrasse that uses tools. C. schoenleinii and its relative C. anchorago have both been documented to bash clams into rocks repeatedly to open them. At this point I wouldn't even be suprised if we find a wrasse that can recognise itself in mirrors(huh what's that we already did??)

Above is the old sketch back in september last year. I had the idea for them to show their tusks like geladas. I kept the primate element with the new design since it's a quick and easy way to communicate that this is an animal of significant intelligence compared to other fish.

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Zzynrath Pauldronpelt(that's right 2 Zs) is the reigning tide brawler champion of the Jetty. Her marine familiar is a cluster of gooseneck barnacles(Pollicipes polymerus)...bar...bar knuckles....bar- This is a continuation(sorta) of a character series I made last year where everyone has a marine familiar.

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I can't fix them but I can join their long list of victims!

I just finished Sorry We're Closed and HUUUUAAAAAHHHH!!!!! It's so good??? I love the designs for everything, all of it, the scrumptious.

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Some exploration on Piki's raptorials and their gloves

With Piki being a peacock mantis shrimp(Odontodactylus scyllarus) their signature move is the cavitation punch with their raptorial clubs. Here I did a little study with the real life O. scyllarus, simplified and translated the structure to fit into Piki's arm. The hands are extensions from the dactyl clubs and have high density of hydroxyapatite, making it great for dealing impact, but also means Piki's hands are a lot less sensitive than others'.

And do not let the power punch fool you, they're dogfish terrible at fighting, can't even dodge a hit to save their life(that's what the other two of the trio are here for.)

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Finding comfort(drawing silly art of them) in a time of hardship(arcane seaon 2)

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All of inktober 2024! With my MCC silly sea creatures

Actually finished a monthly art challenge this time wow I'm spitting up blood

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Inktober day 31: landmark