Insectoid Thumbs

Round two of the second race I designed for an MMO (first thumbs here: [link] ). The first one I did is at top left, and the three along the right side are the final thumbs the art director approved. As you can see, with the first four I had yet to venture into the phylum arthropoda. Once I made that jump, I really got cracking! To be honest, before this I had drawn nary an exoskeletal creature (I know, an embarrassing oversight for any would-be creature artist), so I scoured the internet for every reference picture I could find, and started mixing, distorting, and experimenting with the anatomical elements and design tropes I found. There are a lot of straight up copies in my sketchbook of the photos I looked at, which I might upload at an unspecified future date. Anyway, the final designs are sort of a beetle/mantis/wasp, every tough bug rolled into one. I think it probably is the best of the designs amongst these, though I'd like to play further with the chap second from the right on the bottom.

Blah! End text vomit. Anyway, more designs to come!