These were done for a three-part C.O.W. (Creature of the Week) contest on ConceptArt.org. The theme was "Cryptids".
I chose to do them as charts, rather than character shots, and use a scientific style. The nature of these creatures is both rooted in real animals and completely outlandish at the same time. They could happen, if you just squint. They all are pure nightmare fuel, too though I didn't plan that theme from the beginning.
The Will-o-the-Wisp is inspired by the deep sea predatory sea squirts, with some angler fish and salamanders thrown in. (Floating balloons for spreading eggs aren't used by any land creature, but they are found in the ocean. The network of lures is not found by any creature I know of, though.)
The Kraken is more of the Scandinavian floating island version than the Scandinavian giant crab or later mid-European giant octopus, but some of its polyps look like giant octopi. It is, of course, a syphonophore, a Portuguese man-of-war mixed with a bit of velella and blown up to ridiculous scale. I used the famous Olaus Magnus map, featuring sea monsters, as the background.
The Chupacabra, though, is not a single creature at all; I started at the fact that most Chupacabra "sightings" turned out to be dogs with heavy demodecosis, which makes them bald and emaciated, and their swollen skin an odd bluish-purple color. It was not outlandish enough on its own, so I added two more parasites, both based on real (and terrifying) ones: the tongue louse which attacks freshwater fish, and the Cordyceps fungus which reprograms host behavior to suit itself.
And now, some preparatory sketches:
Despite being, essentially, a blob, the Maw took many attempts to design.
The Kraken sketches did not see much rework. There is an unused one showing the miles
-long trail of its tentacles.
The Chupacabra parasite (the sinuous thing on the right) wasn't a woodlouse at the start, instead being inspired by the Sacculina. It wouldn't be able to disappear from the dog corpse easily, though, so I split it into a small crustacean and a fungus.
