As a kid, I loved monster manuals. I had all varieties of them, enamored by the sheer diversity of designs. I always dreamed of creating a world of my own, a field guide to the denizens of the vast savannahs, abyssal oceans, and reaching mountains that persist in my imagination. This project is to my younger self. I set out to make the book that, as a kid, I always wanted to read.

My piece is a collection of illustrations in the form of a digital (hopefully eventually printed ) series. It is an art book of sorts, a collection of various projects I’m working on, from sketches to final renders. It is unified in a field-guide style format, with an emphasis on creature design, which is something I wanted to learn since youth. My inspiration was triggered by an interest in anatomy; the way muscles and bones knot and pull each other never fails to interest me, and portraying them in new, warped forms allows me to weave original configurations, figuring out anatomical questions along the way. As I worked on this, I began to veer into an almost abstract arena- seeing how far I could push a design while still having it feel plausible.

During the design process, I greatly enjoy employing features of an animal not native to the intended environment.

For example, the work “Rosturacitus ecfigia” depicts a creature endemic to a dry, arid habitat; pursuing prey as a cheetah would. Yet, the majority of inspiration came from sea life such as: parrotfish, betta fish, various species of nudibranch, and cephalopods.

In “Atrocivenator ultor”, the goal was to create a strong looking, prideful dragon. While I did use many lizards as reference, the main inspirations were herbivorous prey animals: Ibex and pangolins. There was something noble about those two that I wanted to translate into the design.

The reason I choose qualities of animals generally thought opposite to my final vision is because it adds an element of depth to the piece overall. It strays from worn and weathered tropes and carves something new into the populated world of concept art.

My two mini projects are seperated in two chapters: one for more fantasy-based artwork, and the other for abstract, alien-like design experiments, which I call “Six Seconds to Descent”. I think about everything from adaptations, to how the body works. It’s a lot of work, but the end result feels alive.

I still plan to edit and add more pages as time goes on, but in the end I hope It would’ve made my younger self happy.