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Description
My entry for the latest Contest-
It Came From The Center Of The Earth
I've been dying to get a good b-movie creature round like this one for ages. Love how this critter turned out.
Could have used a little more time to polish it up, but I'm just glad I got it done in time- just barely beat the countdown clock.
Horray for being way too busy to do anything just for fun.

Photoshop on top of pencil sketch, about 12 hours.
_________________________________________
The foreman was having a 3-packs-of-smokes day.
It was bad enough that they had mined straight into a cave system that somehow had been missed on the ground-penetrating radar surveys, meaning that the geologists would hold up further excavation for weeks or months.
(And heaven forbid they find some new species of cricket in the {*&>&%} thing...)
And as his luck would have it, it happened on HIS shift. Of course.
The worst part was that the two workers he had sent into the tunnel they had broken into had not yet reported in- after two hours.
Meaning that his smoking break was being delayed to go and find the two missing morons, and hope that they hadn't gotten themselves lost too badly.
At least this day couldn't possibly get any worse.
Now what the hell is making all those crunching noises, anyway?
"They better not be in the middle of a snack, or they're dead." he muttered to the cave.
______________________________________________
For some info on the creature itself, I drew a lot of inspiration from the creatures of the "cambrian explosion"- creatures like anomalocaris and wiwaxia that were sort of "evolutionary one-offs" between different branches of life, like fish and arthropods(bugs). This creature represents an offshoot of the branch containing reptiles and mammals, so they carry some traits of both, and a few of their own. They are almost totally blind to visible light, but they have developed extremely large "pits" for detecting infrared light (heat) like a viper and a powerful sense of smell. They can lie motionless and dormant for weeks waiting for prey to pass by, then strike in an instant. Their long limbs and narrow bodies mean that few crevices are too small to wriggle through or wall to sheer to climb. In addition, the "tentacles" around their mouths are extremely sensitive and nimble, and aid in grabbing the smallest of morsels from their hiding places. This has made them the apex predator in a "lost world" environment where food is scarce and hard to catch. But now they have discovered a world of plenty called "the surface". And they have been hungry for a very, very, long time...

Description
My entry for the latest Contest-
It Came From The Center Of The Earth
I've been dying to get a good b-movie creature round like this one for ages. Love how this critter turned out.
Could have used a little more time to polish it up, but I'm just glad I got it done in time- just barely beat the countdown clock.
Horray for being way too busy to do anything just for fun.

Photoshop on top of pencil sketch, about 12 hours.
_________________________________________
The foreman was having a 3-packs-of-smokes day.
It was bad enough that they had mined straight into a cave system that somehow had been missed on the ground-penetrating radar surveys, meaning that the geologists would hold up further excavation for weeks or months.
(And heaven forbid they find some new species of cricket in the {*&>&%} thing...)
And as his luck would have it, it happened on HIS shift. Of course.
The worst part was that the two workers he had sent into the tunnel they had broken into had not yet reported in- after two hours.
Meaning that his smoking break was being delayed to go and find the two missing morons, and hope that they hadn't gotten themselves lost too badly.
At least this day couldn't possibly get any worse.
Now what the hell is making all those crunching noises, anyway?
"They better not be in the middle of a snack, or they're dead." he muttered to the cave.
______________________________________________
For some info on the creature itself, I drew a lot of inspiration from the creatures of the "cambrian explosion"- creatures like anomalocaris and wiwaxia that were sort of "evolutionary one-offs" between different branches of life, like fish and arthropods(bugs). This creature represents an offshoot of the branch containing reptiles and mammals, so they carry some traits of both, and a few of their own. They are almost totally blind to visible light, but they have developed extremely large "pits" for detecting infrared light (heat) like a viper and a powerful sense of smell. They can lie motionless and dormant for weeks waiting for prey to pass by, then strike in an instant. Their long limbs and narrow bodies mean that few crevices are too small to wriggle through or wall to sheer to climb. In addition, the "tentacles" around their mouths are extremely sensitive and nimble, and aid in grabbing the smallest of morsels from their hiding places. This has made them the apex predator in a "lost world" environment where food is scarce and hard to catch. But now they have discovered a world of plenty called "the surface". And they have been hungry for a very, very, long time...