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26.1.2023

Paint Tool SAI

I was working on Haado's new reference, and since I had always noticed that artists who draw spiders don't seem to give a crap about their anatomy, I wanted to do it justice this time around. I had looked at reference for her from the start, but never really STUDIED spiders.

This sent me down a deep rabbithole of cool spiders, even cooler harvestmen (did you know the Opiliones order has its own fandom.com wiki??) and eventually some other cool bugs as well like treehoppers. Which made me realize another thing about a lot of spider monsters in fantasy: They're always just spiders, and usually the most generic kind too like black tarantulas or widow spiders. Never fusions, never creatively improved, just spiders where every fantasy element comes at the expense of anatomy. There's so much cool shit out there, yet I can count creative fantasy spider designs I've seen with the fingers of just one hand. Unacceptable.

I had already drawn this sketch at that point. There's some reasonable anatomy (Yay! Already ahead of 90% of spider art) but Haado's design is still stuck in the 'just spider' category, even if European Garden Spiders aren't the most common choice for inspiration. A big web-weaving spider makes sense for her, but it's a bit basic, isn't it. Verno and Glino are fusions of more critters, so I want to put in some effort to make Haado's design stand out just as much. Now I have tons of material for that as well.

But it's a nice sketch. So here you go.

Description

26.1.2023

Paint Tool SAI

I was working on Haado's new reference, and since I had always noticed that artists who draw spiders don't seem to give a crap about their anatomy, I wanted to do it justice this time around. I had looked at reference for her from the start, but never really STUDIED spiders.

This sent me down a deep rabbithole of cool spiders, even cooler harvestmen (did you know the Opiliones order has its own fandom.com wiki??) and eventually some other cool bugs as well like treehoppers. Which made me realize another thing about a lot of spider monsters in fantasy: They're always just spiders, and usually the most generic kind too like black tarantulas or widow spiders. Never fusions, never creatively improved, just spiders where every fantasy element comes at the expense of anatomy. There's so much cool shit out there, yet I can count creative fantasy spider designs I've seen with the fingers of just one hand. Unacceptable.

I had already drawn this sketch at that point. There's some reasonable anatomy (Yay! Already ahead of 90% of spider art) but Haado's design is still stuck in the 'just spider' category, even if European Garden Spiders aren't the most common choice for inspiration. A big web-weaving spider makes sense for her, but it's a bit basic, isn't it. Verno and Glino are fusions of more critters, so I want to put in some effort to make Haado's design stand out just as much. Now I have tons of material for that as well.

But it's a nice sketch. So here you go.