[WIP] Mantis shrimp

Related post : [wallpapers] Mantis shrimp

I drew a Mantis shrimp, which came in second place after the crow in the last popularity poll!

Animal Drawing and Popularity Poll 2

If you look at the WIP gif, you may have noticed that it was done in a slightly different way than my recent work. This is the way I drew it a few years ago. For a while, I cleaned up the lines perfectly and started working. This feels a little less planned and more spontaneous.

The most well-known features of the Mantis shrimp are their amazing eyesight and strong punching power.

I had some trouble figuring out how to draw the eyes.

If I had drawn them more realistically, they would have been drawn like this 👇

I thought their bright, big eyes and small dots were cute.

So I thought, what if I drew them like this....

But if I drew just one mantis shrimp, it would have been okay, but since I drew several in one frame, it might have been a bit scary to people if I drew ten mantis shrimps all like this.

In times like this, it becomes easier to decide on the answer if I think about what message I was trying to convey with the drawing.

Rather than drawing realistically, my goal is to approach the public in a friendly way, so I ended up modifying it in a cartoonish way :D

I only knew about the most famous peacock mantis shrimp and a few others, but there were many more species than I thought.

There are over 520 species of mantis shrimp. The leopard mantis shrimp is a relatively recently discovered species. The shape of the claws also varies. So I drew them a little differently. Wikipedia has more details. If you're curious, read on!

By the way, I got a call from the factory yesterday saying that the Crabby crab pins were shipped. When I get them, I'll take pictures and post! So we should be able to see actual pin samples soon :D The secret shop will also open soon!

Thank you!