August MOTM: Neon aesthetic - concept sketch + design commentary // sfw

so the design prompt this month was "#neon aesthetic," based on nak's suggestion of a modern era monster. i have to throw my hands up at myself, because of course you can trust my nerd ass to somehow manage to base a modern era monster on ancient mythology and art. in my defense, i didn't really do it on purpose. it kind of just happened, as i was concept sketching...

it all began with a couple of flashing mental images. i had the idea of using a very humanoid anatomical framework to make the design look more modern and urban, compared to a more monstrous body type. besides giving him pretty regular proportions and limbs i pictured him with plantigrade feet, partly because i wanted him to wear nice sneakers and partly because i felt like it somehow made the silhouette look more contemporary than digitigrade feet. i also enjoy the contrast between a humanoid body dressed in relatively normal clothes but crowned with a clearly non-human head, perhaps with a tail and some other non-human details. it's a subtler flavour of monster design than many of my other creations and sometimes, less is more.

speaking of sneakers i wanted the clothes and accessories to play an important part in this design, since such props are a good way to indicate a time period or illustrate a certain vibe. if you look at a "naked" monster it might not always be immediately apparent what era they belong to. there's ways to get the point across, sure, but take for example my "hunter and the beast" monster -- the bare concept art doesn't really tell you if he's from 2000 years ago or from yesterday. 

that said, one way to make this monster look unmistakably modern was to make him a robot or cyborg. i opted for the latter but decided to go for an 80s nostalgia kind of vibe, so it would look cyperpunk-y rather than straight up futuristic.

i started experimenting with drawing his head. at first i wasn't sure what silhouette i wanted to go with, but suddenly remembered an old sketch of a monster with a completely featureless face, except a glowing circle on the front. it could easily be adapted to a robotic design, and as i scrolled through my sketchbook posts to find it i 1) realised that apparently i never uploaded it but 2) stopped instead at my sketches of sagra. there's a couple of doodles of his humanoid form where his relaxed feathering looks like hair made up of electrical cords, which would look neat on my neon monster.

so i made a few sketches of a kind of robotic monster with a featureless face save the glowing circle and a separate mandible, added the electrical cord 'hair,' and a thick neck. his smooth silhouette looked nice, but i still wondered if maybe i should add any details to break it up. i tried giving him horns but it didn't really work out, and then i thought i should try adding artificial "ears." that's when it hit me -- he looked a bit like like a modernised, robotic version of the egyptian god set. in the moments that followed, everything fell into place: many of the design decisions i made are directly based on ancient egyptian aesthetics, but modernised to fit the neon cyborg theme.

i based his body type on the stylised proportions of ancient egyptian reliefs. as you may or may not know, ancient egyptian art gets its distinct look from a desire to depict different body parts in the most clear way. that's why you have an eye seen from the front but a silhouetted face, and frontal shoulders on a belly and hips viewed from the side. of course i had no intention of actually twisting and distorting his body, but i drew inspiration from the reversed triangle silhouette of relatively wide, square shoulders combined with a slim waist and hips. i also went for the same fitness level as many of the dudes in egyptian art: athletic in a slender, long-limbed way.

i gave him the forked tail of the unidentified set animal, and was tempted to change his face into the long, curved muzzle of the god in question. but i wasn't sure if i wanted to give the impression that he actually is set. it would have looked dope, and i really was on the fence about it, but ultimately decided to go with the rounded outline. it implies he was created (or modified) in set's image rather than being the god himself, which felt appropriate for a partially robotic individual. in either case i can still make jokes about "giving set a glow up. literally."

on that note, i tried giving him one robotic arm and leg, dressing them in plates of metal and with neon light peeking through the joins. but i just wasn't feeling it. i decided that only his head, neck, shoulders, and the area corresponding to his ribcage would be robotic, but the rest of him is covered in regular human skin. it's a neat variation on the appearance of many egyptian gods, where everything about them looks human except their heads.

his clothes are partly based on ancient egyptian fashion, too. on wall paintings you can see royalty and nobility wear a long, semi-transparent skirt over a shorter, more opaque skirt, tied at the waist. they're usually white and starched, but i chose more cyberpunky colours and left out the starch for a more flowy, kind of pleated feel. the necklace, chest piece, bracelets, and anklets are based on iconic pieces of egyptian jewellery but adapted to fit the theme, with the strings of beads easily translated into strips of neon instead. i combined these modernised ancient elements with tights, sneakers, and a cropped leather jacket, in line with the aforementioned 80s nostalgia.

i used neon colours for the jewellery and other small details, with the rest of his clothes being various shades of grey and black, because he's just that kind of style icon. but i wanted to use more neon, to really hammer home the theme, and thus i got *very* excited when i realised i could use hieroglyphic neon signs for the background of the painting. i have studied a bit of egyptology at uni and know the bare basics of reading hieroglyphs, so i felt like i could accomplish that with confidence. 

the end result looks modern, for sure, but the incorporation of ancient aesthetics is very on brand for me and i'm quite proud of this take on an ancient egyptian concept!

// art + character © me.