May MOTM: bioluminescent naga - concept sketch + design commentary // sfw

thanks again to nak, lostmisfits and eren doran for the suggestions that combined into this month's design!

for this monster of the month i started by heading to google to, quite simply, search for cool-looking snakes. i wanted to see if there was any particular type of real-world serpent i could draw inspiration from, especially in terms of markings and colouration. but i actually didn't find any species that stood out to me, or any specific style of markings that gave me a clear idea of how i wanted to incorporate bioluminescence into his appearance. so i discarded the notion of basing his design on any existing real-world snake, because there was no reason i couldn't just make it up from scratch. as it turns out, designing this guy was relatively smooth sailing.

his basic anatomy was easy enough; a long snake's tail, a humanoid torso, and a snake head at the end of a long, elegantly curved neck. i've previously designed both naga with human heads and others with reptilian faces, and this time i simply felt more like the latter. it also depends a bit on the vibe i'm going for. a human face on a naga can feel a bit more ... folklory, like they are a character from a myth or legend, a being that sits somewhere between the human realm and the fantastical worlds beyond. it can also potentially look more eerie, since combining a human face with a not-so-human body can easily be made to look unsettling. on the other hand a serpentine face often gives naga a more 'primal' look, like they're more connected to nature and the wild side of things than having much to do with anything that concerns regular humans. the rest of his basic anatomy is pretty... well, basic, in lack of a better word. there's nothing peculiar about his humanoid torso, arms, and hands, nor his serpentine tail.

his colour scheme is inspired by one of the most beautiful displays of bioluminescence i can think of: the glowy blue waves, full of bioluminescent plankton, that make certain beaches all over the world appear so otherwordly and magical in the dark of the night. you'll see plenty of examples just by googling 'bioluminescence.' that's exactly what i did, because even if my search for snakes didn't yield anything useful, i knew the natural world still had much inspiration to offer. that very same search shows plenty of images of jellyfish and deep sea creatures, too, many of which appear very blue. changing the search to 'bioluminescent animal' gives more examples of creatures that look green, purple, red, or yellow (not to mention green mushrooms), so there was plenty of hues to choose from ... but i kept returning to blue, like the aforementioned beaches. also, purple or green might have made his winding coils look a bit too much like the tubes of a neon sign, so ... yeah. blue.

i wanted the bioluminescent areas to really shine, so in contrast the hues of his main body would have to be quite a bit darker, and following on that it felt rather natural to give him an even darker chest and underbelly. some bioluminescent creatures have glowing 'spots' dotted all over their bodies, but tbh that reminded me too much of the space avatar movie--i wanted to go with something bolder. basically i intended to give him some style of markings or pattern and 'fill them in' with bright bioluminescence. i was already imagining how the coils of his tail would twist and turn over and around itself on the painting, so i wanted to choose a pattern that wasn't all too irregular and 'busy,' because that might have rendered the painting a bit messy-looking.

i settled on bands or rings circling his tail at even distances, with smaller patches along the ridge of his spine, merging into a very shiny tailtip. it is a simple yet striking pattern that helps consolidate the shapes of his twisting coils rather than confuse them. again, i didn't base his markings on any specific existing species, but there's plenty of banded snakes and i also saw various images of serpents with irregular spots concentrated in a line along their spines. this makes it feel like his patterning has some basis in reality, and makes them look kind of natural. to top it off i made the end of his tail extremely shiny, because i intended it to twist around his lover, creating a cool lighting effect against her skin. i also added some glowing 'bracelets' around his arms in a way that mimics jewellery, partly to repeat the banded pattern and partly because it simply looks neat.

i never planned to define his scaling very much. even on the concept sketch i just used an oval brush for the glowy bands along his body and the little patches running along his spine, painting them on with sort of ’almond shape‘ brush strokes. that alone gives a good idea of the scaly nature of his body, which already has so much going on, what with the shiny patches. adding any more texture might have made the design look very messy and as already discussed, that's something i wanted to avoid. the only part of it i defined a bit more is the horizontal scaling running all the way from his chin to the tip of his tail, including the decorative chevron shapes down his chest.

however, i still felt like the design was lacking something. i wanted to add some kind of feature that made his appearance more unique and that further consolidated the 'bioluminescent' aspect of the prompt. i went back to google and kept looking for inspiration--should i add glowing mushrooms growing from his back and neck? or shiny frills protruding from his spine or sides? or perhaps a cobra-esque hood with a funky shape?

then i saw an image of a jellyfish that had a mixture of thin tendrils and long, flat, frilly 'ribbons,' and the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. those tendrils and ribbons would make a perfect head of 'hair,' for my naga, especially if i made them almost exceedingly long. i decided they're kind of prehensile but even when he's not consciously moving them in any specific way they float and flow in the air as if they were underwater, defying gravity and looking mildly slow mo. on the concept sketch above the thin tendrils simply taper to a sharp point but as i was working on the painting i had the idea of finishing them off with small glowy bulbs instead, somewhat inspired by deep sea anglerfish and the like--perhaps he does use them as a lure of some kind?

in any case adding the 'jellyfish hair' really did the trick and with that, i felt like the design was done. but if you have any questions about this guy, feel free to leave a comment below!

// art + character © me.