March MOTM: Eldritch minotaur concept sketch + design commentary // nsfw-ish

i'm going to be perfectly honest - when i put 'eldritch minotaur' as a poll option, i hadn't thought too hard about how exactly i'd make a minotaur look eldritch. when that monster won the motm poll in question, i had to ask myself - how do you make anything look eldritch, really? what are the defining characteristics of eldritchness? i felt like i knew, inherently, like i had always taken for granted that i knew exactly how to portray the quality of 'eldritch' - and yet it wasn't quite as simple as you'd think. or perhaps that's just me overthinking shit. 

aaanyway, as i was sketching i started to figure it out. i wanted him to look powerful, intimidating, and eerie, so i settled on a tall, sinewy, muscular physique, with broad shoulders, a strong neck, a deep chest, and narrow hips. gangly but ripped. i feel like i've seen many minotaurs with stubby, thick fingers capped with little hooves, so i wanted to deviate from that pattern and gave him long fingers with huge claws instead. and of course i had to give him fangs. because. of course. 

i knew fairly early on that i wanted his colour scheme to be pale and washed out, simply because it looks ghostly and creepy, and then i realised it would be cool if his colour scheme resembled waterlogged flesh, as if he'd been laying lifeless in the water until he turned pale and slippery. i also had the idea of making his fur very patchy, looking like it had fallen out in tufts, all ragged, wavy, and more or less wet-looking. i found myself imagining him as a water-themed creature, lurking in a delta or swamp, with horns that look like pale driftwood and wet fur that drips and clings to his body when he leaves the water. i ended up colouring his fur in a darker hue on the painting and the sketch, which made it almost resemble dark wavy seaweed, and in retrospect i should maybe have added some vines of seaweed clinging to his horns or around his limbs... either way, as i was sketching, his backstory started to take shape, too. 

he used to be alive, and back then he looked much less ghastly. but he drowned (probably wasn't an accident...) and in death the water changed his body and, to some extent, his mind. it turned his horns brittle and flaking, ate away at his fur, turned his hide a ghostly white, filled his lungs and eyes. when he died, the flower crown on his head wilted - i added it partly because 1) it's my Aesthetic(tm) and 2) what if he was murdered while in the middle of celebrating something joyous? just to make it extra fucking tragic? perhaps he was vengeful for a while, envious of the living, a restless, embittered ghost luring or dragging victims into the depths, into a murky underwater maze of caves and nooks and seaweed, eyes shining like will-o-the-wisps. i think his posture speaks volumes, too - hunched over, lurking, stalking.  

but then he met a human who managed to soothe his sorrows and aches and put his soul at ease. sometimes all it takes is a little kindness. i'm a sucker for stories where a smol human manages to give a big scary monster something that the monster may not even have known that they wanted - friendship, family, a home. love. 

i have yet to name the two of them. suggestions are welcome...! 

// art + character © me.