Insectoid character design.

I started off looking at spiders, praying mantis and wasps, torn between which i wanted to base my design on, i decided to try blending features of all three into some kind of hybrid creature. From my love of fantasy fiction, i was also interested in combining aspects of the drider character design into my own.

First sketch design focused heavily on the spider/drider design, however i subconsciously included praying mantis style apendages. I really liked the insectoid, helmet-like head as a basic starting point. (Note to self: MUST START IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PAGE MORE OFTEN!!!)

Elaborating on the praying mantis appendages i used on the first, heavy spider/drider design, i ran with these and carried them over to my mantis design, i really like the body/figure of this one, along with the large bug-like eyes.

The final design i went with was a wasp/drider design, again there were elements of the head i really liked here that i wanted to carry across to the final design, aswell as the wings and thorax .

The final creature design incorporated all the aspects from each design i liked most, blending my favorite parts of each individual head into a hybrid design of all three that i really like, keeping that warrior/soldier/knight type feel of the spider design while using the big buggy eyes of the mantis. While i included a thorax protruding from the back of the character, much like the drider designs, i prefered the bipedal anatomy, so shed the multiple legs and stuck to just dual pairs of arms to make up the limb count, the more wasp-like wings i feel pull the overal hybrid design together nicely.

The final creature design knocked up in a (hopefully) modeler friendly face on and profile views character sheet, still having major problems with spacial awareness when it comes to setting out my sketches on paper, this is something i must work on. 

Probably the first time i have ever attempted to draw a character in total profile, MUCH harder than i expected!!