Just one of 12 pages of color variations and themes that I worked on tonight into the wee hours of the morning.

We were assigned the task of illustrating something from a written excerpt from a science fiction story, and I chose to do character design on the alien, based on the brief description thus:

Whatever it was, whatever intelligence it possessed, it was clearly not human in shape as its shadow formed an extraordinary silhouette in the green light of the airlock. Its movements were jarringly swift and fluid, like those of a reptile. It twitched and thrashed, slithering forward toward the open port.

An oddly articulated arm with eight clutching digits at the end of it, snaked into the dark corridor, followed swiftly by another, and another, and then another. The fingers of these strangely bending limbs fastened onto a nearby stanchion and an immense, roughly triangular torso, perched atop two thick, sinewy, oddly joined legs, loomed up into the eerie greenish light. As strange and terrifying as the huge body was, the creature's head was more fearsome still. Its three huge, watery eyes moved independently of each other on flexible stalks as the thing summarily surveyed its surroundings. The large, elongated head possessed a slathering gash of a mouth, with ragged fangs that protruded past green blue lips. It had no nose that could be recognized, but a row of slits in the creature's short, muscular neck pulsed and fluttered like gills, laboriously drawing air into its gigantic frame. Beginning at the top of its disproportionately large head and running down its back, was a whirling mane of slender, reddish slug-like parasites that squirmed and coiled in a bizarre parody of human hair. Some of the slugs fell onto the deck and scattered in various directions, seeking the security of darkness. Vera's skin began to crawl. She feared that the parasites, attracted to her by her body heat, might make their way up into the shielding cover of her flight suit. Powerless to suppress the impulse, she let out a gasp.

I took a little artistic license with a few of the features, but not without approval. I think the lower one is my favorite out of the 24 compositions I ground out. I might post them all if asked, too :)