For many years I've been musing with the idea of a race I've come to call the Nauticai. Originally I had designed it to be used in a novel I was attempting to write, but that has been put aside for a couple years now. In any case, this character is stemmed from a violent mutation that the protagonist endures after coming in contact with a Nauticai. These creatures are a collective swarm of millions of other organisms that sometimes form a large writhing mass of flesh. Think Tyranids gone The Thing. They are harvesters of just about anything they can consume, or infect through mental manipulation via telepathy, or through physical contact by injecting their own tissue into the victim using more mobile forms of their kind. When the infected tissue began to take hold of the protagonist, who was already a sort of advanced form of human, he took the DNA of the Nauticai into himself and transformed into The Hunter.

The sketch itself is incomplete and of course, rough. I wanted it to look feral and simply twisted. Taking in the aspects of the original host and morphing them into an armoured, agile four legged monster. In action it would attack its prey on all fours, moving at incredible speed and quite able to leap great distances to further close the gap. Using its tail as both balance and an effective weapon to overwhelm and disable, claws to grasp on and deliver a devastating bite to anyone unfortunate enough to gain its attention! You can expect more of this lil guy later on when I have the time or energy. It was fun to draw, I have to admit. Monsters and other unpleasant things are so much more interesting to draw...