Gracile alien - observation sheet

This is a compact page of observations gleaned from P.O.Holland’s sketch of the “gracile alien”. I did it to adapt the form to my own sketching style, as well as test my understanding of it. Figuring out the hints on actual form and function from a rough sketch is challenging but fun. Which features are essential? Which ones are incidental? Are these thingies muscles or bones or horny ridges? And so on.

At this phase I did not attempt to devise the actual anatomical structures yet, though I did record the apparent structures in P.O.‘s sketch. There’s also a column of written notes documenting the observations.

I also doodled some ideas for possible alien “fish” in the free space on bottom left, in red pencil. The ventral-dorsal position of the arms and the symmetry of the hands, as well as the chevron “muscles” on the torso and an apparent joint at the antenna base, made me think of mirrored rows of fins. This is the earliest glimmer of the four-fold symmetry I designed for this fauna later on.