Deep Haul

Chapter I

This where it all started, the idyllic fishing scene. I tried to be sensitive to the mood of the text and reflect it in the style of each picture. I wanted to make this very light in contrast to what would come up next.

Chapter II

The first ancient creature makes a quick appearance here. I imagine it would've been quite a horrific and surreal experience and i tried to capture that feeling most of all. A lot of the crazyness comes from the water.

Chapter III

We get to see the shadowy silhouette of the mysterious creature as it's chasing a school of fish. The pattern on mackerel is something that i've always found very intriguing.

Chapter IV

The Dunkleosteus makes a jump going after the boat. These were always exciting when the creature would pop out.. there is definitely a pattern going on here. Also I had good fun with the water on this one. Once again i got to fall back to memories on a boat.

Chapter V

Here we see some detail of the dunkleosteous armor plates and the eye. I spent a good amount of time trying to make that reflection work and i'm quite happy how it turned out.

Chapter VI

The dunkleosteous flees as a new creature is approaching from below. I liked to play a lot with the black and white in lot of the drawings. Trying to work out the trail of the boat was a treat.

Chapter VII

This one was a little of a pickle. For this one i wanted to do the sinking boat, but verbal-d also liked the goblin shark. So we ended up doing this fun split image.

Chapter VIII

There was a lot going on in this picture. I liked the play with the triangles and fin shapes which sort of picks up from the previous image as things are starting to get more hectic here.

Chapter IX

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The divers get to have a close look a the Megalodon as its chomps on the poor dunkleosteus. I remember we were very excited to get to this one. Again lot of elements in the picture like the chains and the dissolving blood clouds making the action.

Chapter X

Then it was time to chill with the blue whales and drones. verbal-d wanted some random letters on the side of the drone but i always like to put in little easter eggs.

Chapter XI

_ Megalodon dives after the whales. This seems pretty straightforward drawing but there were some kinks to it with the angle and the mouth._

Chapter XII

This is the end. I did not have a specific reference for the Leviathan due to it's mythic nature. I initially thought it woud only be a big cavernous mouth with teeth, but these things tend to grow. Verbal-d suggested adding a few spikes on sides and below chin and i got carried away. We had to try few types of eyes that would give the right impression.

And that was all of them. Thank you all for reading and thanks again @verbal-d for this project! This really was a good experience, can't believe it's over. I am looking forward to check out the story again with the illustrations.

Here is link to the original story:
They Didn't See It Beneath Them by @verbal-d

I thought i would make a separate post for these but let's just throw them here at the end. throughout the process i made a lot of separate saves and after completing each drawing i would compile them to an animated gif, which was a cool way to show the process. So here is the encore of those aswell: