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Description
first humanoid design for artstation's beneath the wave creature design challenge

www.artstation.com/contests/be…

the idea of a sleek looking and fairly advanced race of dolphin-people interests me the most, so the second round of brainstorming involves things like how they live, their body forms, armors, weapons, etc. from the initial sketch i was already going for a middle eastern saracenic warrior look, with some influences of Mongolian helmets.
a major challenge in fleshing out this concept is figuring out the way aquatic merfolks would create clothing, since i'm going for a more hopefully realistic take on their clothing materials. wool and cotton simply doesn't exist in the deep blue sea, nor do fire and the amount of heat necessary to smelt metal. therefore most of their clothing and armor should be based on organic materials found in the ocean, but at the same time it must still convey the sleek and fairly advanced look of their culture, meaning i must avoid crude looking weapons and armor and must have them processed in some way. i'll save the crude coral weapons and carapace armors for another different looking race.

in the end a bunch of interesting materials i found are oyster shells and cuttlebones which has an elegant sheen on them, and they are grindable or can be carved into shapes, perfect for merfolk armor. so in this world i've come up with the idea that the cetans grow giant oyster farms in their homeland and harvest them to be grinded into armor parts, same goes for the giant squids whose cuttlebone they fashion into armors or even shields resembling the norman kite shields. later on whale bones also joined the gang as they are similar to ivory. some other ideas for softer clothings include weaved seaweed, whale hide, fish scales.

as for weapons, i took into account the drag that occurs underwater, so axes, clubs, or slashing/cleaving swords and maces wouldn't fit a fast moving open sea merfolk, i generally go for spear-like weapons or thrusting swords and sabers made of bone materials, some have hook parts on them, either serrated or more bill-looking. their helmets have sharp narwhal-like tusks protruding from them which are used in the way they battle, mostly involving lunging at the enemy in high speeds, and turning back for another lunge until one of them is fatally wounded or is forced into close-quarter stabbing.

lastly, they have colossal war-narwhals that they use as army transport and intimidation, much like the war elephants rome fought.
they are a semi-nomadic people, although they have a homeland, they travel on gigantic whales far larger than the narwhals, going on months of raids on the reef people, the sight of their whale pods approaching from the deep blue distance spelling doom to the coral natives living in their reef community.

Description
first humanoid design for artstation's beneath the wave creature design challenge

www.artstation.com/contests/be…

the idea of a sleek looking and fairly advanced race of dolphin-people interests me the most, so the second round of brainstorming involves things like how they live, their body forms, armors, weapons, etc. from the initial sketch i was already going for a middle eastern saracenic warrior look, with some influences of Mongolian helmets.
a major challenge in fleshing out this concept is figuring out the way aquatic merfolks would create clothing, since i'm going for a more hopefully realistic take on their clothing materials. wool and cotton simply doesn't exist in the deep blue sea, nor do fire and the amount of heat necessary to smelt metal. therefore most of their clothing and armor should be based on organic materials found in the ocean, but at the same time it must still convey the sleek and fairly advanced look of their culture, meaning i must avoid crude looking weapons and armor and must have them processed in some way. i'll save the crude coral weapons and carapace armors for another different looking race.

in the end a bunch of interesting materials i found are oyster shells and cuttlebones which has an elegant sheen on them, and they are grindable or can be carved into shapes, perfect for merfolk armor. so in this world i've come up with the idea that the cetans grow giant oyster farms in their homeland and harvest them to be grinded into armor parts, same goes for the giant squids whose cuttlebone they fashion into armors or even shields resembling the norman kite shields. later on whale bones also joined the gang as they are similar to ivory. some other ideas for softer clothings include weaved seaweed, whale hide, fish scales.

as for weapons, i took into account the drag that occurs underwater, so axes, clubs, or slashing/cleaving swords and maces wouldn't fit a fast moving open sea merfolk, i generally go for spear-like weapons or thrusting swords and sabers made of bone materials, some have hook parts on them, either serrated or more bill-looking. their helmets have sharp narwhal-like tusks protruding from them which are used in the way they battle, mostly involving lunging at the enemy in high speeds, and turning back for another lunge until one of them is fatally wounded or is forced into close-quarter stabbing.

lastly, they have colossal war-narwhals that they use as army transport and intimidation, much like the war elephants rome fought.
they are a semi-nomadic people, although they have a homeland, they travel on gigantic whales far larger than the narwhals, going on months of raids on the reef people, the sight of their whale pods approaching from the deep blue distance spelling doom to the coral natives living in their reef community.