Here it is! my first proyect in Behance: El Coco or Bugaboo.
The inspiration came observing tropical catfish in an acuarium (don't remember in what part of London, think around kew gardens) with a group of illustration students few years ago. The shape, the wide mouth, the prinitive appeal attracted my attention and started to make a story in my head for an illustration: a huge creature founded on an ancient city in some corner of the galaxy, lurking in the underground spaces and sewers; a living relic between relics of an almost forgotten glorious past of the human race.
I made a few pencil sketches (you can see them here) previous to the serious work: a huge container with the creature inside and a group of observers to give an idea of the critter's size. Using fine liners, markers and my hands (my working style) I made a black&white illustration in A5 cartridge paper that was scanned and polished using Gimp (the fourth image in this proyect); then I added just some pale colour for the belly and mouth of the beast using the same program. The final step was using inkspace to vectorise the illustration, smoothing the line work and giving me the option to scale it without ending whit a horrible pixelated image.
