Every character is inspired by something. You do a doodle that seems inconsequential, and there's something in it that you like, a small part of it that resonates in your imagination, sparks another idea, another possibility. I'm not particularly fond of the little guy I drew in the first post, but there are things about him that stayed with me for a couple of months. During the middle of January, when scanning was really heavy, I came back to that face. The down-curving horns, the thick eyebrows, the square buffalo-ish nose, the scowl. Then I started re-imagining the body. The neck became this huge pyrimid, the upper body more defined, and much larger, the legs and lower body smaller. This was definately much more interesting to me, this was sort of like the superheros that I had always wanted to draw but couldn't get quite right. Here was a very muscular character, but did not have to conform exactly to the rigid human musculature. He's a cartoon, he's not trying to copy real life, and thus my mistakes would not be as evident. With this drawing, this character became interesting and worthwhile to me, and I began the process of developing him further.
I don't have a name for this race/species/people group yet, so if you have any ideas or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments section. As usual, you can click the picture to enlarge the image.
