Shrimp Dog

I was commissioned to draw a person's dog as a monster, with the very open notes of making him lanky and with sharp teeth. After editing together some supplied reference photos to make a vague tonal reference to work over, I decided to mess around with the idea of it being a mimic dog of some sort. Initially going more crablike in the sketch work, I slowly decided more and more on trying to fit mantis shrimp anatomy into the form of a dog. I decided its arms and mandibles would form the face as a method of protective mimicry to allow them to enter homes at night to eat from people's cabinets and small animals. I reconsidered how the back legs would connect a few times, before settling on something that'd be more biologically consistent with shrimp anatomy. I've noticed that personally, the disguise works oddly better when its very close up; pretty spooky!