Sketches trying to work out a new design for some bug aliens called Chapoli. Tried going for a mix of a gorilla, a wasp/ant, a grasshopper/cricket, and a little bit of coconut crab. The main idea with these guys is that they can leap real far/high with organic springs. In older designs (below) the spring was way more cartoony, and didn't really give a good idea as to how they'd move without bouncing everywhere. I wanted to remedy that by giving them smaller legs they can use to walk around and to position their springs for more controlled leaping. The new spring design is based on a jumping robot featured in this Veritasium video.

The Chapoli also had arms with cartoony looking springs in the older designs, which I changed out for flexible membrane. In Tablespess, if you play as one of these guys you get a larger melee range as a passive skill so I wanted to keep their ability to stretch their arms. Oh yeah, these guys also use their wings to communicate and have some metal body parts, which does have an example in nature.

Below are some pretty old drawings I did of these guys. Lower one was an enemy in a Tablespess playtest campaign I ran.