Deep Sea Orca

this one's been sitting around for a while, but i thought i'd give it a quick brush up because i really liked these guys~

so a while ago i saw a few peoples takes on deep sea orcas, but most of them just seemed to be regular orcas with some anglerfish parts on them. i liked the concept though and i wondered what a realistic deep sea orca might look like if they evolved somehow.

since we already have deep sea cetaceans, and none of them have gills or glowing lights, my guys took some evolutionary cues from those guys. they're very compressible and have much smaller fins so they don't have to waste all that heat and time keeping them circulated. no gills or anything like that, either - they're just very good at diving for long periods of time. this one's guarding her kiddo while the rest of the pod finds something to eat. what are they hunting down there? it is a secret...

sadly i fucked up the colour scheme while painting. the colours are supposed to be a lot more muted (i find they're better represented in the sketch). but i'm having a bad day with drawing and couldn't get the whales to "pop" otherwise. maybe i'll tackle these guys again some other time.