Creating this new "animal", my principle thought
was the suggestion of speed. And to achieve this, I employed several visual-language
principles: the first one is simple association of ideas through the
interpretation of select anatomical features. Certain animals, such as the
cheetah, who can achieve great speeds while running, make use of their long
tails for balance during cornering. Equipping a character with such a tail can
be indicative of this. In the same sense, equipping it with legs which are
similar in morphology to those of a horse or horse-like animal can reasonably
be used to point to these creatures' great speed.
The second visual element I used, however, is a bit more
complex. I am referring to principles of aerodynamics and stability in motion:
upon constructing ever faster vehicle models, race-car manufacturers eventually
noticed that upon surpassing certain speeds, their cars actually had a tendency
to lift off the ground, thus losing traction and even running the risk of
losing control and crashing. Another issue was that during cornering, the high
velocity tended to cause equal losses of control and wipeouts due to lack of
grip. These issues were amended, respectively, by the addition of a wing
attached to the rear of the car which would produce downforce, thus keeping the
car on the road, and by widening the distance between the car's rear wheels
(and sometimes also the distance between the front wheels), in order to
increase the amount of grip they could obtain.
I reproduced both these features in the design of my
character, first by flattening out the face and tilting it back, to mimic the
downforce effects of a wing, and then by changing the structure of its legs and
hips to something completely non-existent in nature, in order to widen the
distance between the legs' points of attachment to the torso, in order to
simulate increased grip and stability.