Deep Terrors

I´ve seen enough hentai... you know the rest.

There are a lot of ariel pics out there being attacked by an octopus, buuut I just couldnt find one that appealed me in such a memorable way. 
That´s why I decided to make one. 

I remember having seen a B movie when I was a little kid where there was an octopus killing people. You never saw the octopus, you got a camera angle from the octopus point of view. 
One moment there was a baby on a stroller on a deck, next thing you know baby was gone. 
One of my irrational terrors was not sharks in the pool.
It was octopus on the pool. 

I have this Phobia/Fascination with spiders and octopuses. There is something about octopuses, the void in their intelligent eyes. The way they camouflage and ambush their preys and just like sticking to bubble gum or spiderweb, once it wraps a tentacle around you, it is almost impossible to escape. You can´t effectively fight or inflict damage on that rubbery muscular structure, it will just keep adding more tentacles to the equation, those suction cups that just wont let go, and by the time you free yourself from one, you are already ensnarled in two or three more. 

That irrational terror is what I wanted to convey on this image. The dephts of the sea are dangerous, and I firmly believe that many adventurous merman and mermaids found their demise in the tentacles of one of these monsters. 

Initially I had the idea of ariel being gagged with a starfish, just as ursula in human form does in the ship wedding scene. Ultimately, an octopus an a starfish working together just didn´t felt right. And I went for the octopus alone.   I thought first about a squid covering ariel´s mouth with one of his wider tip tentacles, but squids only have two long tentacles and the other tentacles are rather short. Besides the body-tentacle ratio wouldn´t have worked for the design idea of the pic. 

I couldnt find a proper color for the octopus. Ariel was color balanced with the background (redhead, green tail, peach-yellow skin and blue ocean), so the octopus didn´t balanced the pic in any way. Besides, what color is an octopus? They change colors accordingly to their situation and surroundings, so any colour and design could be plausible. So I went for the dark purple reminiscing ursula. 
Background is a collage from image web searches, some blur filters, screen mode, some overlay shadow gradient, some light rays traced, some more blurring and color management until it felt right and balanced with the pic. 
I added some ocean light rays over the octopus and ariel and turned down the transparency, added some glow, skin filters for the octopus, an some bevel and emboss to add some texture to its skin. 
Finally some bubbles... I dont´t know why, we are used to see bubbles in animation, but fishes dont just burp out bubbles. They breathe through their gills or branchia. They absorb the oxygen on the water by filtering it. If you watch an underwater documentary, no fish, crab, shark or marine life burps bubbles ( dolphins, whales and orcas are marine mammals that breathe air)
I understand that in animation, as a way to subconciously sell you the illusion of someone underwater, they add something that we all relate with being underwater (bubbles), but fishes dont "exhale" bubbles.  It is not correct, you might have never thought of it before, but I´m sure you will think about it the next time you watch the liittle mermaid. 

Anyway, enough bubble ranting. 

Cabroon out.