nealdanderson:

So, this is a project I’ve had in mind for years now, but have a very difficult process in actually designing. While I appreciate the original Metroid 2 more than most, I’ve always found their lifecycle design to look, well, disappointing. The base Metroid form looks like the enlarged version of some microscopic abomination crossed with a jellyfish, but instead of continuing on this intriguing tangent, it’s lifecycle opts for a more reptilian route that I find boring and frankly silly looking. Though I obviously wasn’t expecting them to, I think Nintendo  was in a unique position to redesign them in Samus Returns that was sadly put to waste. Metroid is a series I hold very dear, but its constant recycling of the same environments, music and creatures is making it incredibly stale, and I frankly don’t care to see the series continue in all honesty, unless it drastically embraces new ideas and designs(which I highly doubt will happen). 

So end of rant, here’s my reinterpretation of the Metroid lifecycle- from hatchling to Queen, more inspired by microscopic organisms and weird sea life. I wanted to make sure each stage looked more advanced than the next, while given them each a distinct shape and ‘personality’. One common attribute is that I wanted them all to look a tad confusing in terms of anatomy- you really don’t know which end is which.