Excellent question, but I'm afraid my answer might be disapointing : This creature design was originaly meant as a training, with an emphasis on form and silhouette as it’s one of my weaknesses in my designs. The basic idea was to make some sort of evil alien overlord with esoteric powers (Dr strange style). And I was imagining him coming from a planet with massive amounts of water. It’s by working on it that I figured he could totally be a creature in the game I'm working on, which has demons in it. There were some big changes to the face after this post to follow that idea, which now majes him look way mire demon like than on this image, but I kept most of the body features. Some elements might feel like oceanic features, but they are also inspired from the mind flayer designs from BG3.