The Sanguisughi is a creature introduced in The Saint of San Lorenzo. They were designed to look like the kind of monster people would immediately mistake for a vampire, while actually being something quite different.
In a setting filled with elegant, attractive and alluring vampires, I wanted to create a species that looked far more monstrous but was not inherently predatory. The Sanguisughi are closer to fruit eaters, yet their appearance causes them to be feared as monsters long before anyone understands what they are. In that sense, they are almost a faux vampire.
The design uses a human face as its anatomical base, with bat-like features built around it rather than simply added on top. The ears keep the ear canal in a similar position to a human one, with the larger outer ear developing around it. This helped keep the structure believable while still giving the head a strong bat-like silhouette.
The nose dominates the centre of the face, helping shift the facial structure away from something conventionally human. The eyes are extremely large and dark, with very little visible sclera, designed for a creature capable of functioning in very low light while still maintaining sharp vision during the day.
Strong neck muscles support the idea that the head and body are adapted for flight. The hairless, wrinkled skin, heavy brow and pronounced cheekbones push the design further into horror, while also suggesting that the mouth and jaw could stretch far wider than the human structure beneath it would initially imply.
Every part of the face was chosen to make the Sanguisughi feel like a believable blend of human and bat anatomy, while supporting the central contradiction of the species: they look like the monster in a story about vampires, but appearance is exactly what makes them misunderstood.