This part was incredibly satisfying to draw;

Lately I've been thinking there is something so appealing about a human head on top of a totally animalistic body.

I think I must have also been thinking about a fantasy novel called 'A Spell for Chameleon' that involved a lot of transformations, including a sphinx like this one. I might recommend it, but unfortunately it turned out to be an allegory about the so-called "evils" of race-mixing. Ugh.