raptors-drawblog-of-awesome

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fucked up how colors look different depending on what screen you’re looking at them on. that should be illegal I think

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Feather illustration for non-biologists! It occurred to me that some of you might find this useful. It starts with a necessary biology lesson, because I find that understanding the structure and function of feathers will greatly improve accurate rendering of those feathers.

A lot of this is general - obviously you can find all kinds of exceptions in the  natural world (penguins, ratites, I’m looking at you guys). But it should cover the bulk of the illustration needs if you’re not comfortable drawing feathers and want some ideas on how to improve.

For photo references, I highly recommend birdpixel (a very generous online art reference created by Leena and Vivek Khanzode), Cornell’s Macaulay Library, and Piranga, which is mostly aimed at North American bird banders but shows excellent close-ups of a variety of species.

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A perfect illustration 🙏💕

Hello I heard we needed a trans hydra

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Yooo this is so good!!!

the lemon lime flavored one

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i am thrilled every time someone evolves this one and says "wait that wasn't a smiling mouth?? it was all eyes this whole time??"

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dragonfruit fruitbats, tried to make the final stage equally king and fool. we used the name fluffruit before TPC did, hope they don't C&D us!

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last of the early route birds, these are based on california quails. why does the feather become a giant fist? i just thought it was funny.

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these ones are based on the myth of koalas being constantly drunk on eucalyptus, as well as eucalyptus trees propensity to encourage wildfires to propagate their seeds. they have two thumbs just like real koalas, check out a photo of a koalas hand if you've never seen one!

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these ones are of course based on goose barnacles/barnacle geese, and the myth that barnacle geese emerged from barnacles instead of from eggs. other myths told of barnacle geese growing straight from trees, like the vegetable lamb, which quarantine crystal also features!

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attacko! this is a mimic that desperately wants people to bite it, and is eternally frustrated that no one takes the bait and gets tempted by a 3 foot taco sitting in a dark cave corner. they extend and retract limbs as needed, like an amoeba.

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nomster and nomsabre are our early route rodents. nomsabre catches and stores attacks in its cheeks. people who have seen a hamster yawn will understand how that backsprite looks.

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another early route bug, gwubby fails to metamorphose properly into a beetle and grubboid is the result. grubboid's 'face' is fake, comprised of the horns on his face and thorax and the eyespots on his elytra. he's based on hercules beetles.

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straddling the fine line between an homage and a rip off here. i would raise the question of how wormacho looks under the mud, given the 5 separate visible worm ends.

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these guys are based on the archetype of the thieving household fairy. their skin has the texture of a green garden hose. the horns on the final stage are coloured to mimic a lawn gnome!

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i struggled with their redesigns for a long time but now these early route birds are easily some of my favourites in the whole dex. they're based on horneros and burrowing owls, with some terracotta warrior and knight armour thrown in.

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one of our early birds, based on my favourite bird, the hoatzin! they hatch with fully formed clawed hands, which they climb with. the hands metamorphose into regular wings as they grow. they smell like manure and are also known as "stinkbird"! go look them up, they are beautiful!

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our early route bugs, based on parasitic wasps and mosquitos, and the medical mummy. since injectoid develops from the eggs laid on buzzling's back, technically buzzling is not part of the same evolutionary line!