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When in doubt, plagued by a lack of motivation, and stricken with artists block, draw a random cat you found on Pinterest

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Some more creature design I did a while ago which still holds up, and is still canon in terms of Wonderwit and that whole worldbuild haha.

It’s a fish, it’s a whale, no! It’s a sea serpent!

The big one, while still colloquially regarded as the same thing by some groups of people, is very much a different thing, in that it’s a separate manifestation of strong currents in the ocean which has taken the form of something resembling sea serpents. In various cultures it is a god, or at least a higher being, either worthy of worship or fear. It is a menace to boats and people alike, though not always intentionally, and it is rare. Incredibly rare to the point where some people, despite documented evidence of its existence, still call it a hoax.

Because what it is not, is made of flesh and bone, unlike the others.

Sea Serpents that are flesh and bone are a relatively new lineage, descants of semi-aquatic lizards that survived the extinction of the dinosaurs, and went through rapid evolutionary changes as they were pushed further out to sea. But, because of sharks they were never able to get a decent foothold in any position of apex predators, and the when whales came onto the scene, Sea Serpents started to get outcompeted. Now, only a few species survive, clinging to small niches in remote locations.

All Sea Serpents still have specially adapted scales that almost resemble odd fins, which are used as a sort of sensory organ, detecting vibrations and electrical signals in the water.

The smaller three are all technically Sea Serpents, though only the long pink one is called a Sea Serpent due to its shape being more snakelike. It uses large “teeth” to crush through the shells of clams, turtles, and break the skulls of anything it can fit its jaws around. They live close to the shores in kelp forests and coral reefs, nearly an apex predator. Fortunately, it doesn’t really like the taste of humans, and they’ll usually only attack in self defense, though some man eaters have been reported before.

The largest one is called an Odd Whale, despite it not being a whale, or even a mammal. People thought it looked like a whale, and they thought it looked odd, and when people looked out into the water and said, “Hey, I think I see an odd lookin whale over there!” The name stuck. Odd Whales are very small compared to other whales, and generally like to stay in mangroves and shallow oceans. It is slow and mostly herbivorous, and no serious threat to humans. It’s more of the opposite, since many people would see it while fishing or hunting and simply shoot it to figure out what it is. Thankfully, it’s making a comeback.

The smallest Sea Serpents is the Surfice. They’re small, but very tenacious, very strong, and so fast it’s broken. They hunt like sharks, and their complete range is unknown. What is known is that humans have to make sure the Surfices continue to have a healthy fear of them, because when they don’t, they start frequenting beaches. Unfortunately, kids, people dragged away by rip currents, and surfers that stray too far from shore are very tasty looking targets. Sometimes even worth a fight.

Here’s some skeletal structures I sketched out while designing these guys!

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Characters! These guys are fun.

A lot of the colors aren’t unintentional.

hah

I’ve redesigned these a couple times over the last year, and I think I’m finally satisfied with how they look now. Almost. So close. Rah. I think Tilly and Alec have stayed the most similar from their very first iterations.

Anyhow,

INTRODUCING:

Tilly Avis - Fresh out of high school with a knack for breaking the rules and getting away with it.

Alec Wonderwit - A self made man who exterminates unwanted (possibly illegal) pests for more money with less questions.

Fin Lux - Buff Royalty

Calisper (Cal) of Aureole - A scrawny runaway who made a deal with the proverbial devil

Elmin Surefoot - Claims she’s in her early 70s. Allegedly

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The designs here are wonderful! You can guess at their personalities with barely a glance

I like drawing Seawings the normal amount . . . (1/??)

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Some old work that still holds up to snuff in my eyes!

This is Cal, I won’t say much now, but he’s got fun plant powers and a knack for using his brain where it counts.

His outfit has changed a bit since I’ve drawn this, and it certainly doesn’t help his silhouette that I opted to leave his cape out in this drawing, but I think his hair makes up for it.

I hope to post my character references soon!

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I sketched out my terror bird things in charcoal pencil.

I love speculative biology I do

It’s so much fun when my mind gets working on stretching out towards all the fun possibilities.

Here’s closeups of some of them with explanations

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These are Horned Hollers, the smallest of the Rhacids in Aureole and devious little burrowers that can fly.

They’re mostly carnivorous, eating insects and reptiles, but they’re not adverse to roots, and a couple seeds every now and again.

They live in groups of pretty big, like meerkats, and they’re pretty ferocious for their size, usually able to drive off larger predators and animals with the power of determination and being really annoying.

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These guys are Blue Rhacids, they can’t fly, but they’re big and they can run. They’re incredibly intelligent, nocturnal pack hunters and scavengers that live in groups of up to twenty, usually family and extended family, though a group of twenty-six members is the largest documented yet.

Y’know how crows can recognize human faces and will target and mob people they believe have wronged them or killed them. This is that, 5 feet tall at the shoulders.

Thankfully, they usually don’t want to get on people’s bad sides, but harass or kill a member and they’ll be out for revenge.

There’s also rumors and stories that they can tell when the humans in their territory are hunting too much prey, and they’ll start targeting hunters for food instead, but it’s hard to say if those are actually true or just things made up to make sure people didn’t over hunt or do more ecological damage during the Great Starving.

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These are Crested Hollers, a bit like secretary birds mixed with hornbills. They’ve really loud, but melodious territorial calls which people used to use as measures of time, a bit like a rooster crowing. Up before the Holler, as they say in Aureole.

These birds can fly, and can run, and they stomp the souls out of snakes, reptiles, small mammals, even smaller birds. But unlike the other two Rhacids I’ve highlighted, these ones have a healthy fear of people, and tend to steer clear when they can.

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Well, rather self explanatory, I’ve resurrected terror birds in my worldbuild, made a couple absolutely monstrous in size and gave them all fancy headgear because I can.

Yes, you can ride the big ones. Yes, they will probably buck you off. Although number 5 is a species that is be domesticated and was released into the landscape by humans, and now its invasive. There’s still domesticated versions, however, just feral ones now too, and since the area they live in was decimated anyhow, it’s not as if they don’t fit in.

Number 3 likes to dig

Number 7 is nocturnal and hunts in packs

They are all faster than the average person. Or any person, for that matter. Number 6 is only fairly omnivorous, but it might be more accurate to say it’s a facultative carnivore and will have you for lunch. Or…a midday snack, not certain, people are pretty small.

Really smart birds, and I mean really smart birds.

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Pigeon 🪶

More ink tests trying to capture the blue hues calligraphy ink does when mixed with water and bleach.

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These worldly feelings of wonder are kind of pretty.

Squawk, you said you weren’t going to let this account die like the last one, where’ve you been? Vanished for - wait wait lemme check - a whole month.

WELL, things exploded, life happened, but we are getting back on the rails and seeing if we can shove some extra coal in the engine. Y’know what’s great? I lack a follower base of any kind, which means I’ve no “obligations” to an audience, I’m such a free lad. Can’t bind me to expectations if there aren’t any, etc etc anyhow

TILLY AVIS

Self proclaimed hoverboarder extraordinaire, but only because she’s not old enough to enter any races yet (something about safety and “not endangering the lives of reckless youth” which she is not just so everyone knows). But, she is quite skilled regardless, and enjoys the views and the feeling of being so high up the air feels thin and looking down could make nearly anyone dizzy. But she’s. Not reckless.

No, I swear, she can handle herself up there. She’s well practiced, has a healthy fear of flying in storms, and has tricked up that hoverboard so much it’s illegal real hard to die if you know what you’re doing. And she sure knows what she’s doing, evidently, because she’s still alive.

She has a helmet too! For when she wants to go so fast she can’t keep her eyes open or breathe or things like that. Usually she doesn’t go high enough to where she needs to wear it for the purposes of oxygen, it’s risky for several reasons, like falling and airships.

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Ah! Worldbuilding stuff!

This one is still highly in development, and if you’ve seen the maps, this is completely irrelevant. Now that I think about it I should really have tags or something to help differentiate them. Honestly, maybe separate blogs would be better. I could reblog into other blogs! Wouldn’t that be perfect. Actually, I think I might just do that then.

ANYHOW.

More on the world!

I’ve no intentions to spill all the beans just yet, and honestly there’s a whole lot of uncooked ones in there, but the basics are as follows:

THIS is a world between the realms of life and death, conscious and cadaver. It is beyond the unconscious, but what penetrates it are dreams. Dreams make up the basis of life here. They are the source of all matter, all energy, and all physics. They shape what would otherwise be a void.

Souls aren’t supposed to exist here, but some get trapped between where they are supposed to be.

Normally, souls would be the driving force of this world, what with them being a collection of dreams, and they would be rather distant from this world altogether. But a soul inside the world, oh they’re a walking target for things that eat dreams. Something that is a near undying source of energy and radiating dreams wherever it goes? The dream creatures would see a hamburger with legs!

And these two folks are a couple of the unlucky souls stuck here, poor them.

About the drawing, though!

The jellyfish are probably the biggest thing anyone would wonder about, so I’ll just address that.

See, unlike down in our world, there’s no stars in this place, and it’s perpetually nighttime. Though, if you gaze up at the sky you might see something that resembles stars, but they move! You’d be seeing jellyfish. Like stars, they look small, but in actuality they’re monumental things. Maybe not quite as big as a star, but probably bigger than a house.

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Heheh

Roz sketches

I finally got to watching this film and it is absolutely wonderful. Roz is wonderful, I love how natural her arc feels, the events that pulled her to breaking her programming and coming to terms with who she was outside of what she was made to be.

Ahh! So good. I was wondering how accurate it was when people would say “This is one of the best Dreamworks movies ever made” but they’re right, I think. Dreamworks has done well!

I’d say more but I rather not spoil things.

If you haven’t watched the movie, please do, it’s refreshing to see in the midst of the live action remake sludge that has littered the modern film landscape.

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World Map!

Was this unnecessary? Yes. Definitely. I did not have to make this whole map for my worldbuilding stuff, I really didn’t, but it makes things so much easier to visualize!

Now when I talk about geopolitics I can point to a map and say “this one right here, that’s the dictatorship that is horribly xenophobic and has a massive ego but gets away with it because good trade relations!” (Top right, if you were curious)

I worked this place ground up from plate tectonics and placed biomes with the help of geological features and ocean currents. I couldn’t poured rice onto a piece of paper and traced it, but a reason for everything!

I will admit that it is quite inaccurate and probably needs to be reworked, but I’m very proud.

Now, the nations in this world have been jam packed with lore, and while I’d love to ramble about that here, it would take forever and be an organizational nightmare.

But then again, giving you a map with names, telling you it’s cool, and then telling you I’ll elaborate maybe some other time is anticlimactic, sad, droll what have you, and I don’t want this to be any of those things!

So, instead, I’ll give you a reason to stay tuned…

With some wonderful highlights of what’s to come!

Introducing:

Aureole!

Self proclaimed “City of Sunshine” smack in the middle of a hellscape of their own making! They have lots of territory, most of it inhabitable!

Viru!

The only city where magic isn’t outlawed, and also drives half the economy by supplying the black market which everyone else pretends to hate!

Transoceanic Links!

Neutral territory, very hard to live in. Natural habitat of sea serpents and pirates.

Senit!

They haven’t noticed the entire secret city under the mountain range yet, and they probably never will!

Capitulum!

They built their capital on a giant tree! Bad design? Maybe! But it doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to dying yet.

Township of Nivalis!

Not a lot of land, but a really scary Navy.

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I was getting inspired by all the Over the Garden Wall art that kept passing me, so I decided to do a quick drawing of this guy.

It’s a bit late for this to be in the spirit of halloween, but it is anyhow, because I like the spooky season. And I also really like this show, and this dog. Such a good dog when it’s not trying to kill people!

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I love this very much, it’s like biology Sherlock Holmes gig, fascinating stuff. You never even think about a lot of this but it makes perfect sense! It gives you that same, “How did I ever miss it!”

Could you imagine a parody of Sherlock Holmes but it’s like Shark Tales? I’d say Finding Nemo but Shark Tales has a fish mafia so it’s better suited.

But my point is fish Sherlock could use the different biological differences in fish to figure out what species the villain of the week is and it could be like a kids educational show.

What would you call it?

Sealock Holmes and Dr. Washedson

I swear it’s a marketable pitch.

The body shape of a fish can tell you a lot about it! It can tell you where they like to hang out, how they hunt, what they eat, and more!

Let's use the Asian Arowana (Scleropages formosus) as an example!

Based off the rounded caudal fin (the "tail"), this fish is not a very fast swimmer

Having the dorsal fin and anal fin right near the end of the fish's body suggests it is an ambush predator

The flat head suggests it hunts at the surface

The upturned, large mouth suggests it catches its prey from below

Arowana are ambush predators that hunt at the surface!

They don't need to go very far very fast, hence the rounded caudal fin (which is the slowest moving fin)

Having posterior dorsal and anal fins are a common trait amongst ambush predator

They primarily hunt at the surface! They will sit near the surface and grab small fish, bugs, crustaceans, and even occasionally a bird!

4. Fish that catch their prey from below sometimes do it via suction. They'll open their large mouth, and as the water gets sucked in, so does anything in the water. And the larger the mouth, more water will more quickly fill into the mouth, catching larger and faster prey

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Propaganda on how to avoid propaganda I bet, it already looks like a marketing pitch, in full S.M.I.L.E. fashion.

I can’t wait for a finished version whenever that happens, I’ll be watching it day in day out for a week.

Just want to share this very quick oh you bet it not finished heh looks at camera

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Jeepers, it’s really tempting to just leave a bit of art like this and then vanish with no context but that seems a bit too much like I’m screaming into some kind of void.

Actually I guess this technically still counts into screaming into some kind of void because I don’t know how tumblr…works? I don’t mind being unseen in the eyes of the vast public currently, I fully believe if I just stay active and keep posting things people will eventually congregate into some amorphous blob I can then manipulate with all the various subliminal messaging in my art.

Haha what? who said that? I’m joking though (for now in this case) because this art doesn’t have anything like that.

But I must satisfy the people who don’t like reading so before the text strays too far from the image…

TL:DR Folks it’s a deceptively peaceful scene, in actuality what you’re seeing is a picture straight from one of the most inhospitable places in this fictional world!

And now if you’ll follow me to the context…

This is a thing I drew for some worldbuilding I’m doing. The location is an environment that was once a rainforest, but too much farming and industry turned it into a bit of a hellscape.

Centuries after, the people have - mostly - learned the errors of their ways and the vegetation is reclaiming the land once more, albeit slowly. Very slowly, for the atmosphere is crippled and the land lacks nutrients, so grass practically owns the landscape, and makes trees kind of a rarity.

It does rain around here, but without a mass of trees the further into the hellscape you travel the less rainfall you’ll see, and the more wildfires because phoenixes absolutely adore a nice sun scorched savannah, it’s practically a playground for them.

Of course, despite all that, where there’s plants, there’s animals to eat those plants, and those wyverns sure animals.

They are grazers, not likely as big as what you may be imagining, they’re a bit smaller than the size of your average coyote. They can also fly, which is helpful in a place that is so hot and dry it spontaneously combusts.

Y’know what auto ignition is? It’s a term that’s used to describe an environment that has enough heat, oxygen, and fuel to get a fire going without a spark. Usually it happens in burning buildings, or where there’s a fuel that’s really combustible.

So, yes, this place is that inhospitable. You thought deserts were bad? Imagine being a dehydrated traveler trying to get through THIS place and suddenly everything from the grass snagging at your clothes to your hat is on fire. So yeah, flying is useful for running away.

Note there’s no real megafauna in this place, it’s not possible, you get caught too far from what remains of the rainforest on a particularly hot day, and can’t book it before noon you’re dead.

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I want to say this looks like stained glass, and it does, but I don't know if that would be apt. Y'know what else it looks like? Colorful tissue paper pressed until wrinkle free and laid over a collage, backlit by sunlight. Something about it is so kaleidoscope as well, holograms? Whatever it resembles, I love it.

Ooorion boy ohyeah