#A beak or a snout??

[shidraoftheworldpillar]

I have an inexplicable urge to make fursonas for epic the musical characters so woe furry be upon ye:

Odysseus: wolf or fox (or both???)

Polites: firefly

Eurylechus (or however you spell it): badger or bull

Antinous: grizzly bear

Circe: red panda

Zeus: thunderbird

Poseidon: hippocampus

Hermes: jackolope

Athena: owl

calypso: tropical bird like a hoatzin or scarlet ibis

penelope: I'm not sure, if yall please suggest suggest good species thatd be awesome

Telemachus: a hybrid of Odysseus and Penelope's species

EDIT: Calypso is now a marine iguana cause we gotta have some reptile representation and antinous is a really scruffy stray cat that crawled out of an alleyway in the middle of a storm

[mammalfriend]

[ofdarklands]

was trying to redesign phoenix (wol version) to having an actual beak and be (slightly) less boobyful while still being properly draconic. ended up a bit chocoboy

i felt like i was trying to fix a pug breed

[sleep-deprived-luka]

Oh I recall why I hate drawing humans

[jragon-teeth]

Time to start posting some fr art,,,

These are some of my pearlcatchers! Top one is Midnight, a 5yo og from when I first started playing the game, and the bottom two are Cinder & Burn! Hatch-siblings from midnight and her longtime mate, Tigerflame.

[molagboop]

I need to draw Samus more. The one obstacle is drawing faces. It's not just that I haven't exactly nailed human faces, it's that I consistently envision her in at least six different styles simultaneously every time I try to put her to the page (that's why she looks different every time I draw her).

It's a constant battle between big and blocky (my beloved), cartoony and malleable for comedic purposes, and some hybrid look with influences from all over the place. Between wrangling the shape of the face and remembering how her hair works (harder than it sounds when you have 30 different versions of one character in your head), it's hard to find a happy medium sometimes. I'll get there, I just need to separate the different entities within the fleshy mass in my head from each other and use them appropriately.

[the-crystal-femmes]

I can't draw Pearl front facing but I can't draw Ula anything other than front facing. Wtf 🥲

[unchained-hound]

He's pretty cute y'all just don't like him bc you're scared

[fvaleraye]

on a lighter note- we remembered our plague doctor mask. it doesn't quite give the euphoria of a screen face, but it's something. it's silly, and we like it

[ryansholin]

Yeah, that tracks.

Would you like to find out what you would be the god of? Take my new uqiz to find out

[mbat]

i wanna like stantler so bad cause i like deers and such and i like its horns and i think the tail is so silly /pos but why does its face look like that 😭 google wont tell meee

[avian-hearts]

what if longan had a plushie of bird me that they hold and be cozy with?

[mspaintlover]

i drew this a while ago on a bigger canvas because i was thinking about like . all prompts or whatever like mentioning kissing like erm. how

[seven-gill]

Evolution of my sketches and doodles for Indigo. Still haven’t settled on something I like. She feels too similar to my Listener design, mainly in the face, so I’m working on giving her a distinct look. Bonus Fathom sprinkled here and there.

Minor content warning for blood in image 3.

1. The most recent concept, comparing Indigo before and after the massacre. I know Fathom completely healed her following her tussle with Albatross, but I like the idea of her still carrying the scars of that fateful night. I’m not a fan of her color palette or horns, but I’m happy with the freckles and triangle motif.

2. Early version of the previous image with more vibrant purples and white compliments. Post massacre Indigo is almost meant to look like a completely different character. I wanted her sail to be a prominent part of her person, something vibrant and playful before its completely shredded.

3. Fathom grieving over a dying Indigo. Very happy with these colors and the shape of her wings and tail. Maybe I’ll revisit this sketch and make a full drawing of it.

4. Color exploration. I really don’t like working with the color purple. I mean, I love it on its own, but I’m awful at coming up with pleasing palettes, and purple- for whatever reason, is one of those colors I can’t seem to get right, I tried purple and oranges, purple and white, and so on and so forth. I looked at some purple fish for reference and decided that the Purple Tang was a decent muse. Deep blues and purples paired with spots and stripes. Also tried incorporating yellow/orange again…

5. Fathom and the “Animus Slayer”. Fathom has remained relatively unchanged in his appearance. He’s meant to look like a wearier Turtle, while also borrowing some of his grandfather’s traits. The Albatross similarities will make more sense if I ever get around to posting my design for him. (They’re supposed to have similar beaked snouts, eyebrows, horns, and forked barbels).

6. My OLDEST concepts for Indigo. These were my attempts to get a feel for color and shape, and it’s where I decided I wanted Indigo to be heavily scarred.

7. Indigo and Fathom as young dragonets | Another armored Indigo doodle | The Pickles meme but with Indigo and Fathom.

I’ll probably finish Indigo eventually, but I’m sorta at a loss on where to take her. Maybe I’ll move my focus to Albatross and Fathom since I have a much clearer vision for them.

[alphynix]

Avisaurus darwini here lived at the very end of the Cretaceous, about 66 million years ago, in what is now the Hell Creek fossil beds in Montana, USA.

It was a member of a diverse group of Mesozoic birds known as enantiornitheans, which retained claws on their wings and often still had toothed snouts instead of beaks – and being part of the avisaurid family it was also one of the larger known examples of these birds, similar in size to a modern hawk at around 60cm long (~2').

Although this species is only known from isolated foot bones, the remains have distinct enough anatomical features to show that Avisaurus had powerful gripping talons similar to those of modern hawks and owls, suggesting it had a similar lifestyle hunting small vertebrate prey in the ancient swampy Hell Creek ecosystem.

———

NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Patreon

References:

Clark, Alexander D., et al. "New enantiornithine diversity in the Hell Creek Formation and the functional morphology of the avisaurid tarsometatarsus." PloS one 19.10 (2024): e0310686. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310686

“Predatory birds from the same fossil formation as SUE the T. rex.” Field Museum, https://www.fieldmuseum.org/about/press/predatory-birds-from-the-same-fossil-formation-as-sue-the-t-rex 

Wikipedia contributors. “Avisauridae” Wikipedia, 21 Oct. 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avisauridae

Wikipedia contributors. “Avisaurus” Wikipedia, 09 Nov. 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avisaurus

[the-ancient-dragons]

HiveWing. Overcomplicated. But also not?

Joy and Tui, y'all cooked, I just put my own spin on it.

Details and explanation below.

Otherwise, next week are LeafWings! See you then!

More overcomplicated dragons.

I thought I had fun with the RainWing.

I was wrong. This was FUN.

Of all the ones I've done this design is nearly identical to the original. I'm not saying that to toot my own horn, it just somehow came out like that because I found the perfect references (and avoided altering the skull too much lol). Let's talk about them!

First, an unlikely one: iguanas. I originally picked them for their spines, but when I saw their eyes and large jaw scale (or whatever it is) I knew I'd found the new reptile base for the HiveWings. I also included the little snout and under-the-chin spikes they have; it just fits perfectly for a beetle-and wasp inspired dragon.

Speaking of beetles and wasps: I took heavy inspiration for the HiveWing's 'beak' from wasp mandibles. I love the way the mouth looks originally and wanted to preserve and exaggerate it. So, when creating the beak, I combined the jagged jaws of wasps with the curved beak of an African fish eagle. To top it off I referenced the rhinoceros beetle (obviously) for the horn on the nasion.

(The nasion is a point where your nose meets your forehead between your eyes). The HiveWing's horn isn't directly on it but I couldn't think of another word.

I actually wanted the entire head to have an insect-like feel, that's why the snout and forehead are built from large plates (once again referenced from rhino beetles).

Lastly, besides the lion-inspired teeth, an incredible animal called the nyala was responsible for the back horns. Whoever photographed that bull in that exact angle: thank you.

Let's see how badly I mess up the LeafWings next week. If you've read this far, perhaps let me know if you would like to see all of my personal headcanons for the LeafWings? For Alate Atta's Ascension I use a design where they have four wings and extra frills to look like leaves. I can do one closer to canon where they're more like a Pyrrhian tribe and another where they visually fit in with the other Pantalan tribes. Let me know!