#Skyeraptor

[kosmonauttihai]

I haven’t posted raptor AU art to tumblr in a while, but here’s how things have been going with Skye and her girlfriend wife Tumult.

They each made one egg via parthenogenesis, resulting in their clutch of two. Life can find a whole bunch of ways.

[image description: a 10-panel comic featuring cartoony Jurassic Park Velociraptors in a summer forest landscape, with bright sunlight but dark clouds in the horizon. The main characters are a fully feathered, grey Velociraptor with blue markings and yellow eyes, called Skye, and a scaly, brown Velociraptor with reddish brown stripes and orange eyes, called Tumult. Description of each panel is below:

Panel 1: Skye looks up at the darkening clouds. She has a tuft of dry grass and a twig in her mouth.

Panel 2: Skye walking to a large sand nest lined with dry grass and twigs. Tumult is curled up asleep at the center of the nest. A scaly, yellow Velociraptor with brown stripes (Tumult’s mother) walks past and looks at them with a smile.

Panel 3: Closeup of Skye and Tumult greeting each other by bringing their snouts close together. They are both smiling.

Panel 4: Skye leans down to place the grasses and twig she brought into the nest. Tumult affectionately pushes her head against her flank.

Panel 5: Closeup of Tumult preening out pieces of grass stuck to the feathers on Skye’s flank, while Skye licks Tumult’s snout. Dialogue reads:

Tumult: And then the other half you brought in your plumage.

Skye: Maybe they’re new kinds of feathers.

Tumult: Come here.

Panel 6: Both are sitting down in the nest with their tails curled around each other. Tumult is still preening Skye. Silhouettes of two other raptors are seen farther away in the background, chatting with each other.

Skye: Saw the hunters returning with prey. They’ll get here soon.

Tumult: Oh, good. We can both eat before the rain starts. Want to take over already? I need to stretch.

Skye: Sure.

Panel 7: The nest seen from above, with both Tumult and Skye getting up and looking at something under them.

Panel 8: Closeup of Tumult and Skye’s faces, and two white eggs cushioned in dry grass and a few soft down feathers.

Tumult: Well, mine still looks the same. I guess it’ll stay smaller than yours, then?

Skye: Yeah, but you’re also smaller than me, so I think it’ll be fine. Our babies know how much egg they each need to grow in.

Panel 9: Skye is settling into the nest to brood the eggs. Tumult stands next to the nest stretching a leg, and is looking up with a more serious expression than they have had so far.

Tumult: Hey, did you hear that rumble?

Panel 10: Tumult and Skye are touching their snouts together and smiling again. Around them the forest is still brightly lit, a lot of the sky visible between trees is very dark.

Skye: Still distant, but it’s getting closer.

Tumult: We’ll be ready.

Skye: Yeah. Come here.

End description]

[kosmonauttihai]

Skye and Tumult from my JP/W raptor AU are all grown up now, and have chicks of their own, which naturally means an update to their toy figures on my shelf! Each figure is made a little differently, but they're a family, so here they are all together.

You can find WIP photos and posts about making the figures in this tag at my other blog. More information and photos about the finished figures below.

🐤  Tempest 🌩️ The scaly chick. She is a small figure sculpted from scratch. Fully painted, other than a few parts made with clay in already the right colour.

Materials:

polymer clay + liquid polymer clay

0.3mm ∅ jewelry wire, 0.8mm ∅ steel wire, 1mm ∅ aluminum wire

aluminum foil

acrylic paint

🐤  Cloudburst 🌧️ The fluffy chick. She is a miniature art doll, with poseable neck and tail.

Materials:

polymer clay + liquid polymer clay

0.3mm ∅ jewelry wire, 0.8mm ∅ steel wire, 1mm ∅ aluminum wire

faux fur

fabric

sewing string

glue

aluminum foil

nylon tag ties I've kept from clothing purchases and such

acrylic paint

🐦  Tumult ⚡ The scaly mom. She is a modified and repainted Mattel JW Extreme Damage Velociraptor figure. Eyes, claws, and inside of the mouth have some of their original colour, otherwise fully painted.

Materials:

epoxy putty to patch up that extreme damage feature, and to fix balance issue with feet

aluminum foil as filler under the putty

acrylic paint

pearlescent puff paint

🐦  Skye ☁️🌈☁️ The fluffy mom. She is also sculpted from scratch, this time with an articulated jaw.

Materials:

polymer clay + liquid polymer clay

air-dry clay

epoxy putty

0.3mm ∅ jewelry wire, 0.8mm ∅ steel wire, 1mm ∅ and 2mm ∅ aluminum wire

aluminum foil

glue

sewing string

various pieces of plastic trash

glitter

acrylic paint

gloss varnish

Details:

And some comparisons and extended family:

Tumult and Tempest with juvenile version of Tumult, and Tumult’s mom Meripihka.

Skye and Cloudburst with baby and juvenile versions of Skye, and Skye’s mom Blue.

Thank you for reading. Please don't repost the photos without my permission.

[kosmonauttihai]

Updated couple photo for pocket-sized lesbians, featuring the grown-up versions of Skye and Tumult's toy figures.

[kosmonauttihai]

My girl Skye looking seasonally appropriate. 🎃 Her glow-in-the-dark eyes are so fun to photograph.

You can find more photos of her here: Couple photo with her wife A set of photos of them both and their kids

[kosmonauttihai]

Skye and Tumult. Lesbian birds, birds who are lesbians, lesbirdians.

[image description: A cartoony drawing of two Jurassic Park Velociraptor characters. One is scaly and brown with stripe patterns, and has orange eyes. The other is feathered and grey with dark purple wings and fluffy crest at the back of her head, and has yellow eyes. The feathered raptor has blue markings similar to Velociraptor Blue’s. The scaly raptor is nuzzling the feathered one’s neck, and they are looking at each other and smiling. The background is a pastel gradient of orange and pink, with a lighter circle around the raptors’ heads. Along the circle’s rim are little hearts in the colors of the Lesbian Pride flag. End description]

[kosmonauttihai]

Tumult and Skye would like to announce their engagement. Anyone within earshot is invited to bring them presents.

[Image description: A cartoony drawing of two Jurassic Park Velociraptor characters. One is scaly and brown with stripe patterns, the other is feathered and grey with dark purple wings, tail, and fluffy crest at the back of her head. The feathered raptor has blue markings similar to Velociraptor Blue’s. The raptors are standing side by side on top of a cliff facing the edge, and screeching happily. Behind them is sky with clouds lit by sunrise, a few raindrops, and a rainbow. End description]

[kosmonauttihai]

Sweet mlems and adoring allopreens with Skye and Tumult.

[Image description: Two cartoony drawings of two Jurassic Park Velociraptor characters. One raptor is grey and feathered, with a dark, fluffy crest at the back of her head, and blue markings similar to Velociraptor Blue’s. The other raptor is scaly and brown, with darker, reddish brown stripe patterns. First picture has a green background, and shows the feathered raptor licking the snout of the scaly raptor, who has her head bowed. The feathered raptor has her eyes slightly open, while the scaly one’s eyes are closed. Second picture has a pink background, and shows the scaly raptor preening the feathered one’s crest feathers with her teeth, while the feathered raptor nuzzles her neck. They both have their eyes closed. In both pictures, both raptors are smiling. End description]

[kosmonauttihai]

Skye update: she has a girlfriend!

[kosmonauttihai]

do you love the color of the Sky(e)

Starting to grow the bright blue back in feather form after a more camoflaging juvenile plumage. Wasn’t it just yesterday that she grew her very first down feather?

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Cuddle the gf.

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A mini photoshoot with the girlfriends, and a tiny lesbian flag for tiny lesbians.

Tumult’s figure is a repainted Blue cup topper, Skye’s figure I sculpted from scratch.

[kosmonauttihai]

Oh, fun fact! Some of Skye’s plumage design was inspired by Crested Caracaras.

[kosmonauttihai]

Congrats, it's a bird!

I mean, she already was a bird, or at least a modified version of an animal that shares an ancestor with modern birds.

(Blue has in fact seen raptors with feathers before, but the avian dinosaurs that are also called raptors, such as hawks and eagles, are strange enough to her that they don't match her definition of raptor any more than she matches theirs.)

The real Velociraptor, Deinonychus, and Dakotaraptor, whichever of those the Jurassic Park/World raptors would best match, did unquestionably have feathers back in the Mesozoic Era. I figure that’s true in the universe of this franchise, too, even if some part of the cloning and genome gap-filling process resulted in these "Velociraptors"* created from their DNA being covered in scales instead with just the occasional bare quill.

An already scaly animal changing its scales into feathers is not a thing, as far as I know. An animal growing scales in some parts of its body and feathers in others, however, is. The bumps on Blue's head look like something that might have developed into feather follicles, even though on her they didn't, and obviously the original dromaeosaurid would have had a lot more feathers on most of its body. I guess we'll see whether or not the fluffifying will stop at this for Skye. I've never drawn her in a style detailed enough to have to decide exactly how much of her, besides face, feet, and fingers, is scaly, and how much is just skin waiting to grow plumage, even if it's taking longer than it probably would on an animal created by natural evolution rather than meddling human curiosity.

*The hybrids that are part “Velociraptor” and part a bunch of wildly incompatible species are of course even less based on a real animal, but never mind them for now, since Skye is just a regular JP/W raptor, despite some dialogue here seeming to imply otherwise without context.

[kosmonauttihai]

A kiss meme fill with dinosaurs, it appears I have said to myself, is a thing that should exist in the world. This time with scientifically inaccurate dinosaurs, perhaps one day with real ones.

Featuring featherless bird social grooming by my current bookshelf raptor pack, and a special guest star. Everybody loves Blue.

[kosmonauttihai]

raptor october #26

when you raise a child from their hatching and love and protect them just like their mother does, guess what

(for context, yeah they are indeed both aware he's the miniraptor's dad specifically by adoption. although considering Blue probably wouldn't have created her if she didn't feel secure with a pack she can bring a baby into, technically they did make her together. by... literally being happy and liking and trusting each other? lmao life uh finds a way)

[kosmonauttihai]

raptor october #25

Yeah so, they're not a couple (...yet?) and Indo isn't Skye's biological father. She doesn't have one; Blue just made her via parthenogenesis with her convenient monitor lizard DNA.

She’s a little unexpected, but by both of them, very welcomed. It'll work out.