#half life strider

[i--love--combine]

Aw hell nah bro's got the WOOOOOOO

I imagine baby striders would be very awkward.

[mulletsg]

MANIPULATED LIVING

[deltoidlover]

HALF LIFE 2 D0G & HUNTER & STRIDER MODEL REFERENCE

send me a message if there's a specific model you need references of, i'd be happy to snap some pics!

[ootah-canadiensis]

silly little organic strider doodle while i start thinking about what other cool things i can come up with to feed my starvation of half-life alien biology

[redeyeswatcher]

took these pics on the bus mb if they r ass

some barneys and benreys cause they r silly and i live them. also tiny gordons🙏

also i love the creature designs so much i need to draw more they make me insane. i like 2 think striders before the combine had crawdad like faces, idk their carapace reminds me of one

[deku-pipe-link]

That strider at the end of HL:Alyx likes to shoot the gnome out of your hand. So here it is playing with the gnome by juggling it in the air with its small gun.

[the-political-one]

Oh dear God

[wizard0rb]

i did that color wheel character challenge 

[drugfromgod]

hi i found some more stuff from last year

[suspicious-bread56]

Sketches

[i--love--combine]

I kinda want to draw more baby striders. Should I draw more baby striders?

[magpies-gold]

Tim finally got a proper gaming PC recently with the capability to allow us to use our VR headset to the fullest potential (it's an old Oculus Quest and we can finally use the Link cable!). Of course one of the first games we picked up was Half-Life: Alyx.

Half-Life is one of those fandoms for me that when I'm not immediately engaging with it, I'm totally normal about. Yeah, Half-Life! It's a great game series. Love it. Fond of it. Cool.

But then when I actually play it... I remember exactly how enamoured I am with the universe and I go a little feral.

Can I just say - I've always loved the striders, ever since I first saw them back in the early 2000's with the announcement of Half-Life 2. I like spiders, I like crabs, I like eldritch monsters, and freaky sci fi cyber-beasts, and the striders tick all my boxes. I want one for a pet.

And now I've just about been stepped on by two of 'em in VR in the space of less than an hour and I want one even more. I would ride one to work. I got so startled by the second encounter that I nearly threw myself onto the living room floor, but at the same time I was yelling "Hello beautiful!"

So have some fanart.

[ootah-canadiensis]

STRIIIIIDERRRRR!

I wanted to see how I would interpret the very... very strange anatomy of the Strider. And let me tell you, I had a very tough time figuring out the damned thing.

First of all, You might notice a huge lack of the carapace that covers the Strider's legs and main body, that is because I've figured that the exoskeleton is largely artificial as the other synths seem to have it (with exception of the Hunter,) and that inclined me to believe that the Strider didn't naturally have it, and without it It would largely be that dark green musculature, which of course any living thing would have some form of skin and not exposed muscle. Another point towards the carapace being artificial is how it segments, appears to have bolts and of course, the ventilation on it's back. All of these factors would lead a pretty clear image that the synths originally had other forms of covering, with maybe some exception of the Dropship.

And of course, the mouth and "hand." The mouth is where the particle cannon of the Strider was, as it appears there are vestigial compound eyes next to it, and following the evolutionary advantage of the eyes being close to the mouth, as to know what you're eating... It only makes sense to put the mouth there. One thing that I also noticed in the HL:A model for the strider is that a small piece of musculature seems to "wrap around" where the particle cannon is, which I think might be some form of lip structure?

Next down the line on the head region are the bolts downwards of the giant "bolts" grafted onto the side of the neck, which I believe cover where the ears might've been? In my sketch you can see two frog-like tympanic tissues there. Since the Strider naturally is pretty fuckin' tall, it probably wouldn't need extensive protection for the ears (and also because it was easier for me to draw.)

And the next is... The hanging sack of meat that is the Warp Cannon. God, that was just so challenging to try and rationalise how and why a creature would even have something like it. And yet rationalise I did, as I made it where it is able to grasp things and function as a hand or arm, which inside of it is also it's reproductive organs which are more often than not sealed away like a cloaca or something.

Lastly, the feet of the Strider. I wanted to make sure that it's rounded end was still noticeable, while also resembling like an actual functioning foot. Which I ended up with a soft foot with 5 toes arranged in a star pattern. I had to add that in because it wasn't very clear on my sketch of the foot. I also ended up adding those hairs as sensitive whiskers.

And now for my own personal interpretations for its behaviour pre-combine (as if EVERYTHING wasn't my own personal interpretation beforehand)

In HL:A, you can hear "speech" from the Striders. That is something that caught my attention, and I think that might suggest that the Striders were also just as intelligent as us, just in their own way. As for their culture and society... I'm not sure, if someone wanted to use this as a base for something, be my guest :) At minimum their intelligence could be compared to something like an elephant.

And their feeding habits I imagine are a lot like sauropods of earth, using their rake-like teeth to strip off food such as branches or whatever their native flora might've been like. And speaking of their immense height to reach those glorious foods that most other animals can't get too...

They must have been on a planet with lower gravity, I mean just listen to their walking sounds in-game. Do your legs make creaking sounds just by walking? Their legs are clearly under stress from holding up their weight on Earth's gravity, and because of their new-found body's composition of being made of Combine stuff, their legs won't break! But if you were to place a pre-combine Strider on earth, their legs would- should shatter from their immense scale.

And their ears, I think that the Striders largely communicated through infrasound, largely making noises below our range of hearing which they would have naturally heard with their two sets of ears. With exception from the infrasonic communication being that of the deafening howls and "craggles" as I like to call them. And for their sound design in Half-Life: Alyx? I think those may be sounds that are generated from some kind of Combine tech. Not sure, though.

And I believe that is all I have to say, it was delightful trying to figure out just how the Striders probably would've functioned before the combine came along and mutilated them. And it was so incredibly hard not to have the Strider's warp cannon not be exactly what it looks like. If anything was hard to understand, I apologise since I wrote this all in one sitting and didn't have the time or patience to read it over. This will probably be my last Half-Life post like this unless I still have other ideas for how a lot of the aliens of this lovely franchise live beyond being an obstacle for Gordon to bash with a crowbar

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

BRO: All right. This is gonna decide your fate. [Sets down physical copies of Half Life, Portal, and Team Fortress 2]

BRO: Choose.

(BABY) DAVE:

BRO: Half Life, huh? You're gonna be the chosen one. Let's go.

[deku-pipe-link]

My decision to draw more human characters freed me to be more willing and comfortable doing other art things that I don't usually do.

[hyperioncorps]

HALF LIFE 2 VR BUT THE AI IS SELF AWARE ⟡ trailer : link back for edits & stimboards : part 1 / 2 / 3