#non human features

[usagifuyusummer]

Timmy with his found family your honour. *sobs furiously*

[weekdaysend]

Redesign of my old Cherri Bomb redesign because it looks bad and outdated.

[gaemms-chamois]

W + beanie = ?

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Making Humanoids Less Human

I did make a small post on this, but now I've got the art for a much bigger and more detailed post! so here we go.

I had several anonymous asks that all came in quick succession weeks ago. Every single one of them was basically just a variation on "how would you take (typically humanoid) fantasy being, and make them look less human?"

This blog does not exist for me to just give people original designs for free, my goal is to show off my own personal thoughts about fantasy design and help people figure out how to adjust their own designs to fit their vision better. That means when people ask me questions about how to do something, I want to give them things to think about so they can come to their own conclusion. I don't mind making original designs to illustrate concepts, but a whole flood of "show me how to make this specific thing look different" all at once like that was too much. I'm not answering them all individually, it's just not what I want to do.

But what I can do is show my own thoughts and ideas about how to take any fantasy design and push it further away from "human", and you all can look at my ideas and figure out your own way to do things!

So here are the main 4 methods I've come up with to make humanoids look less human.

(image description: a simplified drawing of a humanoid face surrounded by four altered versions of the same face. clockwise starting from the top left, they are:

Speculative, drawn as a cat person. Additive, drawn with horns, pointy ears, sharp teeth, and a second pair of eyes. Subtractive, drawn with blank eyes, no nose, and no eyebrows. Exaggerative, drawn with a long face and huge eyes, as well as a wide mouth, narrow nose, and big ears.

end description)

I am personally a fan of the speculative route, which means exploring an alternate root of evolution to create a new design. Through this method, I've created monkey elves, frog goblins, and pig orcs.

the additive option is the most common, I think. adding new feature or doubled features to a humanoid form is a very intuitive way to change the design and make it look less human. you see this in most fantasy and scifi designs, like star trek aliens and the dnd player races.

subtractive and evaggerative are the most common options for people that like the uncanny valley. it's really easy to make uncomfortable designs by removing or exaggerating recognizable features, and they're often used together. Slenderman, for example, removes all facial features and skin color but also exaggerates the limbs and body.

Combining the four methods will give you a really interesting design as well! So for practice I decided to explore an alternate design for Tieflings, the part-demon player race in dnd.

(image description: four examples of differnt tiefling designs using the previously described methods. the additive example is just offical dnd art of a tiefling woman with purple skin, horns, and a long tail.

the subtractive sketch looks very alien, with a bald head, empty eyes, and no other facial featuers aside from a small mouth. it has three fingers per hand and two toe per foot.

the exaggerative sketch shows a hunched humanoid figure with huge eyes and big ears. the neck, limbs, and digits are all long with claws at the ends of the fingers and toes, and the limbs are also quite muscular.

the speculative sketch shows a bipedal figure with features similar to a giraffe, including a long neck, ossicones, and hooves.

end description)

now, because tielflings have such a distinct look to them, obviously my new sketches don't really look like tieflings, do they? the only one that comes close is the giraffe. relying only on one type of alteration to the human form has left the designs rather empty and lacking in the more iconic traits of the original concept. so i tried a sketch that combined my ideas! it came out looking like a completely different creature lol, like it could be a kobold or something, still not really a tiefling.

(image description: a sketch of a creature with a giraffe-like head, long tongue, and sharp teeth. it appears to be roaring at something and stands in a half-crouch. it has long limbs with hoof feet and clawed hands, as well as a long tufted tail curled behind it. end description.)

didn't work out. too far into the animal side of the speculative evolution, I think. so I tried again and got a design I liked much better!

(image description: a digital painting of a tiefling leaping back and casting a glowing orange spell. she is wearing a tunic with a corset and detached sleeves, as well as several pieces of jewelry. Her skin is purple with dark patches like a giraffe's spots, and she has a giraffe's ossicones as well as hoof-like hands and two-toed hoof feet. Her tail is long with a tuft at the end. She has glowing eyes and a flat nose, and there is a single sharp tooth visible poking out of the side of her mouth. end description.)

Brought the face back into slightly more human proportions and that helped a lot. Sometimes designs just take a few tries! that's normal.

and hopefully this is helpful to all of you! there are so many ways to alter humanoid designs to come up with something original and unique to you!

[blotb0x]

he let her infodump and he regrets it SO hard it’s been three hours

[elbiotipo]

Catgirls, or more like catpeople, with more non-human features.

Oh, you met one, and you might think it's just a girl with cat ears. Sure. You've heard of them.

But look a bit closer. They have hair on their heads like humans and their body hair distribution is mostly the same, but you feel it (after asking, of course), and it's clearly not hair but soft and thick fur, the longest hairs are more like manes. Functional whiskers that do operate as an actual sense, something that you can't actually feel yourself. Eyes with full irises, shining in the dark or when you look at them from an angle. When they yawn, you can notice the pattern of sharp teeth and the sharp tongue. The skull shape is noticeably different, and you can tell the placement of the ears is different down to the ear channel. The more you look at them, the less human they look even if, evidently, they stand in two legs and and can talk to you like one.

You look at them closely, talk to one, and you're not talking to a human wearing cat ears. It's not cosplay, it's not something to be cute or appealing, they're not like that to appeal to you, they're like that because they are. You wonder where the "cat" part ends and the "girl" part begins. You realize there is no end or beginning, they're neither.

[wulvercazz]

👻Spooky💀

They're all out having fun, pretending to be normal teens because what else are they to do after having fought in multiple spirit-world wars? They're still just teenagers to some extent. Except they're also not. Ichigo less than any of them. Someone's taking pictures and suddenly they're all freaking out over the otherworldly glow on Ichigo's eyes.

What the vizards had never bothered to tell him (and he'd never experienced with the arrancar either) was that all hollow eyes reflect light like animals. No matter how human they looked and- well, it seems like Ichigo's got one more thing to hide from his human classmates on top of the fangs and the pointy ears 🫠.

Extra: Ichigo staring in disbelief at yet another inhuman bodily feature he wasn't aware of. =_=

Ichigo now hides from all cameras, afraid the flash will make him look like more of a freak... too bad his friends are fckn insane and now it's become a game to see who can present more and better "cryptid Ichigo" pictures to the group. 🥴✨

[sysig]

Some highlights from a tense but still very Winterkov-y scene (Patreon)

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

ok now speaking of dreams, i just had one where i took Gabriel shopping and he was wearing that one dress like in the New Blood 10th anniversary art. he really liked nail polish and i just stood there as he tried on all 1628499302 samples available

This is just my (possibly weird? Or is it common idk) head canon that he doesn’t have nails so I’m just imagining that he’s drenched in paint

Help

[ihm-bread]

at this point i think we could count on one hand whos not going for march

[porksoda-07]

[featherymainffins]

You know the fact Larian did have "fucked up elves" in their creative vision once shows that they can and want to do it, so I'm wondering why BG3 elves look like humans with pointy ears and half-elves like humans with slightly less pointy ears. Like, was WotC threatening them with a gun like "If you make these elves even slightly 3e we will kill you and your entire family."?

[p1nk-pallas]

and ecstasy has meaning once again! (⁠☆⁠▽⁠☆⁠) /lyr

[newtafterdark]

Special shoutout to our DM who gave several of our characters each a full closet worth of clothes each made by The Royal Seamstress (actually the man's full name, love that for him) at the Elven Capital, just so we as players have an excuse to draw our fellas in many different fun outfits in the future! ... so to no one's surprise I have been treating my messy little tiefling man Sköll like my personal barbie doll. :]

[themissinggoldfish]

My agents as humans :]

[which-qsmp-egg-would]

Yeah, that might as well happen at this point.

(Extra drawing and explanation under the cut)

So. Shapeshifters, right? The eggs in my HC almost always mimic their parent(s) with their forms. It's something the Federation was aiming for when creating them to ensure emotional attatchment.

Now, I don't know if any of you recall (or if I even stated this), but Poll only has 2 main forms. Egg form, and Dragon form. This is completely due to the fact that she doesn't really have anything to base its form on! Papa shapeshifts too much to really subconsciously catch onto anything. The only features that Poll got from Stardust was its hair and the diamond patterns (like stars! It's also inspired by my IRL birthmark :]). All of their other features are its genetic default (scaled, big ears with fuzz, etc), it's birthmarks (the rings), and whatever is going on with its horns.

All that is to say, Poll doesn't have a human form at all, because they've never really been around anything humanlike for a long period of time! They COULD get a human form with enough time.

Now about Tequilla. I know I haven't been able to really show off his parents much, but considering 3/4 are definitely humanoid? Yeah, that kid has a human form. Since he's been regaining a few memories, something triggered in his sleep and he woke up like this! He is. Very confused because he doesn't remember ever having this form.

I'm not sure if any part of this rant is making sense but if anyone has questions or theories PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PL-