#worldbuilding study

[kodasea]

Cape Falmouth’s “Weeping Salmon"

[theprissythumbelina]

I can't tell if my dragon worldbuilding has gone too far when I start reading scientific papers on bat wig morphology and comparing them to bird morphology.

[pawpunkao3]

When fantasy writers want to worldbuild religions, but they haven't unlearned cultural Christianity, so all their religions end up being Christianity with a new coat of paint or based on the ways Christians misinterpret other faiths, such that when they criticize religion it is always from the point of view that all criticisms that apply to Christianity must apply just as well to every other faith

Call that cross-contamination

[luxudus]

PLANT STUDIES! all the way back in February I wanted to explore the anatomy and evolution of Irou's plant-life to differentiate them from earth plants. which led me down the rabbit hole of Speculative Botany and early plant evolution. Which led me out of that rabbit hole and into studying how to draw plants in general. Which is where I am now.

The bottom quintet of trees is from when I was actually figuring out how to even paint foliage progressing from left to right.

The top trio of trees were referenced from a set of photos I took at a Botanical Garden I went to back in march. Some friends helped me identify the first two trees being a Jabuticaba and possibly a day palm tree. The last plant I hadn't verified yet but I'm pretty sure it might be a jade plant/money tree (Crassula ovata) or at least a plant in that genus.

And lastly to throw a bone to the people here for my spec-bio. In the bottom left are two sophont sketches from my side project A Story of Our Universe. What do they share in common? Evolutionary speaking they're both more plant than animal.

The first sophont (left) we don't properly know their real name, we just call them Nightwalkers. Everything we will come to know about them comes from evesdropping on radio communication between various members of the Intergalactic community. What we will know though is that the Nightwalkers first evolved a staggering 8 billion years ago, during the very tail end of the first age of sapience.

They were one of the few Sophonts at the time to reach the stars completely on their own. And were one of the very few to be Initiators in first contact with the Eldest sophonts; the Factorem and Bellators. They lived their lives out their little corner of space, just outside the Hercules-Corona-Borealis great wall, some 10 billion light years away from us. They would eventually go extinct some 2-3 billion years ago, fizzling out in the aftermath of the Eldest Alliance's Death throes.

They evolved on a cold, dark, and damp planet that sat on the frost line of their sun's habitable zone. A World so dark it was said you could still see the stars even on the brightest of days, Which is where our name for them came from. The Nightwalkers themselves evolved from a kind of motile vine-like algae. which over hundreds of millions of years evolved bilateral symmetry, Hydraulic muscles and compound eyes from light sensitive leaves. They still retain plenty of floral features, cells with walls and vacuoles, A circulatory system derived from a "xylem and phloem". And an alternating life generation cycle of "Gametophyte" and "sporophyte" sexes.

The second sophont (right) we will come to know alot about. They aren't from some distant galaxy or lived and died before anything on our planet consisted of more than one cell. And we wouldn't hear them from the distant radio chatter of unimaginably larger civilizations. On the grander scale of the universe, the Thau'Lix evolve right on our backyard. They would be the only other sapient species to hail from the orion spur of our milky way galaxy.

Evolving on a ringed tropical planet covered in rainforests and geographically teeming with waterfalls. The Thau'lix evolutionary speaking, are also a form of plant native to their homeworld. Unlike the Nightwalkers who are as far removed from them as we are from the neotenous young of sponges. The Thau'lix are still very much a form of plant. Their lifecycle is split into two, the form you see here is derived from walking seeds, given hundreds of years of speciation to convergently evolve an animal-like form, an almost angelic one at that. They graciously soar their entire planet on 2 pairs of wings, foraging for fruits, leaves, and small prey, both of the walking seed and true "animal" varieties. And eventually for suitable ground to settle down and re-emerge into their adult form as a fast-growing trees that branch like chandeliers with Arcuate-veined Truncate-shaped leaves that take on a familiar green pigment.

It will take 100,000 years for us to make contact with the Thau'lix. By that time Our governments, cultures, languages and religions will have become near unrecognizable from what they are today. We will have explored and settled across thousands of worlds like home, all across the entire orion spur, we will have mastered our little corner of space. While the Thau'lix would be in their own paleolithic age, living in airbound nomadic hunter-gatherer communities. We are to them what the Eldest Sophonts were to the Nightwalkers, We will be their godlike benefactors. And they will see us as gods, deities of the night sky gifted with eternal youth, divine seedlings that will never age and sprout into our own trees. We would come to share with them bits and pieces of our culture and way of life that will change their future. We will become friends for centuries, and without warning we will disappear. We will tell them to keep the memories of us in their hearts, Carry on our torch, and to not shout into the cold quiet night, lest they hear them too.

Just like that they will be alone once more, we will be remembered as their gods, and only as gods, for at least a while. They will have to overcome their own problems and revelations. They'll learn not to fall for leaders with big claims and bigger desires for absolute power. They will explore the rest of the galaxy only to find that everything trailing their home planet is seemingly missing of habitable worlds, a great hole of planet-bound colonization. And they will eventually learn about the true nature of their old gods, and have to come to terms that the Ancient Alien conspiracy theorists were fucking right all along.

The Thau'lix will carry the torch, the spirit, of humanity. Not us, not anymore.

[peculiar-and-obtuse]

these r my favorite basic lands from magic: the gathering if u even care🌇✨

how can you not love overgrown architecture

Welcome to the city of Ravnica.

Notice the freefall perspective in these pieces, that's not easy to get to look right by hand (or idk maybe it is. how would I know, it's not like I've tried). They're both by the same painter, as you can see at the bottom of the card.

Ravnica is an ecumenopolis, meaning the city completely covers the surface area of its home planet. It holds a multitude of competing factions, all within the limits of a single, continuous city.

You can feel the suffocating heat and coarse flakes of charcoal on your skin just by looking at this one. Imagine having to spend an afternoon touring this factory, let alone a full 70 hour work week.

There's a couple tiny little guys for scale :) Beyond the ramparts, you can faintly make out what seems to be either a river or the fringe of the another population center, or perhaps both.

Even tinier guys🐜🐜🐜 How many stone bridges and precarious ledges can you spot? Uhuh, and what about guardrails. that's gotta be an OSHA violation but it's chill cause I personally think it looks neat

oooh very spooky & scary😱

this one's prob my absolute fave😈

lovecraftian cult meeting ahh locale💀

Your way out, or yet another meandering cinder highway of madness?

btw can u tell my favorite mtg color is black.

High fidelity card art embedded from Scryfall. Link to the full cycle of Return to Ravnica basic lands

Further reading: Head on over to the Rhystic Studies youtube channel to unlock a damn-near boundless treasure trove of highbrow MTG art analysis by a degreed expert. Consider starting with the Return to Ravnica video I saw long, long before I got the idea to create this blog.

[kimbapisnotsushi]

one thing about ans that really impressed me and that i found absolutely refreshing is like. how GOOD zen and his family are, for being royals. they love their kingdom and they will do EVERYTHING right by them, and it isn't just talk!!! usually in fantasy you'll see problems with the head of a monarchial system (or whatever system is in place), whether it's corrupted power or incompetently silly/ridiculous (hi raji), but zen and izana are genuinely invested in caring for their people and their land and sorata makes sure to prove it over and over again!!!! zen eats and trains with the soldiers and he sneaks out to regularly check on the citizens and EVERY single time status becomes a problem he immediately tries to chuck that shit out the window (see: marquis haruka and kiharu vs viscount blaker). izana manipulated two crooked lords out of their estates and returned all the unfair taxes they gave him. he quarantined lyrias because he trusted the word of shirayuki, a royal pharmacist, and that's what someone of his position should do (ie listen to the professionals that their subordinates hired in the first place)!!! he's set to marry a high-ranking academic authority out of love (i'm, like, pretty sure at least), because his kingdom is secure and healthy! people cheered when the crowned passed to izana from haruto!!! everyone in clarines is cared for and loved and they care for and love the wistarias right back!!! it's just so lovely and so impressive to see because you COULD make a really easy conflict out of how horrible the ruling family is, especially considering zen's and shirayuki's positions, but that's never been a problem at all!!!

[wanderingokali]

Witch Hat Atelier artstyle study with Kalops and some elements from chapter 1. Mostly wanted to replicate the little chapter illustrations that usually feature one character and some nice visual elements and frames.

[rks-systems]

Just got this book delivered today and there is so much stuff in here even with my piss-poor Japanese grammar understanding.

For example, pokemon using the heat generated from rotting leaves to hatch eggs in the wild? Very important for worldbuilding stuff.

[dataframe]

[ID: MSPaint doodle of user dataframe hitting Scum Villain with a transgender beam. END ID]

[keepers-art-n-craft]

Frankie's cereal commercial snapshots (not sure if there is a video, even if it's like a very short cut off version of it ingame)

[stroopwaffelz]

oc stuff for my webseries

[whale-trawl]

foggy morning on the water

[springypaws]

Tumblr scrambled the first time I tried writing/sending this post so uhmm… let’s see if two’s the lucky number?

Anyhow, finished drawing of the interisolary commercial liner, the Hanankur!! Not exactly sure how I feel about it considering it kinda looks like a mismatched quilt made up of different styles from the different days that I worked on it, but it exists anyways

I was actually hoping to draw Coalition Airship Archer, but there weren’t any official images of it that I could find 😔

Reference image and additional speed paint under the cut :]

Obviously this drawing was super heavily referenced off of this official art of a Disco Elysium in-world miniature of the aerostatic, even if a bunch of things aren’t perfect and my drawing’s quite a bit messier

Plus a speedpaint just for the fun of it

(TW: FLASHING (I hide and un-hide layers a bunch) and rabies?? With the most minuscule amount of blood maybe??? I snuck in a random tiny sketch in there somewhere that has poor quality stuff like that)

[rawenky]

The true horror of mapper glitches is that half of your body is working normally and the other half is being forced into having its circadian rhythms work around video game time because they’ve been accounted for in the game’s mechanics.

Like, can you imagine the mess that becomes your body when you have to sleep every 10 minutes but you only eat every 8 hours or so? And since sunlight is one of the body’s best Zeitgeber / indicator of when to sync circadian rhythms, does your hormonal cycle change from roughly 24 hours to 10 minutes as well???

Techs that emerge out of like, Minecraft or Stardew Valley have got to have the worst kind of jet lag imaginable (but at least in Minecraft they eat at the same rate as they sleep, since hunger exists in the game).

[retroautomaton]

drawing process for this funny little guy. 🦎🏡

[kagooleo]

the zine’s officially out, so I can post my contribution for the @extraordinaryzine :D!

my piece is an interpretation of the caverns on Iron Island 🏝️ so I wanted to incorporate more of the water surrounding it by creating a sea cave to have light spill inside (akin to the modra špilja/blue grotto)

the focus of the zine was on the daily lives of trainers and their pokemon, so Riley uses a spot inside the caverns like this to meditate with his team, although any new Riolu he trains can’t resist wanting to jump into the water to play υ´˶ ･ﻌ･ ˶`υﾉ”

this piece alongside a ton of amazing artists can be found free to download digitally here! (and lastly some closeups bc I liked getting all the little deets down)