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Showing results for tags 'fauna'.
Found 24 results
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From the album: Natural History of Roshar
Can't believe how long it's been since I last got around to fleshing out my basket full of axehound sketches! I guess it's just one of the side effects of struggling with tar pit of depression, plans getting shelved for longer than intended. Anyway, this is another design for axehound where I really push for cuteness and pet-me vibe while still keeping the carapaces. -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
One of the many alien looking shell creatures on Roshar. It looks like a cooked lobster. -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
I want to design more than just cool looking creatures. These skyeels are part of a world where people of all species live. They must have a long history of interaction – relationship – with people. So I start to think about how skyeels might be edible, hunted, ‘fished’, with flying baits, of course, since they aren’t fishes that swim under water.© Yen Shu Liao 2019
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From the album: Natural History of Roshar
This is the skyeel from Roshar, with much artistic licenses added because I was having too much fun visualizing them! It started out as just skyeel, which I decided to expanded into three species to have some more species diversity, and a more natural feeling when populating the world, like a city park would have pigeons, sparrows and starlings. Besides the Common Skyeel, there is the Greater Skyeel, and Lesser Skyeel, because I am great at naming things like that. The Common Skyeel has a difficult balance to strike – it needs to not compete in coolness with the Greater Skyeel, which is set at boss level, but also not as drab and blending-in as the Lesser Skyeel despite it being the most … well, commonly seen around by people! Like a seagull, but cooler, but not too cool. For that reason Common Skyeel remains the only design that has the same color, pattern, and size between female and male. It is also the last of the three I designed, but somehow ended up being the standard to which I adjust the other two Skyeel designs to make the Greater fittingly boss-like, and the Lesser accordingly humble. That seemingly little egg there took me a while to settle on! So I must ramble about it here. Skyeel is a fish, that flies in air, taking up the same niche as birds do on Earth. So does it still lay eggs? What shape and surface if they're exposed to the elements? How does the baby break out? Does skyeel birth live pups like some sharks do? What is the morphology - the baby looks exactly like adult but miniature (sail fish), baby looks partially like adult (birds), or a complete metamorphosis (tadpole/frog)? When everything is possible, it's impossible to just settle on one. But I had to, so I did, otherwise my life cannot go on... There are a total of 6 pages, and I'm posting them here in set of 3 so as to not spam so much. If they're small or blurry, you can see bigger resolution on my Artstation -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
Meet Arkto! Arc-too This is how I imagine the Listener Art Form. So far we have seen a boat ton of War Form, and I thought, that’s boring. They don’t do much beyond smash and break. The Art(isan) Form, now that’s more fun, because they can do a lot more stuff! But what do they look like, if not in full carapace armor of War Form? I don’t want them to look like human. That make no sense for a species that evolved on another, crustacean-based planet! But the more I add non-human parts, the more they look animalistic instead of civilized. Wait! I know! 4 arms! I often wish I have 4 arms when making stuff - extra arm to catch my-I-mean-their easel and painting from flying off in gale-force gusts, to stop that furnace door from swinging back onto their elbow while carefully keeping the molten glass spinning, to hold up that sun-brella so their brain stops boiling while sketching outside during mid-day, and to sand and chisel simultaneously for instant look at how things are turning out... etc... so many possibilities... For a world that is so wet and stormy, I figure most of their art would be water resistant like stone sculpture, oil paint, and since they aren’t short on crem, ceramics. You know what Art Form would play on a piano if they have 4 arms? Woogie Boogie. And of course they wear skyeel leather as part of their clothing. I don’t see chull shells make comfortable anything other than Klompen :P -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
The greater skyeel family! Can't tell if it's a happy family or not, but definitely a hardcore one. Are skyeel eggs edible? Yes. If you can get your hands on one... and still keep said hands attached. -
Are there flying insects like cockroaches and dragonflies, or grasshoppers on Roshar? How big are the leggers and amphibian-things? Are they small enough to be eaten by something the size of a Cardinal or Chickadees?
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From the album: Natural History of Roshar
1st of many Axehounds I have been wanting to sketch out, testing out how to merge my idea of cuddle-able soft dogs and spiky crustaceans. C-19 just means this thumbnail is number 19 on page 3 of alllll the axehound thumbnails I did a while back -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
This is a size chart showing each skyeel specie's size in relevance to a human :D -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
The greater skyeel display sexual dimorphism in both in color and body size. The female is considerably larger, just like eagles and cassowary on Earth. Greater skyeel eats just about anything, including each other. They do not make good pets due to their aggressiveness, but that never stopped certain people from trying. -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
The greater skyeel is a voracious and aggressive predator in the skyeel family. Their powerful muscles gives them bursts of speed when needed. Their size and weight prevents them from diving for prey on the ground, so they often go for airborne prey, or sweep prey off trees, rooftops, hill/rock tops. -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
The Lesser Skyeel, as well as the Greater, display sexual dimorphism in which the sexes appear different. The Lesser Skyeel female and the young are both camouflaged to maximize survival, while the male is fancy to get a date. Instead of an eel, the lesser skyeel is based on lauch fish and a bit of gold fish for derpy look. It is 26cm long, the size of a wooden soup ladle.© Yen Shu Liao 2019
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From the album: Natural History of Roshar
This here veers into some serious artistic licenses, lol! I split the official skyeel description into two - the moray look for the Greater, and the color and pattern for the Common. As I mentioned before, it started as one skyeel, but then I went berserk and made three species. The Lesser Skyeel is comparatively smaller than the other two, but still about the size of a Blue Jay. ... I probably should have included the size chart in this upload too, huh? It'll come with the Greater Skyeel batch. So whereas the Common Skyeel is the equivalent of a seagull or petrel, the Lesser Skyeel is the equivalent of a backyard bird, such as the Blue Jay or the Northern Cardinal, or sparrows. ... aw I should've designed a 'bird feeder'. Too late. As such a small species, their color and pattern need to blend in with the environment well. Without illustrating the environment, I used a collage of what I think Rosharan landscape is based on to help with this part.© Yen Shu Liao 2019
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From the album: Natural History of Roshar
I had a lot of fun letting my imagination run wild with how else a common skyeels would show up in people's culture: What would skyeel be like as food? How big is a Common Skyeel anyway? Is it steak-size? What would a high-end restaurant premium cut skyeel steak look like? This skyeel bun is inspired by a braided dragon bread my girlfriend and I made recently. All it needs are a pair of wing fins, and some cookie back fins, and there’s a skyeel! Where else would a commonly known animal like the skyeel show up in people culture? Toys, of course! This is a simple wooden toy, lovingly hand-carved by a grandfather for his grand children.© Yen Shu Liao 2019
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From the album: Natural History of Roshar
Collection of behavior sketches of all 3 skyeel species showing what their possible interaction with people could be, or just what they might do on their own. Such as chasing down a big, juicy bug for lunch!© Yen Shu Liao 2019
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From the album: Natural History of Roshar
That is the very first design I sketched for the Common Skyeel, upper left corner! It has changed so much... The Common Skyeel’s place in the Rosharan ecosystem – as I imagine it – is akin to a seagull. It’s designed with long wings to coast long and steady in the air, and a streamline body. The fin designs need to walk a fine line between being cooler than the Lesser Skyeel, while staying clear of the Greater Skyeel’s thunder. -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
These are color thumbnails for the Common Skyeel. They start out overly vibrant and coral-theme, then slowly finding a sweet spot between too noisy and blending-in, looking too much like an Earth seagull, and feeling just about right. -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
The Common Skyeel nests high up on vertical surfaces such as cliffs, walls, and underneath roofs to keep its young safe from scavengers and predators. In this sketch, the Skyeel pup looks exactly like the adult, just miniaturized, in the same ways that marlins are on Earth. I've made 2 other Skyeel metamorphosis possibilities, and demonstrated them with 2 other Skyeel designs, Greater Skyeel, Lesser Skyeel (very creative at naming things, I am :P) -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
The common skyeel of Roshar nests high on cliff faces to shelter their young from high storms. Once their chick matures, they would take the leaf of faith from hundreds of meters above ground to learn how to fly - or fall to their deaths. -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
Early exploratory sketches of what thunderclasts might've looked like from descriptions. -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
This is my first impression of chull when I listened to the audiobook which came with no illustrations. I imagined them as short, stout, camel-like giant crayfish with spaced-out expressions. If not chulls, this could be some other cremlings inhabiting the wide plains, nibbling on little moss that has sprung to life after a high storm. -
From the album: Natural History of Roshar
Sketches of common coastal skyeel with possible variations of head shapes. They might be the equivalent of something like a skua or gull, and whatever preys upon them would be Roshar's equivalent of sea eagle. Maybe there's even a smaller variant of skyeel that is the equivalent of tern birds. -
From the album: The Girl who Looked Up
Leaving description intentionally vague on this one for now. -
So... I am writing a fantasy novel and have run into a bit of a snag. I have this thing (definitely an outgrowth of reading too much Sanderson) to have as much of my worldbuilding as possible have a concrete backing in scientific fact. The problem is that I know nothing about astrophysics, biology, or anything that could really help me work out the permutations of certain changes to the world. Here's my current situation: The world I'm building is plagued by abnormally high temperatures throughout half the year (comparable to a constant heat wave) and similarly cold temperatures for the other half. They are mitigated by a short, two-week period of regular weather in between. During the Heatsurge there is week or so long period where the sun does not set, mirrored by a similar period during the Coldsurge when it does not rise. These events repeat in a constant, yearly cycle. The flora and fauna have all had to grow around these extreme conditions, with adaptability becoming even more important to survival. My questions are twofold: First, is there a way to make this astronomically grounded. Would something like the axial tilt have to change to keep the continuing cycle of Hot and Cold surges, or does that have nothing to do with it? Multiple astral bodies? I don't know, just throwing things out there... Second, how would the flora and fauna adapt to such extreme changes in temperature? I've been reading up on some animals' ability to survive temperatures below freezing using something called supercooling, but I feel I would need more of an adaptability factor here. This world's plants and animals have to be able to change throughout the year, as protection against one half of the year would likely be harmful during the other. Any biologically-adept people that can help me out here? The original idea for this came out of a desire of mine to create something fundamentally connected to the world that affected all the life within it, from biology to culture to business (similar to the highstorms of Roshar). Let's see if this can work! Hope you all can help me out! Thanks for your time!
