Gotta Support My Local WoF AUs

I swear I'm not a wof blog I swear. Anyway, here's the bugs and a plant for some reason

Transcribed notes and other info on these guys:

the little doodles are just scribbles about where and their special glands are (which are colored yellow) amd how they work. From the top down and left to right, they say

'wrist spinneret with starter, mouth gland with proteins, combining them causes a chemical reaction makes a lot of quick-hardening silk.'

'Venom (soldier or Queen)

Worker-similar to silkwing silk

Drone-nothing in wrist'

'Extended periods of inactive sun time helps store energy' slightly to the left is 'like a leaf', slightly below is 'ambush attacks'

'No acid or venom, but secretes poisonous mucus and saliva' then to the right is 'very scary-looking because they have skin with bones under it instead of am exoskeleton'

Next to beetlewing head says 'acid spitting glands' below that says 'spinnerets on tail for building and subduing prey'

Some other general info:

silkwings are the smallest pantalan tribe amd they're omnivores, primarily eating plants but opportunistically scavenging when possible. they have a long tongue and a set of spinners in their mouth, the tongue being their to access the flowers,bugs, and fruit from the giant plants on the continent. the spinnarets from both their mouth and wrist have to be mixed to create the strong substance they use for building and defense (there is a ratio they can mix it at that causes it to combust when exposed to air and slung at enemies) the scakes on their wings are a bit poisonous but otherwise they have few defenses beyond this, they're also slow clumsy fliers. they have an exoskeleton but they also have an active respiratory system (so they actually breathe in and out unlike a real butterfly i think) unlike hivewings, they're not eusocial but they have been forced into those roles by the hivewing occupation. they're what's left of the beetlewings, having changed drastically in appearance over the years due to a lot of different pressures.

hivewings are large and omnivorous, but primarily eat meat to help fuel their flight. they're bipedal when on the ground, standing in a weird splayed fashion but able to run at fairly high speeds. when in flight, just like silkwings, they use both their leg wings and chest wings. hivewings can buzz them both at extremely high speeds and therefore fly much quicker and with more agility. also like silkwings, they have an exoskeleton and lungs, and their ither organs are stored in their abdomen tail thing to keep them away from the massive internal muscles needed to twitch their wings that fast. they are eusocial, and have several different classes. soldiers, workers, and queens are all female, and while they're larger than drones the queen is the largest (laying all the eggs in the colony. there are several dozen queens and hives on the continent, but they all answer to one). workers have a setup similar to silkwings where they can mix substances from their mouth and wrist to help them build the hive and trap prey. soldiers can't do this, and only have venom in their mouth and tail like a queen. drones are only there for the queen and don't do much else, having very little political or social power. hivewings are another offshoot from beetlewings that was mixed with some nightwings (which is why their faces, horns, and spines look a bit nightwing-ish and where their black coloring and sparkles of white dots on their wings came from)

leagwings are the only vertebrates, and look very scary to the others with their transparent skin,large eyes, and bones. they spend most of the day immobile somewhere in the sun,only occasionally moving to get water or ambush prey. their many frills help maximize surface area to photosynthesize with. they're entirely carnivorous when not getting energy from the sun. they're much more active at night, using the battery of energy they got from the day before returning to somewhere high and exposed to the sin so that when morning comes they can start to recharge. their main defenses are their teeth and claws, but they can also secrete a poisonous substance from their mouth and skin to deter others. it's mainly disorienting, but in a high enough dose it will kill. their long frog like kegs are for jumping from tree to tree and gor climbing because it's harder for them to work up the energy for takeoff from the ground. some of them are also magic and can control plants (magic is also how the One Queen can control all hivewings, but they also have their own natural pheremone signals) they have largely been wipes out thanks to outcompetition, habitat loss, and deliberate extermination on sight, but pockets of them are still around. they may have been from the same place as rainwings and share some of their features, but have changed drastically from those roots.

no one really knows a lot about beetlewongs because the version I drew is now extinct, but they were likely omnivores with both acidic spit and spinnerets, along with heavy armor. unlike their descendents they're still built more like a dragon from phyrria (idk if I spelled that right) with their big wing limbs being in front with the little arms being behind them instead of the other way around.

I decided to keep them all hexopods even though I think the hive and silk officially have another smaller pair of wing things (bringing them closer to being 8 legged in my version of things)

not doomed by the narrative but saved by the narrative. yeah i know you'd rather die than keep suffering but the story doesn't actually care what you want. you have to keep going, even when it hurts. even being erased from existence won't stop you from being salvaged from the wreckage of un-being. get up. keep pushing. keep bleeding. keep living.

Clouded Moon Masterpost

For all your "I want to get into this but don't know where to start!" needs: Meet the characters: Field Colony: Drawing a ___!

Oak Colony: Drawing a ___!

Marsh Colony: Drawing a ___! Coming Soon!

River Colony: Drawing a ___! Coming Soon!

Clouded Moon Trailer

Shifting Roots Episode One (outdated, still uses Warriors lore, but the story beats are the same and we worked really hard on it LMAO)

Book One: Shifting Roots Amazon-Barnes and Noble (Physical or E-Book NOTE: we unfortunately have no control over how or when these sellers ship things, depending on demand, shipping may take a while. ALSO: Formatting on the e-book should be updated so if you downloaded the book early on, try deleting and redownloading to fix formatting issues.) Avalon's Kofi-buy the e-book for as little as $1, and/or limited physical special editions with sticker sheet, bookmark, and signatures from Avalon, Tennelle, and Snap. (Limited availability)

Extras:

Clouded Moon videos playlist (animations, speedpaint stories, lore videos, ect)

Field Colony tag

Oak Colony tag

Marsh Colony tag

River Colony tag

Followers of the Wind tag

Unbound tag

Q&A's

Fandom Wiki (We are not involved in upkeeping this, but figured it's a fun resource to share)

I'll try to add/edit this post as we mosey along!

BATS BATS BATS

Bats getting glamour shots

It almost got me on deviantart, got suspicious when they started asking for personal info and blocked. Not falling for it again.

Fucking hell these ‘commission’ asks are really getting annoying

Just a heads up for anyone, theyre not people asking for commissions theyre scams. A person wanting to commission would probably not ask within a minute of me posting art, would probably follow me, would probably actually like my art, would have been following me for a while and would probably just dm you straight away

Not gonna rant but these are getting so annoying, and they’re dangerous for newer artists especially if theyre just getting into commissions

Useful

Beyond this, consider how these professions might vary depending on who the customers are - nobles, or lower class. Are they good at their job or just scraping by? Do they work with lots of other people or on their own? City or village?

For younger characters:

Apprentice to any of the above

Messenger/runner

Page/squire

Pickpocket

Shop assistant

Student

Looks after younger siblings

(Images all from Wikimedia Commons)

OC ref from last year to showcase that I'm technically primarily a Wings of Fire artist

DUUUDDEEE your art is insane!! I ADORE the scales you draw and render, and how you make so much of your illustrations look like real work staff from WoF would make! Do you have any tips for scales? Rendering? Drawing them :0?

thank you so much!! for scales, i'd recommend avoiding circle shapes and instead go for a more angular hexagonal shape! it reduces weird gaps in between the scales and makes the texture look a lot more tight-knit and interconnected

as for rendering, i think my best tip would be to start with shadows first. make a shadow layer, fill it in entirely with the base color for the shadows, and carve out the light source by erasing parts of the shadow layer. I've been trying out a new method of rendering which takes a lot less time but gives the same if not better results (using a color layer on multiply above a greyscale render layer with a color overlay to add color to the shadows! i'll go more in depth with this once i have a finished example piece to break down)

and i usually render scales by filling in each individual scale above the lineart to create an alpha mask and i use a clipping group using the mask

scale mask (normal layer mode, 100% opacity)

set to "color dodge" at 40% opacity, additional "shadow" layer (black color layer set to "erase" above the layers in the clipping group) used to create depth!

Looks interesting, may join

(NOT DISCORD EXCLUSIVE) (REPOSTS APPRECIATED VERY MUCH)

edit: If you aren't participating via the Discord server, please message me if u want to apply to participate off-site

Edit 2: If u join thru the Discord server, pls say the codeword listed in the rules and which team you want upon your arrival. I'd like to encourage you to join Team Turtle since they have less people, but it's not currently required.

I'm hosting a Wings of Fire Artfight! Lookin for more participants.

Teams r Peril vrs Turtle, it will run from Dec 15th - Feb 15th (The doubled duration is to make up for the fact that, unlike OG Artfight, most of us will have school and less time to draw.)

(reposting the ad because I finally made the Google doc 4 it!!)

Please read the google doc at the bottom of the post, as it contains 3 codewords which have to be included in your request to join. (Unless u use the discord server)

Discord server (not required): https://discord.gg/2ryERJHA

Google docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VM0oxiHjY7tf95e8JSEVY8myUDj3ADPyWLdMjlO50Tc/edit?usp=sharing

Tag yourself, I'm rough skinned newt

Just found out there's a group on inaturalist dedicated to showcasing the silliest observations