Ohhh Look At Those Baby's 🥺

CICADAS!!!

Just wanted to make some cicadas <3

#543 - #544 - #545. As Venipede evolves, its carapace becomes a dull cocoon as its insides liquify, and if anything tries to break it, it'll stab them aggressively until dead. It regains its lustrous carapace after evolving and becomes docile, giving rides to smaller pokémon and humans it meets.

Sponsored by @madsk3tch. Design process under read more.

I had a pretty solid idea for scolipede itself: Make it more buggy, reference centipede anatomy, but keep its horse whimsy. I did many study of centipede faces and anatomy to figure out how to place their antennae and ultimate legs (thats what the final pair of legs that look like antennae on the end of centipedes is named!). I wanted to keep some of the horn shapes, and also have the tail look like a false head like it does in many centipedes.

The weird eye shape of these guys is referencing the ocelli of centipedes: forming compound eyes. The spikes are actually referencing a milipede instead of a centipede, Desmoxytes purpurosea, who have big pink spikes. The empty spot is meant to look like a little saddle :) and the difference in color is because i think bright green feels more toxic paired with red than the greyish purple the canon one has.

venipede was easy, adapting the canon simplicity and then just adding some centipede anatomy like the antennae below the carapace.

whirlipede however, was pretty annoying. I didnt know what to do with it! i didnt want to just make a wheel but didnt want for it to just look like a venipede curled up. i decided to go the cocoon route: the carapace is protecting the goo inside. centipede dont go through cocoon phases but shhh. made it dull to keep its unique color from the rest of the line that the canon one has.

Preview of Basilisk, my personal favorite of my risograph comics, and the project all my other recent medieval-inspired art descends from.

Styled after medieval illuminated manuscripts and printed using a custom color palette requiring 5 risograph inks (including metallic gold), Basilisk asks the question: what would drive a teenage girl to create a monster?

Physical copies available here (also digital here). To brag for a moment--this is my masterwork of riso printing and is even more impressive in person.

I feel like the live action can learn a couple things from the stage show, especially color/pattern wise.

These are the two best dragon designs in the whole stage show and the colors are so pretty. The proportions also feel better, they have so much character! I also think the live action needs to be a bit crisper with the animation. The dragons feel weirdly bloomed out and hiccup doesn't really feel part of the scene lighting wise..

I'm not saying this stage show DOESN'T have problems with the dragon designs, just my thoughts of what can be improved.

Also give Hookfang gharial eyes!! They gave the terrible terror chameleon eyes, come on!!

Have you seen the live action HTTYD designs? what do you think?

Honestly I think people are being a bit harsh on them. The big pitfalls I usually see with realistic reimaginings of animated/illustrated creatures is that they either just try to copy the design 1:1, seemingly without a lot of understanding of anatomy/style, or go the opposite direction and treat everything as cartoon exaggeration, toning down or removing features that exist in the real world for the sake of realism. most of these are basically fine on both counts, it looks like the character designers are actually trying to engage with what the original designs are communicating while also not forcing themselves to be 100% fidelic to them. Most of these are not bad designs to me. I will say I 1) don't like the zippleback; maybe it looks better in movement but off the first few images it seems like they just kind of ditched all the interesting (and genuinely reptilian) elements of the original, like it's alligator/lizard-like stance and the way it's spines look like a zipper, in favor of a pretty generic/less visually interesting design:

and 2) I mentioned before I'm really not big on the redesign toothless has throughout the animated movies; the sequels gave him an increasingly flatter, more humanish face with big "eyebrows" and I think it looks way less cute/less like a real animal. the live action design is very obviously referencing this later design and I think it looks pretty rough here too, honestly a bit uncanny valley:

side note: i always thought my harshness on this design choice was a kind of mean hot take but the other day i went into the httyd tumblr tag and man they are so much meaner than me. look at this

I need the rainbow trout truck so bad

The guy dancing in my brain

bangin out to some tunes

i love it when fish are like

I want you to remember:

The fascists hate you too and they just will pretend otherwise until after they've killed the rest of us, before they turn on you.

A Closer Look: Vertebrates

The Vertebrata clade can be split into 3 main groups: neomammalia (new mammals) and brachipteryxus (wing-armed) - the tetrapods; as well as polypodus (many-footed) - their distant six-legged cousins.

Examples of chordates: Dolichocerca leo, the ocelot (neomammalia); Lepidoscelus igneamantis, the strider (brachipteryxus); and Neopolypodus flavitta, the bee (polypodus).

Neomammalia and brachipteryxus are both notable survivors of Primordial Death, the mass-extinction event that eliminated the majority of life in the realms prior to the players’ entry. Neomammalia in particular had many surviving members, and has since continued to diversify.

A chicken (Myriapinna polynativas) and a sheep (Lanatumorphus myriachroma), both survivors of Primordial Death.

Polypodus is considered a lazarus taxon - a group of organisms that was considered extinct, but reappeared later. Bees were discovered first - long after the players’ emergence - and defined the previously unknown polypodus taxon. It was believed they were the only extant polypod, until ancient sniffer eggs were discovered - and miraculously hatched.

A snifflet (juvenile Anchipolypodus aeternovis).

Return to full tree.

Neomammalia.

Brachipteryxus.

Polypodus.

The awesome badass Beastar and Legoshi

I wanted to do a more "realistic" take on Gosha and Legoshi while keeping identifiable aspects. Like Gosha has green undertones ( instead of neon green that I do not understand), and Legoshi is on the cooler, lighter side. They both have similar eye shapes as well as the yellow in the pupil, which are suggested in canon that they have the same eyes.

I took some liberties on how the 1/4 komodo dragon would show in Legoshi, specifically his long neck and generally shorter fur. I think komodo dragons and gray wolves in universe would be very similar in size and komodos are slightly bigger than wolves but they end up shorter because they have shorter legs. Legoshi is the size of a komodo as well as a long neck, but the taller wolf legs.This ends up with Legoshi being quite large compared to both species (not to mention his dad is also a large wolf). Despite his shorter fur, he's still cuts it shorter than typical wolves, keeping his head and tail longer.

I could not get Gosha's colors right to save my life. I got somewhere where I could tolerate it but if I were to draw him again, he'd probably look different 😅 but I'm very happy with his shapes. He actually looks like a komodo dragon! That's all I could ask for honesty.