Robin King's Work

[robinking]

Hey, I'm the new character artist...
Here's what i whipped up for the Aeran:
It's a complicated little species and I'm expecting that i got it totally wrong lol.

[Dee Bingo]

I think this is a GREAT start. Keep in my mind that: "Skin: Hairless, leathery, alternating between smooth and wrinkly as it goes from muscle to joint. Ashen gray, with yellow blotches of color, the skin is rarely marked visually, preferring scent markings, but portions of the torso will be covered by brightly colored clothing indicating various status attributes." Also, here is the pre-existing concept art for the Aera (I did not do this).

[robinking]

This is really rough, i was told to get the basic anatomy down before i worried about color, clothing etc.
Can you tell me exactly what you guys like better about the original design so i can integrate that into my design?

[Jack Sampson]

A couple of thoughts on how best to try to work out some of the basics -

Would it be possible to try a couple of different base poses? In particular, I'm thinking of the standard "standing pose" with the forebody upright being one wherein the rear of the body and tail are touching and on the ground respectively (for inspiration, perhaps a cat sitting?) rather than the four legs extended pose.
Then, a running/ready to run (motion being hard and such) pose, wherein the forebody is closer to horizontal.
I think it might be worth it to try to get a good grasp on how the Aera and their hexapod ancestors and relatives moved about before focusing on the details of the modern Aera. Don't know - other opinions welcome on this.

As for thoughts on the sketch as it stands, coloration aside, slightly longer rear limbs, I think, as well as a less humanoid foretorso/shoulder arrangement. Starting with a hexapod ancestor with four spinal columns, two on each side, a thick neck, and limb sockets between the pairs of vertebrae that clambored on all six limbs, I was thinking the fore-chest, housing the lungs, will be less flattened, and the shoulder to neck angle more gradual. Then, eye placement on the head should be closer to the hinge point of the lips/jaw, with forward stereo vision coming from the eyes being on outward jutting prominences (and with high mobility atop those, for inspiration, the chameleon comes to mind for eye mobility, if not overall head placement. For placement, I usually look to orca for inspiration, but.. that's me) that can look past the rest of the head, rather than a high perch position. Maybe the head/jaw thing will only make full sense if drawn open as well as closed? Not sure. When the head is level with the ground, the lip line should be slanting downward.

[robinking]

There are four spinal columns?? interesting, alright.. how do you imagine these four will become one for the tail?

[robinking]

I think it would be best to wrap my head around the unusual anatomy first before getting into any poses.
when you say "standing pose" that sounds more like sitting to me, the creature must stand, right? or is it always sitting unless in motion?
Are the legs splayed out like a reptiles or directly underneath like a mammal? or are the mid-legs mammalian and back legs reptilian? (the latter being more what the description sounds like)... If thats the case locomotion becomes incredibly complicated.
you say you want a less humanoid chest and shoulder arrangement... I assume you would want one more reptilian, except reptiles have very flat chests.
I asked about the four spines and the tail, but what about the head? Does each spinal column connect with the head separately or do they join together first before connecting with the scull.
What's throwing me off about the Spine so much is that i don't see a reason why this species would need them, there aren't four heads or four tails, and having two sets on either side instead of one center one would make the aera very unstable and also limit movement greatly, the creature would be unable to twist from side to side. Now this is a fictional character and I'll make it work, but if you want it to seem as though this creature could physically function I'd toss out the 4 spine idea.

[robinking]

1. Both sets of legs are hindlegs
2. Front set of legs and hind set of legs (like that of any reptile or mammal on earth), This of course makes the most sense to us and will be the easiest to rig.
3. switched, what are normally considered front legs are put in back and hind legs are put up from. This version makes sense because the front legs are supposed to be the ones with the power for this species, however this makes a mess of things because I'd have to put shoulder-blades in the back and a hip up front.. or something along those lines...

[robinking]

Head ideas:

[Jack Sampson]

I think it would be best to wrap my head around the unusual anatomy first before getting into any poses.
when you say "standing pose" that sounds more like sitting to me, the creature must stand, right? or is it always sitting unless in motion?


You're right - that's better described as sitting than standing. I guess there's a minor nomenclature issue - how's this sound?

- Standing: Midlimbs and rear limbs upright, and forebody upright.
- Sitting(active): Midlimbs upright, rear limbs down, forebody upright (easiest pose to maintain uprightness of forebody for long periods of time)
- Sitting(brief): Midlimbs and rear limbs down, forebody upright.
- Lying down: All limbs down, forebody horizontal.


Are the legs splayed out like a reptiles or directly underneath like a mammal? or are the mid-legs mammalian and back legs reptilian? (the latter being more what the description sounds like)... If thats the case locomotion becomes incredibly complicated.
:-/ I was assuming some form of the complicated case. Albeit, I was assuming the hip structure for both mid and rear limbs to be closer to the mamalian, and much of what splay factor there is in the rear limbs to come from different angles in the femur-equivalent to ball joint angle.


you say you want a less humanoid chest and shoulder arrangement... I assume you would want one more reptilian, except reptiles have very flat chests.


Mostly, the comment on the chest related more to how when looking at it I had an immediate sense of anthropic familiarity - maybe that's just me - and the rest of the sense related to the angle of the apparent ribs. However, that last bit is better discussed with respect to the number and arrangement of the spinal columns. (I'm under the impression that reptile chests are flat because their ribs float - the few images of reptile skeletons I've looked at seem to lack sternum equivalents.)


I asked about the four spines and the tail, but what about the head? Does each spinal column connect with the head separately or do they join together first before connecting with the scull.
What's throwing me off about the Spine so much is that i don't see a reason why this species would need them, there aren't four heads or four tails, and having two sets on either side instead of one center one would make the aera very unstable and also limit movement greatly, the creature would be unable to twist from side to side. Now this is a fictional character and I'll make it work, but if you want it to seem as though this creature could physically function I'd toss out the 4 spine idea.

So, I'll start at the high level - we may well ditch the 4-spine idea. Indeed, should the Aera as envisioned prove sufficiently unworkable, they may be vastly re-imagined. However, If you're in a mood to humor me, I'd like to give it at least another shot or two at explaining what I was thinking before we re-architect them :)

From the brain stem, four primary nerve bundles arise, one running to each quadrant of the body. There are very few redundant connections between left and right, but many between top and bottom. The four nerve bundles run through a long sequence of vertebrae equivalents in a not-quite radial distribution - the top and bottom distance between cords is slightly less than the left-right distance. The vertebral columns merge again at the tail. Ribs sprout from all four vertebral columns in an interleaved fashion, and do not slant much forward or backward (i.e. they stay mostly in the plane orthogonal to the spine they arise from). The interleaving is such that each vertebral column has an alternating pattern of ribs and vacancies. The ribs have bone-bone connections only with the vertebral column they arise from. The connections between the adjacent ribs overlapping from the next spinal column over and with the other spinal column are all via connective tissue.

Now, while I agree that this certainly imposes rather a different set of limitations (possibly too many) on how and where things bend, depending on the flexibility of the tendons, ligaments, and muscles that connect various parts of each rib set to its neighbors, I didn't follow why this would make the Aera unstable. I imagined the repeated bifurcation of the nervous system to predate the skeletal system, and the vertebral columns to have arisen around the pre-existing nerve cords in the ancestral fish-analogs at the root of quad-chordate heritage on the Aeran homeworld.

[Jack Sampson]

Head ideas:

There are aspects of both 1 and 3 that I like, 2 not as much. I'd be interested to see how offputting it is if the eye were moved to the other side of the lip line in each.

[Jack Sampson]

1. Both sets of legs are hindlegs
2. Front set of legs and hind set of legs (like that of any reptile or mammal on earth), This of course makes the most sense to us and will be the easiest to rig.
3. switched, what are normally considered front legs are put in back and hind legs are put up from. This version makes sense because the front legs are supposed to be the ones with the power for this species, however this makes a mess of things because I'd have to put shoulder-blades in the back and a hip up front.. or something along those lines...

My initial conceptions have tended to run closest to #1.

[robinking]

I also made them a little more reptilian looking. The earlier sketches were looking a bit frog like.
I'm getting a little creative with boney structures to make the head more interesting, tell me if it would be better smooth. Keep in mind smoothness gives a more amphibious look.

[robinking]

Ok it think i have the legs pretty figured out, little more mammalian in the midlims and more splayed and reptilian in the hind legs. They were a little tricky in the sitting and lying down pose but i think i got it, tell me what you think.
I've tried to figure out the multi spine multi ribcage situation and i'm really stuck. I can't wrap my brain around it and there just really is no reference i can use.
I'm also new and i don't want you to have to change your design because of me but... well ya.
Hey if you give them only one spine the riggers will be happy haha.
Idea: 3 spines? one main spine and two smaller supplemental spines on either side, both of the side spines would have one half of a ribcage attached to them , connecting to one sternum in the center (so basically one rather wide ribcage). This would allow for a more familiar physiology for the artists involved, while still keeping the aeran alien.
New thought:
Are there lower and upper rib cages or are they continuous down the body with spaces for limbs?

[kohldude]

Great job interpreting all that text Robin. I think the legs are definitely approaching more of a hybrid.

I'm sure a simple napkin sketch from Jack would really help with the 4 spines thing.

[Jack Sampson]

Sorry for the lag in reply - was sick much of the last week.

Re heads: let's have a go at the lower of the two (the one with the eye beneath the lip line) and see if we can make use of some of the features from something like
http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/jeffcorwin/episode/episode04_09/animals_03.html
namely, some form of eye turret anatomy.

[Jack Sampson]

I'll try and see what I can do sketchwise (I'll apologize in advance, I'm an extremely poor sketch artist)

Yes, I was imagining the hip structures for the midlimbs make the upper and lower ribcages discontinuous.

For interim visual inspiration, here's something I looked at when I was trying to visualize the multiple spines: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Snake_skeleton.jpg
(it's a snake skeleton). Now, imagine removing every other pair of ribs, then trimming all remaining ribs down so that they cover a slightly less than 180 degree arc (~170 maybe a little less) . Then duplicating 4 times. Then, looking straight down the spine, put one at each of NE, NW, SW, SE. One diagonal pair (NE/SW or NW/SE) will be shifted along the front-back axis relative to the other so that the ribs can extend into the space where the other is missing ribs.

[kohldude]

Something like this?

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/4905/spinezorzororz.th.jpg (http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/4905/spinezorzororz.jpg)

[Jack Sampson]

Something like this?

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/4905/spinezorzororz.th.jpg (http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/4905/spinezorzororz.jpg)

Yes, much like that! Thanks :)

[robinking]

I'm not sure if the ribs are a little too visible...

[kohldude]

Where does it keep its brain? :p

[Jack Sampson]

:) I'm pretty happy with what I'm seeing from the basic structure now.
Many thanks for hanging in there with my crazy skeletal structure!

Little things that come to mind (presuming you think it's time for smaller things now):

Very minor - The lips should probably be at least partially open in most drawings (Aera are mouth breathers)

Worth iterating on - I think the thumb looks a bit short. Could just be me. We can refine how we want their hands to look a bit more. On the one hand (ours, not theirs ;-) ) we'd like the Aeran hand to be alien and tough looking, but on the other, it does have to look dexterous enough that we can imagine them as primitive tool-users before they had push-button tech. My first impression is that we might be currently a little too far toward the former at the expense of the latter. Maybe we can do something with just the last segment of the digits to make them look a little more apt for delicate work? Feel free to use your imagination on this one.

For later - skin markings (where and how big to make the stripy bits)

Re: brain location
Sensory management and higher functional bits starts between the eyes and proceed neckward. Additional large ganglia are present near each of the limbs and tail, and autonomic functions are somewhat more delegated to the 4 spinal nerve cords than in a terrestrial vertebrate. In summary, you still shoot an Aeran zombie in the head :) - it just keeps flailing about longer after you've done so.

[robinking]

So sorry for the delay, i usually get emails when i get a comment on this thread, strangely i didn't get one for the last post... woops
Anyway here are some hands, longer shorter, thinner, pointy nails small nails no nails etc. tell me which is best or which combination.
how are the arms?

[Jack Sampson]

Some nails recommended. Something between middle left and bottom left is my preference for hands, but both of those points themselves are fine even as they are.

I'm fairly content with the arms. I think the Aera, especially with the head-face oddities, and indications of non-standard skeletal formation, are sufficiently distinctive from terran fauna that any hints of familiar form will be pleasantly unsettling in context.

[robinking]

stripes and Blotches, low saturation and high.
I did the belly in yellow in the second set, as well as the "waddle"/neck flap, which i like better personally.

[robinking]

... and by second set i meant first set..

[kohldude]

I rather like the second set since the blotches look a little like stripes, but I do also like the colored waddle and yellow belly.

[robinking]

Here's with stripes and a colored "wattle"

[Jack Sampson]

Stripes + colored wattle looks very good.

I'd go for mixing in some instances of the somewhat dimmer stripe coloration along with the bold though - lighting is both dim and uneven underneath a dense rainforest canopy, so I was thinking that maybe the coloration would be similarly uneven in intensity (of course, it's still the lighting itself that makes it uneven, but perhaps it would be even more effective in breaking up the shape of the animal against the background if the base coloration was uneven... not sure.)

I tried just now to find some good pictures of rainforest floor beneath a dense canopy to show the shadowing, but most of the pics weren't very good (and I wasn't looking that hard) :-/

[robinking]

How about bringing in some hints of other colors? like desaturated purple or greens? Give the skin some more variety.

[Jack Sampson]

How about bringing in some hints of other colors? like desaturated purple or greens? Give the skin some more variety.

Not sure about purple, but feel free to experiment a bit with whatever you think would be a good match for alien dirt, detritus, and "tree" bark on a planet where the chlorophyll equivalent is yellowish.

[robinking]

Orange, green and purple

[Jack Sampson]

My intuition was wrong - purple looks great.
I'm also partial to the orange. The green doesn't move me as much.

One imagines there will be some variation in skin coloration among the Aera, so perhaps go with both orange and purple or combinations thereof?

[robinking]

next stop, clothing?

[Dee Bingo]

These look great Robin! I really like the one in the lower left hand side especially.

[Jack Sampson]

Sorry for the delay, didn't realize until I just re-read it now that "next stop clothing?" was a question and not a statement (with which I agreed).

So, clothing - I tended to envision something jumpsuit-like, but feel free to experiment with whatever strikes your fancy provided that it doesn't get in the way of functionality. To rephrase the above from another angle, I am not heavily invested in any particulars of how their clothing looks, so you can be quite free with it as long as it meshes with the overriding aesthetics seen in the rest of the Aeran ships and such which I'd distill into
A) It has to work and not impede the performance of important tasks -- impractical designer clothing that requires your four best friends and some spirit gum to put on... not so Aeran
B1) It hides the messy bits (not necessarily the naughty bits) -- as with their ships, the Aera can't always build something truly elegant (FTL bits, for instance) but they can always put a nice cover on it so that it looks elegant from the outside. Thus, flappy bits and strings and zippers may well be there, but hidden in folds or beneath smooth sealing flaps.
B2) Apparent simplicity is a part of Aeran elegance
C) Social function is social station in Aeran society -- what you do is important, so dress clothes will utilize some aspects of work clothes

But, really, do have some fun with the clothes, I'm sure whatever you imagine will be better than almost anything I can come up with (not a snappy dresser).

[robinking]

So honestly i hit a bit of a artists block with the clothing, but i think something similar to a jumpsuit is the best way to go. Here's some roughs; i imagine i'd add some pouches or pockets to these suits.

[Jack Sampson]

Like where it's going, pockets sounds good :).

After the basic clothing, we can think about teching up a bit - headset design, goggles, personal/mobile computing device/display, -- or even more mundane things like "what does an Aeran hardhat look like?"

[robinking]

Update- pockets! and little back pack thingies! I have very little technology related creativity so if you have anything specific in mind or any reference that would be great.

Just to Let everyone know, finals are next week then i leave straight away for europe for 3 weeks so I won't have any more updates until mid July (when i plan to finally start on Rlaan!).

Hope everyone who has a summer break has a good one!

~Robin

[Jack Sampson]

Update- pockets! and little back pack thingies! I have very little technology related creativity so if you have anything specific in mind or any reference that would be great.

Just to Let everyone know, finals are next week then i leave straight away for europe for 3 weeks so I won't have any more updates until mid July (when i plan to finally start on Rlaan!).

Hope everyone who has a summer break has a good one!

~Robin

Okiedoke - will have any tech-specific things I was hoping to see in the Aeran pics written up by the time you get back :)
Enjoy Europe - hope your trip will be more pleasant than my there-and-back for a job-talk in Lausanne (nothing like crossing the Atlantic twice in a less than a week :-P).