Colin's Inspirational Traveller Art Thread

[C. Chapman]

Andrey Lifanov
http://andr-sar.deviantart.com/gallery/

 

[C. Chapman]

Cory Trego-Erdner
http://m0ai.deviantart.com/gallery/

 

[Valarian]

The site http://www.worth1000.com/ is also worth a look at for strange creature mixes and aliens. There's a few galleries of Photoshopped creatures that are a mix of two (or more) Earthly creatures which end up looking great for alien encounters.

[EDIT]
The galleries to have a look at are the Animal Crossbreed and Chimaera galleries.

 

[C. Chapman]

Call me old fashioned, but I'm just not a fan of photo manipulations. Plus, IIRC, you can't directly link images from Worth1000 anyway, in the same way that you can't directly display images from most blogs. Not that there's not a lot of fun stuff to look at there, but photo manips aren't something I'll be posting.

Colin

 

[C. Chapman]

Daniel Graffenberger
http://talros.deviantart.com/gallery/

 

[C. Chapman]

Vlado
http://sketchboook.deviantart.com/gallery/

 

[C. Chapman]

John
http://creature-man.deviantart.com/gallery/

 

[C. Chapman]

Nemo-Ramjet
http://nemo-ramjet.deviantart.com/gallery/

 

[Paladin]

What is the [evolutionary] purpose of the strange additional appendage that extends from the torso of so many of the creatures?

 

[GypsyComet]

From that last picture, it appears that the digestive tract developed a separate "mouth" from the air intake used by the lungs, and that each has its own extension from the body instead of shared like Terran life has.

Evolution could lead down this path if the need to keep eyes high while feeding low was sufficiently important early in the development of complex forms.

 

[EDG]

Looks like some kind of sensory appendage to me - the eyes and mouth are in the skull part, and the other bit is the ears/nose/vibration sensors or whatever?

 

[Tychus]

As someone mentioned earlier, a lot of these creatures seem to have originated in Spore's creature creator. The extra appendage on that last creature is a piece that increases the creature's stealth rating in game.

 

[Stainless]

What is the [evolutionary] purpose of the strange additional appendage that extends from the torso of so many of the creatures?

That question does not compute. Evolution has no purpose. You mean, what is the biological function of the appendage? If it has a function, it has an effect on fitness and so selection can occur (i.e., evolution). With 100% made-up figments of someone's imagination, it probably doesn't profit one much to ask for a scientific explanation.

 

[EDG]

All is explained here:

http://www.snaiad.com


and here:

http://www.nemoramjet.com/sndanatomy.html


What looks like the "head" with the skull is actually the genitals!

Also, from the looks of it, the Snaiad material predates Spore by several years.

 

[Paladin]

What is the [evolutionary] purpose of the strange additional appendage that extends from the torso of so many of the creatures?

That question does not compute. Evolution has no purpose. You mean, what is the biological function of the appendage? If it has a function, it has an effect on fitness and so selection can occur (i.e., evolution). With 100% made-up figments of someone's imagination, it probably doesn't profit one much to ask for a scientific explanation.

That's kind of my point. If it serves no function but to hinder the development of the creature, why would it continue to exist and spread among so many species rather than die off as the less encumbered, "stronger" versions move forward. On the vast majority of the creatures, esp the Allotauriformes, it looks like it would prevent them from bending down to eat, get caught on things repeatedly, prevent the "nose"/face from reaching things, etc.

But asside from that I didn't know if it was for feeding, breathing, reproduction, sensory input, psychic node, etc. Just curious what the artist envisioned.

 

[C. Chapman]

All is explained here:
http://www.snaiad.com

and here:

http://www.nemoramjet.com/sndanatomy.html

What looks like the "head" with the skull is actually the genitals!
Also, from the looks of it, the Snaiad material predates Spore by several years.

Thanks for digging up those links; interesting stuff and something I bet no-one here predicted or anticipated.

Snaiad looks like it'd be a very cool planet to include in Trav.

Colin

 

[GJD]

What is the [evolutionary] purpose of the strange additional appendage that extends from the torso of so many of the creatures?

That question does not compute. Evolution has no purpose. You mean, what is the biological function of the appendage? If it has a function, it has an effect on fitness and so selection can occur (i.e., evolution). With 100% made-up figments of someone's imagination, it probably doesn't profit one much to ask for a scientific explanation.

That's kind of my point. If it serves no function but to hinder the development of the creature, why would it continue to exist and spread among so many species rather than die off as the less encumbered, "stronger" versions move forward. On the vast majority of the creatures, esp the Allotauriformes, it looks like it would prevent them from bending down to eat, get caught on things repeatedly, prevent the "nose"/face from reaching things, etc.

But asside from that I didn't know if it was for feeding, breathing, reproduction, sensory input, psychic node, etc. Just curious what the artist envisioned.

The bit sticking out of the chest is the feeding mechanism. Tentacle, tongue, whatever. The bit at the top that looks like a head is actually an armored set of genitals with sensory organs attached. Apparently the young are gestated within the chest cavity, then "vomited" out, or, in some cases they lay eggs or in some other cases the young claw their way out.

So, wiggly thing in chest = tongue.
Armoured thing on top = great big scary articulated tonka.

G.

 

[Stainless]

Things that serve no purpose, but that also are not deleterious (i.e., they are neutral) can be fixed in a population through genetic drift. The neutral theory of evolution.

There is also the nearly neutral theroy of evolution where things with a slight advantage can be fixed because of positive selction if the effective population size is large, or may be fixed randomly through genetic drift if the effective population size is small.

Things that are deleterious may be fixed in a population if they are linked to something with a strong positive fitness effect. In other words, they hitchike. The phenomenon called synteny when refering to genomic context. Alternatively, there may be a selective sweep that has a similar hitchiking result. Lastly, a population bottleneck may see a deleterious feature fixed on a purely stochastic basis.

In an alien environment/ecosystem/etc. who's to say what is advantageous, deleterious or neutral? Who's to say there isn't a sweep or bottleneck phenomenon happening. Because of the length of time required in order to see evolution at work (unless the generation time is very short), what you observe can often be very difficult to interpret. I'm reminded of the Australian stick insects that lay eggs which look like seeds. No-one could understand why such an obviously disadvantageous feature could have been selected for, but eventually the explanation became clear....

In other words, just make stuff up! It's your game after all.

Sorry, I'm an evolutionary biologist.

What is the [evolutionary] purpose of the strange additional appendage that extends from the torso of so many of the creatures?

That question does not compute. Evolution has no purpose. You mean, what is the biological function of the appendage? If it has a function, it has an effect on fitness and so selection can occur (i.e., evolution). With 100% made-up figments of someone's imagination, it probably doesn't profit one much to ask for a scientific explanation.

That's kind of my point. If it serves no function but to hinder the development of the creature, why would it continue to exist and spread among so many species rather than die off as the less encumbered, "stronger" versions move forward. On the vast majority of the creatures, esp the Allotauriformes, it looks like it would prevent them from bending down to eat, get caught on things repeatedly, prevent the "nose"/face from reaching things, etc.

But asside from that I didn't know if it was for feeding, breathing, reproduction, sensory input, psychic node, etc. Just curious what the artist envisioned.

 

[C. Chapman]

Mike Doscher
http://malaveldt.deviantart.com/gallery/

 

[C. Chapman]

Jan Ditlev Christensen
http://www.janditlev.dk/