Drawing Female Vargr

[Chumbly]

After getting a bamboo pen tablet for my birthday, I am kind of starting a project to
learn to draw traveller style figures(NO... you don't want my artwork...overall I am lousy
and inexperienced )While looking through the alien modules, for examples, I kinda of noticed that
the drawn Vargr all seem to be male. I then started wondering, what gives... Do Vargr keep all
their females at home in the harem purdah..making them wear burqas when then go outside? :wink:

So the question is, whats cannon for drawing female vargr. I know Aslan are usually drawn human anthromorphically(i.e they have have human female style hips and chests). RL female canines have multiple pairs of non-protuding mammary glands(They would appear flat chested without the human style gender based hip difference). Do you draw them just like smaller males, or is it cannon to anthromorpthize them like the way aslan are usually drawn(and then 1 pair or 3 pairs)

If the answer is draw the like the aslan....My question to Grandfather then would be.."And the reason you needed to make breasts that extend was....?" :shock:


Also..another question... Typical humans usually are drawn proportionately 5 -6 human heads high..(I guess Zho's would be 6-7)....What would a good scale for aslan and vargr?

 

[rust]

Since Vargr are basically lupines*, I see no good reason for
visible gender differences beyond the (usually covered) ge-
nitals, even a size difference between males and females
would probably be mostly a statistical difference - many al-
pha she-wolves are just as big as their male counterparts.

* Vargr cannot be true canines, when Grandfather kidnap-
ped their ancestors dogs as we know them did not exist.

Edit.:
By the way, since the "grey" wolf mostly used as the "mo-
del" for Vargr developed only about 180,000 years ago,
the wolves captured by Grandfather would probably have
looked like the much older Arabian wolves:

 

[hdan]

The reason for drawing Vargr bitches with a pair of protruding breasts is obvious - to appeal to Furries!

Now that I'm done offending people , I'd say that it's fair to draw Vargr females as "cute" or more pretty than males since the target audience for your pictures is human and we like those sorts of visual cues, but they should probably be about the same size as males and not have humanoid T&A.

Though some of the MgT Vargr illos are cool looking in a werewolf sort of way, CT's "skinny dog-man" looks more right to me.

Aslan male and female are different from each other in the setting, and we're not really sure if they even have mammary glands or not.

 

[Jame Rowe]

The reason for drawing Vargr bitches with a pair of protruding breasts is obvious - to appeal to Furries!

Now that I'm done offending people , I'd say that it's fair to draw Vargr females as "cute" or more pretty than males since the target audience for your pictures is human and we like those sorts of visual cues, but they should probably be about the same size as males and not have humanoid T&A.

Though some of the MgT Vargr illos are cool looking in a werewolf sort of way, CT's "skinny dog-man" looks more right to me.

Cutify them if you like I'd say that you shouldn't draw them with humanlike breasts (one of my complaints about D&D 4E's Dragonborn is that they have humanlike breasts!). Remember, actual wolves have a set of them on their bellies instead of a pair on their chests.

 

[BFalcon]

James: Please don't mention that game around me - it just raises my blood pressure, thinking about that "console game on paper" that D&D has deteriorated into...

Quick question regarding Vargr, were they raised to sentience by the ancients, or were they raised and have their DNA spliced with human DNA? If the latter, then a more human look would be appropriate than pure wolf...

Remember, though, that lupine/canine females head smaller heads and less well built shoulders than the males and that males and females will have pretty slender hips compared to humans, although females less so. I would presume, though, that they'd be more human than wolf, given their bipedal stance, opposable thumbs and voice-capable voice boxes and mouths.

 

[rust]

Quick question regarding Vargr, were they raised to sentience by the ancients, or were they raised and have their DNA spliced with human DNA?

Traveller at least originally did not mention what exactly the
Ancients did to the Vargr ancestors, probably because the
authors were unaware of any plausible method of genetic en-
gineering when Traveller was written. I think they just wan-
ted a species of "dog people" for their game.

 

[Jame Rowe]

James: Please don't mention that game around me - it just raises my blood pressure, thinking about that "console game on paper" that D&D has deteriorated into...

Quick question regarding Vargr, were they raised to sentience by the ancients, or were they raised and have their DNA spliced with human DNA? If the latter, then a more human look would be appropriate than pure wolf...

Remember, though, that lupine/canine females head smaller heads and less well built shoulders than the males and that males and females will have pretty slender hips compared to humans, although females less so. I would presume, though, that they'd be more human than wolf, given their bipedal stance, opposable thumbs and voice-capable voice boxes and mouths.

I'll do my best. Just referencing it in order to explain my point.

 

[Reynard]

Obviously the Ancients wanted a race that had functions similar to the humans transplanted at the same time. 300,000 years is not a long time ago for humans and we haven't changed that much. Vargrs, however, are highly sapient, developed the brain power, shorter muzzles and vocal organs to speak, have elongated digits close to a human hand and their internal organs and body symmetry plus leg structure allows an upright stance. That was not evolution, it was engineering for a purpose.

As to your question about vargr, especially female vargr physicality, I just looked at several old sources plus the MgT sourcebook. They are as varied as terrestrial canine breeds as canines are to the original lupine stock. MgT has at one vargr female that could be centerfold material and amother is a shapely bitch. For an almost clinical view MegaTraveller Alien Vol 1: Vilani & Vargr has a great picture of a male, female and child. The female has three sets with the largest at the chest, all are pronounced compared to terrestrial canines. She may be an average female with some larger and others smaller.

Remember that human females, on the average are not all Playboy models. At about 300,000 years ago most human females look like the women you see in more primative human cultures today, nearly flat and undeveloped. The breasts we are familiar with is a developement of sexual attraction in some cultures and probably accelerated by improving diets from growing civilizations. Why shouldn't vargrs, now engineered to human parallels, possibly follow that route in some populations? I'd say anything is possible.

On a similar note, I have seen the cover picture of the aslan female and they also are placed on the chest. The upright stance of representative higher mammalian species may foster such placement

 

[rust]

300,000 years is not a long time ago for humans and we haven't changed that much.

Sorry for nitpicking, but anatomically modern humans developed
only about 200,000 years ago, the human species of 300,000
years ago looked quite different from us. :wink:

Edit.:
Which, by the way, means that Vilani, Zhodani, etc. are based
upon the genetics of Neanderthals or similar human species of
that age ...

 

[Reynard]

Rust, you're right, however, both Homo sapien and Homo neanderthalensis rose during that same 200k time. Homo heidelbergensis was strong in the 300k timeline and may have been the progenator of neanderthalensis but the charts showed it died out very quickly at the 200k mark while Home erectus faded more slowly and is most likely the ancestor to modern H. sapien. On top of that H. sapien replaced neanderthal by both competition and assimilation. This should mean Grandfather or one or more of his children took samples of H. erectus for experimentation and these people followed a evolutionary path quite similar to Terrans.

Reading the material about human ancestors, our gross features have been very similar for over a million years. Nariokotome Boy is a prime example. A great ape and a human has much greater differences just as vargrs are from their lupine ancestors. Vargrs were definately engineered. At the same time, I wonder if Terrans were experimented on to push them in the direction of H. sapien.

 

[rust]

... both Homo sapien and Homo neanderthalensis rose during that same 200k time.

The jury still seems to be out on this, I have found dates as
early as 700,000 years ago for the Neanderthals. As I under-
stand it, the uncertainty seems based upon different interpre-
tations of the genetic traits considered "truly Neanderthal"
and the number of such traits required to define an individual
as a Neanderthal.

An example of the contradictory and confusing data:
http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.0030175

 

[Captain Jonah]

Or to put it another way, did grandfather do a little tweaking while he was here, take what he wanted and left the remains of his experiments to become us as we took over from the big eye brow and low forhead types. :lol:

 

[rust]

Yep, and also: Should your friendly Vilani or Zhodani
neighbour look like this ? :lol:

 

[GypsyComet]

Yep, and also: Should your friendly Vilani or Zhodani
neighbour look like this ? :lol:

Many of us do not, and we've had the same amount of time the others have had. The Ancients may well have pulled from multiple hominid sources, not just the Neanderthals.

Narrow hips on a Vargr female would suggest that they have a relatively low birth weight compared to adult weight, or that the head and shoulders of the newborn are even more flexible than in humans. Wider hips also seem to be a positive for walking upright, so the Vargr may have larger hips than their distant canid ancestors would indicate.

Prior art of the Vargr has not differentiated strongly between the genders, though the females have often been drawn slightly softer or in less aggressive poses. Both the GDW and DGP anatomical drawings suggested that protruding breasts are not a feature of the Vargr, but female clothing may bulk out a little in front to account for the two lines of mammaries which, like those of humans, would be rather sensitive at times.

 

[Evil Genius]

Aren't we all missing a basic point here - Vargr and Aslan are not genetic modifications of Terrestrial mammals - they're alien. They have an alien morphology and any similarities in body shape and posture could be explained by some of the reasons modern humans evolved to look like they do. An upright stance is an aid to survival - having eyes up higher enables a greater field of view than that of a creature on all fours. Standing on two out of four limbs releases one pair to do other stuff - like tool manipulation and fabrication.
What is the typical birth rate of Vagr and Aslan - do they have a large or small number of offspring? The larger the litter then the more breast the mother would need to feed the young. If, like humans, the number is small - less breasts are required. Once again, this is a survival evolution trait that optimises resources.
An upright body is also less prone to overheating than a body on all fours as it presents a smaller profile to the sun and receives less infra red radiation.
It is also a better configuration for climbing.

 

[rust]

Aren't we all missing a basic point here - Vargr and Aslan are not genetic modifications of Terrestrial mammals - they're alien.

While Aslan are true aliens, Vargr are indeed genetic modifications
of Terran lupines, captured by the Ancients and then genetically en-
gineered into a servitor race about 300,000 years ago.

http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Vargr

 

[Evil Genius]

Except I forgot that in third Imperium Traveller they are genetic modifications of Terrestrial animals.

It's been a long day.

 

[Rick]

Except I forgot that in third Imperium Traveller they are genetic modifications of Terrestrial animals.

It's been a long day.

Details aside, your point is a good one - whatever they looked like when they were first genetically modified, they have had 300,000 years of evolution, selective breeding and living in alien conditions - that must have changed the look of the basic stock a bit. After all - if you look at a 'best guess' reconstruction of a hominid from 300,000 years ago and a modern human - there are differences!

 

[GypsyComet]

They are also not all cookie-cutter twins. Older material mentions that subspecies have arisen, including notable size differences. There is one known Vargr offshoot that is shorter, though not, IIRC as extremely so as Terran Pygmies, and another that matches the Aslan for physique. Whether these variations developed over 300k years or were started by the Ancients is not published, but either is possible.

 

[Reynard]

I have a video somewhere of, I think, a Discovery Channel series about dogs. There's mention how canines have an incredibly adaptable and flexible genetic structure which allows the fantastic variety of breeds we see compared to any other domestic animals. We've seen the physical results of breeding manipulation of many animals with the horses size increase a prime example. Canines, comparatively, has the largest diversity in just about every category. All this in around 14,000 years.

Of all the animals the droyne ancestors could take it was the two that show the greatest ability to advance genetically in short timeframes. What better species to use in far flung environs. That means vargrs can be what the GM needs because there are a lot of breeds on a lot of worlds.

I'm more inpressed the various humans breeds common in Traveller don't show as much variety as vargr. H. erectus was clay 300K ago and the many worlds they were transplanted to should have shaped them. You can put a darrian, zhodani, vilani and solomani in a line and there is very little difference externally or internally. There is more variety between humans separated by geography and climate on Earth alone.