Five Bees, a Gee, and a Kay

Here's a bit more 'making of' for recent entries:

Dwarf Bundler

After I posted this guy I began to wonder if I should put up a NSFW warning. Or maybe I should put one of those black censorship blocks on the images... Just kidding. It's an animal, and not even a real one. Take a look at what some real animals are sporting and tell me which is more disturbing. If anybody has a problem with it they can write me a comment or something to complain.

Goldwave

The artwork on this one isn't my best. At the time I was more interested in getting on with other critters, so I just rushed through this guy so I could say he was done. One of these days I might just update it...

Banded Conker

My pseudocoles have been popular among the community of speculators that has seen them. Chalk it up to their general vibe of "super-smart theropods rule!", or just that they're pretty unique in their construction, but the banded conker already seems on the fast track to the nereid hall of fame.

Bearded Drake

I'm very pleased with the apparent elegance of this creature, despite the fact that the best it can do to move around on land is to awkwardly hop around. I was inspired by sea birds, obviously, but I was having trouble figuring out a solution for one of the inherent obstacles in nereid design: they often have these long, flexible necks, but unlike Earth life they don't have something on there that can see natural use as something to grab prey. So I have to get creative now and then...

Blight

I never really got the "nasty slime" texture of the skin I wanted. I looked at so many pictures of hagfish and how their insides seemed to just show through their skin. Close enough, I guess...

Buffle

Yet another example of me pushing the envelope of plausibility. I had to resort to giving it a feature I had planned not to include in the nereid phylogeny: feathers. I had imposed the limitation to force me to come up with unique solutions to solve what feathers do on Earth, but I relented. It made too much sense for an alien already covered in scales to adapt them into a soft layer of insulation against the cold. Now if I can just keep from adding hair to anything...

Kitsune

We have some friends with Japanese heritage in their family, so we are priveleged to hear about their culture and unique mythologies. I've always been interested in the focus they place on the fox in particular, so I thought I'd pay homage to them in my project. I can't say there's very much directly drawn from the mythological namesake, but there's something about it that's always reminded me of the stories our friends have told us...

And there we have it for another sizable installment of nereids onto the website! Let me know what you think!