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[kangasauras]

Here is another example I found on the most unexpectedly toxic place on the internet, Instagram comment sections! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the people infamous for denying science also deny palaeo science, but oh well 🙃

I was being cancelled because apparently it was classist to put feathers on dinosaurs.

Both dream me and irl me were very confused.

[kangasauras]

Fanart of an Azi Lana individual.

Crying and sobbing thinking about @kangasauras’s Azi Lana. I want to meet one in real life. :) I also need to draw some of their variants as well 👀

[kangasauras]

We finally found the right plant for this other reddit user’s window

[kangasauras]

The problem with suddenly going from drawing for several hours a day (me before) to not drawing for months at a time (me with depression) is that your wrist loses its strength scarily quickly. So recently I’ve been trying to doodle for about half an hour a day just to exercise. If anyone has tips for building hand/wrist strength back up I would appreciate them!

[kangasauras]

An alien. Based on wrasse and hyenas. They are polar predators, using the giant tooth-premaxilla-thing to pierce the skin of their giant, blubbery prey.

[kangasauras]

Hello everyone! I’m sorry for my impromptu disappearance. I’ve been very ill and I’ve only begun to recover. But, I felt well enough to draw this little dimorphodon. I can’t promise anything from here on out, but I really hope I’ll continue to be able to create like I have in the past. It feels very good to draw again :)

[kangasauras]

Today’s sketches: some assorted birds.

Penguins are so weird! They’re birds- with a vertical spine?? Also, they’ve been around for about 60 million years. What were they doing in the tens of millions of years before Antarctica was covered in ice?

[kangasauras]

Some more gazelles :)

[kangasauras]

Some gazelles :)

[kangasauras]

Concept sketches for the ULE! Sorry for the long post.

Most nations in the ULE prefer to create habitats or terraform planets specifically to their biological needs. This is useful, because it means that their citizens can travel to any part of the nation- habitat, planet, or moon- without suffering severe medical effects. However, this takes lots of time and resources, and as many planets can’t accommodate certain organisms even with terraforming, it ultimately limits the available space. So, the Eina jarn have taken a different approach.

The Eina jarn are a majority-Azi lana nation with a range of different territories and ways of life. Their ownership of one of only three dyson spheres in the area makes them a powerful faction. Notably, when they colonise new areas, they will genetically modify their own citizens to cope with the new environment, instead of the other way around. They have created three new varieties of Azi lana in total, all of which cannot sire children with each other or with the unmodified Xenosapiens alana, and so are usually considered entirely separate species.

X. hanwena (casually glewens) is a species of Azi lana modified to live on the moon Hanwen. Although the moon has been terraformed to hold oxygen in its atmosphere, it is half the size of Earth’s moon, and so glewens have been created for life under extremely low gravity.

To cope with this, their vascular systems, muscles, and skeletons have all been fundamentally altered, to the point where their organs would be crushed if they were to travel to the Azi lana homeplanet, Gi.

To take full advantage of the low gravity, they have also been given large membranes with which they can glide short distances. The membranes’ skin and muscle is supported by long, thin extensions of their bifurcated neural spines.

X. Larmwaa (casually engwells) is a species created to live on the super-earth Larmwa. This high-gravity planet has no oxygen in its atmosphere, and so engwells usually live in underground habitats.

To live under gravity that would easily crush others, these people have strong, light bones, sturdy muscles, and a fast, powerful heart. They also have an extra pair of legs, and their arms have been modified to easily bear weight, meaning they have a maximum of eight limbs to support themselves with.

Like humans, they can live in lower-gravity environments, but doing so for extended periods of time leads to physical changes like muscle atrophy and eventually severe medical effects.

X. Einaa (casually arjenjaals) have been modified to live inside the dyson sphere orbiting their star, Eina yerda. They are born and raised to carry out important duties, like maintenance of the dyson sphere, as well as worship and appeasement of the Eina jarn’s god- the star itself.

Arjenjaals live and work in zero-gravity. Their vascular and musculoskeletal systems, as well as their development period, have been highly modified- again, their organs would be crushed by higher gravity environments. They navigate the long, thin rooms of their home by pulling and pushing on walls and handles with their spindly limbs.

Though thick habitat walls prevent much solar radiation from reaching the arjenjaals, they are still regularly bathed in amounts that would kill a lesser organism. To cope, their DNA is hardy, easily repaired, and stored in double the amount of chromosomes. Even still, arjenjaals live tragically short lives.

[kangasauras]

A break from my normal spec bio stuff with an experimental drawing. This is a second pass on an aesthetic I developed a couple of years ago, which was in turn inspired by graphical representations of gravity.

Big green dude.

[kangasauras]

I decided to post the speculative evolution-themed sixfanarts I drew back in October. I have a lot of old art I haven’t posted here yet so I hope you guys will let me indulge myself :D

[kangasauras]

A human/Azi lana hybrid.

Genetic modification in the ULE is… complicated. It’s way easier to simulate projected changes in a plant or a dog, for instance, than in the human brain. And if, despite the computer simulation, you get it wrong, well… if it’s a plant or a dog, you can just try again.

When it comes to sapient species- humans, Azi lana, and such- it’s much easier to do something like replacing body hair with feathers, or adding a tail, or lengthening arms, than to completely overhaul bodyplan and anatomy. So while the former is common in some places, the latter almost can’t be done.

But while mere sapients cannot grasp the complexity of their own bodies and minds, they are not the only intelligent beings in the universe. Superintelligents are vast minds with the power to understand and grasp every aspect of the sapient brain. Though many are unconcerned with the happenings of mortals, a few have helped sapients along their way.

One superintelligence, Anwarth, has gone above and beyond for local sapient nations. Their portfolio includes blueprints for sapient robots, a brain implant that acts as a universal translator, and perhaps their crowning achievement: an algorithm that can create a functional person from DNA samples of entirely separate sapient species.

The GECCAI algorithm, as easy to use and consistently successful as it is, is the relied-upon method for creating hybrid offspring between two alien parents. Though all hybrids are created to do the basics- eat, move, communicate, etc- the different biologies of their alien parents means their own anatomy can be quite exotic. Both this and the inherent sterility of hybrids has sociological implications for their way of life.

More about the Azi lana | more about hybrids in the ULE | more about the universe

[kangasauras]

I drew a funky dinosaur hybrid :D

This is based on a neat hybrid challenge by Emily Stepp on Twitter, with suggestions from my Instagram followers.

Head: quetzalcoatlus

Neck: euoplocephalus

Body: amargasaurus

Arms: carnotaurus

Legs: therizinosaurus

Tail: leaellynasaura

Integument: feathers

Colouration: black/white/red

[kangasauras]

Lore/design concepts for the last of the aliens from the high-tech trio: humans, Azi lana, and lomanos. I’ve done a lot of lore for humans and the Azi lana, so I realised it’s time for me to start exploring the ideas I have for the lomanos. None of this is truly canon until it’s on the website, though.

Lomanos are a species of, uh… slug-fish-squid things. They hail from New Europa, the moon of an extrasolar gas giant. This moon has no life on the surface, but instead has a lush, teeming ecosystem present in the freezing ocean under its icy exterior. It’s here that the lomanos evolved remarkable capabilities to deal with their hostile environment.

Lomanos are capable of more neural plasticity than any other known lifeform. Their brains are extremely flexible units that can grow multitudes of new cells, and even new hemispheres. It can change shape entirely over the course of a few years, and retains this ability throughout their entire lives.

Lomanos do not have shells, hands, or even eyes, but they have remarkable learning abilities unparalleled by any other living creature.

To say lomanos are inherently sapient would be a mistake. In the cold, dark seas of their home moon, they live as unusually intelligent animals with a capacity to adjust to virtually any situation or environment by observing the animals around them and replicating their behaviour. But as the first humans to study them for their unusual abilities realised, non-sapient animals are not the only lifeforms they can change their brains to replicate.

By closely observing the behaviour of the scientists studying them, these lomanos adjusted their brains to perfectly replicate the abilities of the human brain; to experience the human condition, and to become sapient.

After some initial confusion, the first generation of sapient lomanos were established as people, and with their ability to rapidly learn new skills and concepts, they went on to create culture, infrastructure, and technology that rivaled species who had been sapient for hundreds of thousands of years.

Today, lomanos are present in and creators of some of the most powerful nations in the Local Systems. It is, for instance, a primarily lomanos nation that owns one of the three dyson spheres in this area.

However, their fragile, slug-like bodies are not capable of living out of water, let alone these wonders. So, sapient lomanos spend their whole lives inside an artificial robot body. Their incredible neural plasticity allows a newborn lomanos to adjust to both being sapient and being able to control such a foreign body with relative ease.

They can even make big changes to their artificial bodies with ease, or adapt to having prosthetics their brains never evolved to support, like eyes. Such is the nature of their incredible brains.

[kangasauras]

I joined a DTIYS! This one is hosted by Christian Cline, author of The Teeming Universe- in which he offers a copy of his book as a reward! This was really fun to do, especially as I’ve been recovering. I’ve discovered I’m a sucker for backlighting…

Here’s the original artwork (C) Christian Cline. I implore you to check out his work! His Instagram can be found with a quick google search and his book can be ordered online. If you’re following me you probably already like cool aliens, so… why not check out some more?

[kangasauras]

How long has it been? Like, two weeks? Well, I’m glad to be back!

To put it simply I’ve had some medical issues and haven’t had it in myself to draw. I’m still not feeling good necessarily, but I’ve finally been able to draw something.

I felt like drawing a beaman, so I did. This one is leaning forward, almost horizontally, to take full advantage of the swinging motions of his tail while running.

Unfortunately a lot of the art is old but I’ve been doing some work on the beamen’s place in the wider world of the ULE. You can read about it here! It’s been really fun to make a database for all my worldbuilding stuff.