milkyfederation - Tumblr blog

[milkyfederation]

Just saw a "there is no planet B" shirt and started laughing to myself at the thought of there being a planet called "planet B".

I love my brain, I'm so happy with so little.

[milkyfederation]

Exploration of an old species design I did on the train, I've decided to call them mussosians. As always I like to take a general species and try to design a character by exploring its possibilities and limitations of characterisation.

This teen mussosian is a background Hole Station worker who grew up in the human sector. She styles her eyebrow as if they were bangs, keeps a long ponytail and has several piercings. She uses she/her pronouns, even though her species traditionally don't use them.

On vacation, trying to relearn how to draw without a computer so I can practice anyway. Starting with something easy, some designs I know by heart.

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Xa ontogeny

The Xa and how they grow. The brown-feathered kiddos past age of 1,5 are already able to fly somewhat. Xa don't show any sexual dimorphism, so there's only one Xa image for each life stage. Here's more about this sophont: https://www.tumblr.com/total-convergence/726112557515128832/tcxa

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On vacation, trying to relearn how to draw without a computer so I can practice anyway. Starting with something easy, some designs I know by heart.

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“Salvage” created for Critical Chips 2, published/edited by Zainab Akhtar~

[milkyfederation]

- Uuuh yeah... Give me one ticket for the new Lion King Remake Musi- ABSOLUTELY NOT! You know it'll be my turn before the movie's over. - Coome on! My treat. - No way, you know I hate musicals, watch it when it's your turn again. - Hey guys keep it down, we're in public, you're embarrassing us.

The Martian city state of Neocropolis is dead set on fighting, well, death. One of the solutions they have come up with is transferring your consciousness into a mechanical body.

That is, of course, expensive, so some people decide to share the cost, putting more than one consciousness in a single body. That makes Neocropolis the city with the highest number of people per capita in the human sector.

Ever since its creation, the Martian city-state specializes in scientific research to avoid death. Its founder is still alive (as just a head in a jar) after a couple of centuries.

Neocropolitans are modified to have purple skin with stripes, and a lengthy life (although that tends to be cut short for the everyman due to economic disparity).

Despite being a small one, it is one of the most powerful Martian cities thanks to its alliances. No rich or powerful person dares antagonize their source of "eternal life", which gives the city carte blanche to do all sorts of experiments.

The Raging Machines' guitarist, K, was a neocropolitan who's consciousness was put on a machine post mortem without her consent so that she'd keep working.

Neocropolis' name is a play on words with neo (new) and necropolis (cemetary), the city that gives a new definition to death. Etymologically there's nothing else funny here, carry on.

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I've shared this one once before, and there's some things I'd change now, but I still like it a lot. Domesticated pets of the future! (03/2022)

In this drawing you can see:

Mazonian Turtle: very chill, but not very smart, can roll up into a ball.

Liloquian Kazoo: energetic and curious, they sing all the time.

(Unnamed planet) Slug-Hamster: very inactive, mostly looks cute.

Earthian Cat: it's a cat, but edited with new technology to change its colour.

(Unnamed planet) Dog-Owl: smart and weird, can fly.

(Unnamed planet) Bat-Cat: reserved, like a significantly less hairy cat that can fly.

Quadriyan Dog: loyal and playful, tho it has weird bug-like mandibles.

(Unnamed planet) Ferret-Snake: sociable, furry, long and limbless.

Liloquian Dog-Deer: smart and very trainable herbivore, a liloquian's best friend.

Furbo: artificially bioengineered by aliens to be the perfect pet, not very popular with humans, who seem to share a primal fear of the colourful, chatty creature.

Creature names in the MF universe mostly follow the naming convention of [Planet of origin]+[animal with similar ecological niche/that looks similar].

The drawing is two years old and I see some mistakes and things I could've done better (the Owl-Dog is pretty basic), but I still like it a lot. I have to draw more aliens.

Which one's your favourite?? Which one would you adopt??

[milkyfederation]

Hey everybody, go check out @simon-roy 's new book Refugium on Kickstarter! If Simon's reputation on its own somehow isn't enough to convince you to back it, there's a whole mini specbio guidebook with entries from me and like a ton of your other favorite artists probably.

Here are my little aliens without the text and weathered effects

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- Ooooh that one is so cute!

– Mmmmmh how much is it?

+ That one'll be 24,99 moneys.

– ... Aww man! I'm 6 moneys short.

+ Sorry ma'am, no moneys no earthian horse.

– Wait can't we bargaiTHAT'S A HORSE?

The official currency of the Milky Federation is called "the Money".

One Money equals more or less one Euro (because I'm lazy). Less than one Money is called a fraction of a Money. So "0,50" is half a Money, "0,10" is a tenth of a Money, "0,39" is a thirty-nineth of a Money, and so on.

It is a mainly digital currency, and is very controlled by the Federation. Since it intervenes in the economy, the Money's value tends to be very stable, or even increase.

Although it is not imposed, it tends to prevail over other currencies thanks to its stability and hegemony. So much so that other allied but not federated members have adopted it.

Naming it Money makes it more adaptable to everyone and is a strategy to essentialy own the word and concept. (It's definetly not because I think it's the funniest name possible).

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I drew the One Piece crew cause last year I started reading the comic and I'm enjoying it very much. Love me some absolute brainless characters doing stuff.

Here's the individual portraits.

I draw other stuff aside from SF, if you want to see a backlog of my drawings check out my instagram, tho I speak catalan there.

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I finally (got help) slapping Wordpress into shape and Runaway to the Stars is now releasing as a public webcomic! Thank you so much for your support over the years, and sticking with me while I'm slowly chewing my way through this book. I'm very excited to share this story! It'll be updating every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday thanks to the massive Patreon backlog. Patreon will continue to update as I finish pages, which happens on a sporadic non-schedule.

If you experience bugs with the site report them to me. Some things may occasionally break, as coding problems tend to be a very "whack-a-mole" affair; and I'm still getting used to the interface.

[milkyfederation]

The green one is a combine harvester mech.

I figure having individual picking arms would allow the reaping element to contour to the land, with the mechanical legs allowing the machine to operate on unusual terrain.

Once the bag on the back is full, it would be deposited in the field, to be collected by the Dragonflyesque VTOL aircraft. The green machine then automatically fits abither bagand continues working

[milkyfederation]

Oh absolutely, wormhole placement can make or break an economy, that's why Earth is blockading its direct line to Mars.

Mostly tho, it's the age old political cleavage of centre vs periphery, but in an interplanetary level. Capitals and big cities grow exponentially by connecting one another while settlements in deeper space get 2 space buses (big ass ships that can wormhole jump) a week. It's a very obious satire of politics in public transportation by someone who lives in a rural area.

Heya, multiple questions. May have actually asked this before in private but: It's called milky federation, how exactly is it set up? And are there other such big galactic powers?

Also on an entirely different note and more mundane, how are travel times in the Galaxy? Is it feasible to say, get a 2 week vacation, spend it a few systems over and then come back in time for work again?

Here's a fun idea I had that'll help me explain the travel times. A version of underground maps but with wormholes. Not final, just wanted to do a first try, I like it.

You can ABSOLUTELY go to a different system for vacation, you just have to go through the Hole security in the Hole Station (I find the idea of wormholes being called "Holes" hilarious).

The obvious problem with this is that it unfairly favours capitals and important places. Since there's no FTL travel, you might travel faster to the MF's capital than gran's house, which you can see with a telescope. This is very frustrating to those who live in the periphery of stations.

As for the MF, it is an interplanetary political and economic union of sophont species with its origin and main activity in the Milky Way.

It follows an ideology of pragmatic socialism. Every member must provide basic rights to its citizens, not because it's the right thing to do, but because if people are unhappy, they riot.

It's main strategy is being "the Good Guy" in the universe, specially compared to other unions (which we know exist but barely know anything about, except that they are not as good).

That being said they are not above having non-democratic regimes as members, and they keep economic ties with morally questionable non-members. They'll cut ties or organize a coup if the people start showing discontent, in the end they're always the hero.

[milkyfederation]

Heya, multiple questions. May have actually asked this before in private but: It's called milky federation, how exactly is it set up? And are there other such big galactic powers?

Also on an entirely different note and more mundane, how are travel times in the Galaxy? Is it feasible to say, get a 2 week vacation, spend it a few systems over and then come back in time for work again?

Here's a fun idea I had that'll help me explain the travel times. A version of underground maps but with wormholes. Not final, just wanted to do a first try, I like it.

You can ABSOLUTELY go to a different system for vacation, you just have to go through the Hole security in the Hole Station (I find the idea of wormholes being called "Holes" hilarious).

The obvious problem with this is that it unfairly favours capitals and important places. Since there's no FTL travel, you might travel faster to the MF's capital than gran's house, which you can see with a telescope. This is very frustrating to those who live in the periphery of stations.

As for the MF, it is an interplanetary political and economic union of sophont species with its origin and main activity in the Milky Way.

It follows an ideology of pragmatic socialism. Every member must provide basic rights to its citizens, not because it's the right thing to do, but because if people are unhappy, they riot.

It's main strategy is being "the Good Guy" in the universe, specially compared to other unions (which we know exist but barely know anything about, except that they are not as good).

That being said they are not above having non-democratic regimes as members, and they keep economic ties with morally questionable non-members. They'll cut ties or organize a coup if the people start showing discontent, in the end they're always the hero.

[milkyfederation]

How do the worm holes of tLB universe work?! I'd love to know

I have needed to flesh space travel out for so long so thank you to @milkyfederation for giving me the inspiration and motivation to do this

Text is in the ID if tumblr decides to be mean about the image quality. In addition to the gate being very small, wormholes are only open for extremely short amounts of time. The smaller, more efficient generators can stay open for a few hours at a time, but most other gates can only open long enough for a single ship to go through. What causes this problem isn’t a lack of or the desire to save energy, but is rather the instability of the wormholes themselves. Wormholes just really do not want to exist, and keeping one open long enough to get a ship through safely is a struggle as-is. Gates can close and reopen multiple times in a short span though, so this isn’t necessarily an issue.

and oh my god long post. uh oh

What is more of an issue is scheduling.

The way wormholes are scheduled to open in the Little Bird’s setting is heavily regulated by the galactic government. The way it’s set up is that they want all of the active wormholes to bend reality on one plane, kind of sectioning the universe. They do this mostly for safety, because they don’t know what would happen if they tried to bend the universe in too many directions at once. This means that each gate will have a set destination for a certain amount of time, and their destination is determined by where they’re scheduled to go.

The plane reality is bent on does change, usually every week or so, so that each planet’s local wormhole can have a different destination for some time. But overall it does make travel, shipping, and communication at some times to be rather difficult.

Communication is heavily affected by wormhole access, but less so than the other two.

Little guy. These are allowed onto ships and planets, so you don’t need to go all the way out to a transport wormhole to get the news. Granted. They aren’t really good for talking to other people on other planets. There are a handful of ‘websites’ that run on these guys, but when you’re actually in a populated area you can really only open them for a second or so. More than enough time to download the morning news or send a pre-written email, not enough time to load a social media page.

When on a planet there are usually a few of these in orbit, so anyone on-world can stay updated. These ones can also stay open for quite a bit longer. Or turn off and on again, whatever needs to happen so that your feed is actually up to date. The ‘websites’ that run on them are usually government, military, or the one really large social platform though, so if you want to use those your options are still limited.

The Little Bird having one of these is a little unusual, since it isn’t a deep space ship, but it’s not unheard of.

And uhhhhh

I'm a little sad I can't put a read more under a read more. anyways map :)

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Critters from the coasts of Backera! Wanted to explore pentapods of varying pod number. Info dump below!

The eco system these guys inhabit are the vast shallow sea beds between the sea and 'land'. Where the microbial mat swells up to take in sunshine whilst keeping somewhere between a few inches to a foot of water above. This habitat favors walking over swimming for larger beasts, doing a separate post for the 'fish' of Backera. Those are a whole other brand of beast. For now we'll stick to the larger animals on the scene. Going left to right because I'm biased. 1. A quad-pod, a fellow who specializes in using mouth parts modified into clubs to break into shells and rigid 'plants'. While they have two very LARGE jaws, the other three are teeny tiny so they mostly rely on suction once they open their food. They have decided to be boring and use only their front four legs for walking, whilst their hind leg is to scrape out divots to lay eggs in the sea bed. 2. A TRUE pentapod, these guys spend their day swishing their heads back and forth. The wide arc of their eyes allow them to always have a lot of vision above the waterline at all times. Their dainty mouthparts are a constant scuttle against the slime mat to kick up organic matter to scarf down. The long horn jutting up their back is actually hollow and used to trumpet at each other at a distance. Very noisy. 3. With the least amount of feet in the lineup is the flag foot! These fellas are built to prance through the water and chase down any poor fish spotted by those big ole peepers. But they really shine when it comes to display. Upon meeting, the smaller individual will lower their head and wave around their display legs, wooing their potential partner with flashes of color. Most of the time their audience ends up wandering away.

Want to work on more FLAVOR for Backera, this is only the START!

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[...] 2. It lets me talk more about my characters! I don't really have any drawing I haven't posted, but I can give you some miscelanious details I thought of that didn't have a drawing to accompany them.

- Néstor is a Space Sheriff, a legal title that gives you the authority to arrest people in deep space where the law doesn't reach. He loves it because of his whole western aesthetic and it helps him fight for justice. (If the police refuse to arrest a villain, he can do it himself in space).

He had to lie in the personality test, cause even in the future law enforcers are what they are, and sometimes it takes some time to convince rebels he's not a narc. But Néstor's all about using the rules of the game to his advantage.

- Mac's species have very good hearing, and upon moving to the human sector he fell in love with human opera, orchestras and classical music. The only situation in which he will shower and dress smart is if he has to attend a concert.

- Nowa's weapon of choice is the extendable energy sword. As a rich kid he did a lot of rich kid activities, like liloquian fencing, which he loved because it helped him blow off steam. He's not that good at it, but if you're in a fist fight and pull out an energy sword, you don't have to be that good at it to win.

- Hanan, despite being the crew's muscle, is very sensitive. With her augmentations, though she can only cry from one eye.

I'll explore more all her benefits and limitations, but she has to control what she eats, and should not take showers, or go underwater, which also makes her sad.

- Aia has a pet mouse, a computer mouse to be more specific. She knows it's not real, but likes to pretend. It's a way for her to explore her ability to imagine, plus it is very cute.

Thank you so much @wolfsbaneandthistle for the question, you're the best!

For questions- I always love learning more about your characters! Do you have anything about them that you haven’t posted? I’m also really curious about how people travel long distances in the milky federation- faster than light ships, wormholes, something else? -Aconite :)

Love this question cause 1. It forced me to explore a main part of my worldbuilding that I've been neglecting cause idk how to draw atructures. [...]

1. So far there is no faster than light speed travel in my universe. That might change in the future, but right now there's only wormholes.

Wormhole stations are megastructures that have a permanent wormhole set up to a given place, as to connect relevant population centers. Since it's a volatile technology they are always build in space, near an energy source.

They require a lot of workers and see a ton of travel, so most wormhole station end up turning into cities in space. This is a concept I want to explore much more.

Some ships can also make wormhole jumps, which basically teleports it. This is very dangerous, expensive and only some very specific ships can do it. The Supernova, the Space Freelancers' ship, can't.

I made it like this cause I still want space to be an unchartable void, and I love the idea of portal stations in space. No real science behind it :).