Making Humanoids Less Human
I did make a small post on this, but now I've got the art for a much bigger and more detailed post! so here we go.
I had several anonymous asks that all came in quick succession weeks ago. Every single one of them was basically just a variation on "how would you take (typically humanoid) fantasy being, and make them look less human?"
This blog does not exist for me to just give people original designs for free, my goal is to show off my own personal thoughts about fantasy design and help people figure out how to adjust their own designs to fit their vision better. That means when people ask me questions about how to do something, I want to give them things to think about so they can come to their own conclusion. I don't mind making original designs to illustrate concepts, but a whole flood of "show me how to make this specific thing look different" all at once like that was too much. I'm not answering them all individually, it's just not what I want to do.
But what I can do is show my own thoughts and ideas about how to take any fantasy design and push it further away from "human", and you all can look at my ideas and figure out your own way to do things!
So here are the main 4 methods I've come up with to make humanoids look less human.
(image description: a simplified drawing of a humanoid face surrounded by four altered versions of the same face. clockwise starting from the top left, they are:
Speculative, drawn as a cat person. Additive, drawn with horns, pointy ears, sharp teeth, and a second pair of eyes. Subtractive, drawn with blank eyes, no nose, and no eyebrows. Exaggerative, drawn with a long face and huge eyes, as well as a wide mouth, narrow nose, and big ears.
end description)
I am personally a fan of the speculative route, which means exploring an alternate root of evolution to create a new design. Through this method, I've created monkey elves, frog goblins, and pig orcs.
the additive option is the most common, I think. adding new feature or doubled features to a humanoid form is a very intuitive way to change the design and make it look less human. you see this in most fantasy and scifi designs, like star trek aliens and the dnd player races.
subtractive and evaggerative are the most common options for people that like the uncanny valley. it's really easy to make uncomfortable designs by removing or exaggerating recognizable features, and they're often used together. Slenderman, for example, removes all facial features and skin color but also exaggerates the limbs and body.
Combining the four methods will give you a really interesting design as well! So for practice I decided to explore an alternate design for Tieflings, the part-demon player race in dnd.
(image description: four examples of differnt tiefling designs using the previously described methods. the additive example is just offical dnd art of a tiefling woman with purple skin, horns, and a long tail.
the subtractive sketch looks very alien, with a bald head, empty eyes, and no other facial featuers aside from a small mouth. it has three fingers per hand and two toe per foot.
the exaggerative sketch shows a hunched humanoid figure with huge eyes and big ears. the neck, limbs, and digits are all long with claws at the ends of the fingers and toes, and the limbs are also quite muscular.
the speculative sketch shows a bipedal figure with features similar to a giraffe, including a long neck, ossicones, and hooves.
end description)
now, because tielflings have such a distinct look to them, obviously my new sketches don't really look like tieflings, do they? the only one that comes close is the giraffe. relying only on one type of alteration to the human form has left the designs rather empty and lacking in the more iconic traits of the original concept. so i tried a sketch that combined my ideas! it came out looking like a completely different creature lol, like it could be a kobold or something, still not really a tiefling.
(image description: a sketch of a creature with a giraffe-like head, long tongue, and sharp teeth. it appears to be roaring at something and stands in a half-crouch. it has long limbs with hoof feet and clawed hands, as well as a long tufted tail curled behind it. end description.)
didn't work out. too far into the animal side of the speculative evolution, I think. so I tried again and got a design I liked much better!
(image description: a digital painting of a tiefling leaping back and casting a glowing orange spell. she is wearing a tunic with a corset and detached sleeves, as well as several pieces of jewelry. Her skin is purple with dark patches like a giraffe's spots, and she has a giraffe's ossicones as well as hoof-like hands and two-toed hoof feet. Her tail is long with a tuft at the end. She has glowing eyes and a flat nose, and there is a single sharp tooth visible poking out of the side of her mouth. end description.)
Brought the face back into slightly more human proportions and that helped a lot. Sometimes designs just take a few tries! that's normal.
and hopefully this is helpful to all of you! there are so many ways to alter humanoid designs to come up with something original and unique to you!
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matthew asking keith not to talk to the media about him isn't new information (the athletic, 5/10/2023), and as the lede of that story makes clear, keith honored that request:
Matthew Tkachuk put his father in “timeout.”
That’s why Keith Tkachuk, an 18-year veteran of the NHL and one of the league’s best American-born players, wasn’t available to talk about his son’s remarkable run that has taken the Panthers from “biggest disappointment” to one win from the Eastern Conference finals.
[...]
Now, there’s no time for distractions, and Matthew wants to keep a lid on his pops, who informed The Athletic of his “timeout” via text.
that article goes on to quote matthew's mother, sister, family friends, teammates, and coaches and mentors at various levels, so it's safe to say that keith's exclusion is a notable one.
as far as i can recall, the interview last night is the first keith has talked about matthew publicly since, and it wasn't a comment on matthew's performance or his team's play. should keith have said on the broadcast that matthew gave him the silent treatment? hard to say from the outside! i don't think "he didn't talk to me for a bit" gives us any meaningful new information* since we could already infer that he was mad, but i can understand why someone else might want to keep that particular detail private.
i don't bring this up a lot in my fannish posts and comments on tumblr because it's a little bit peeking behind the veil, but the tkachuks have very clearly made being a family the brand. now, that was a low hanging fruit for sure, because the nhl loves father-son narratives and fraternal narratives, but they absolutely lean into it. as a consequence, we know a lot about the family, and can often infer even more. (think brady not quite saying it but boy was it clear that he didn't appreciate matthew interfering with his contract stuff.) they can't just not talk about each other at all, because the story they've woven about themselves requires it. there's no version of this where keith never gets asked about matthew again. i think it's quite impressive how long he's managed to go without commenting on matthew's play. did he even say anything during the conference final?
look, i think there's plenty of things to point to if you want to construct a narrative about matthew and keith not always getting along (especially since no one gets along with each other all the time, perhaps especially not their parents). and there's plenty to dislike or find grating about keith! i also have my own beliefs about where in their relationship there's most likely to be tension, which i'm happy to get into on request but aren't the point of what i'm saying here. and if you're just here to play around with the idea of really contentious father-son relationship and have picked matthew and keith as your paper dolls for this purpose, then who am i to stop you? as one of my dear friends always says, all rpf characterization is fake.
but for me at least, the leap from the information we have to "keith hates and/or disrespects matthew" is a big one.
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