#evolutionsvoid

[hygieiapides-the-vulgar]

WhatTheFuck.jpg

Weird critter cryptid

As the lumberjacks of old times could tell you, the forest is full of mysteries and dangers. In some cases, though, there can also be mischief. Sometimes, the creatures in these woods aren't here to cause bodily harm, instead finding amusement in causing confusion and the occasional fisticuffs.

While most folk call this species "Toteroad Shagamaw," its original name was simply "Shagamaw." That is what the natives in this region used to refer to this odd creature, with the "toteroad" part only coming in when lumberjacks began to encounter it. To the first people of this land, the Shagamaw was a tracker's entry test, to see if one was skilled enough to follow the ever-changing footprints. At first they would look like bear tracks, but then later moose, when in truth it was neither of these beasts. Shagamaw were rarely hunted, but were kept away from settlements due to their taste for cloth. Due to their shifting bodies, changing tracks and thieving ways, they were seen as an embodiment of a trickster god. When settlers came to these lands, and the lumber industry began, these strangers were quick to learn why the Shagamaw earned such a reputation.

The arrival of outsiders to their woods must have been a joyous time for the Shagamaw, as they now had a new crop of ignorant folk to torment. The natives here had long figured out the Shagamaw's tricks and deceptions, even knowing that they walked 440 steps on one set of limbs before rotating. But this fresh batch was unaware, and had the tendency to ignore the locals. And as their industry moved in, so did a new supply of cloth and cotton for them to eat.

Thus the Shagamaws began to pop up around logging camps and travel the tote roads. They would swipe whatever clothing had been left out, and use trickery to make workers leave behind tasty pieces. Their tracks leaving camp would garner attention, and thus the lumberjacks would pursue. However, their efforts would inevitably fail, as the tracks shifted into different shapes. While this was meant to confuse their pursuers, it also caused quite a few fights when inebriated loggers would accuse one another of misidentifying tracks and following the wrong beast. Shagamaws would purposefully choose tracks that would best garner a response: be it a moose for eager hunters, or a bear's when looking to scare folk away. All of this was done to lure lumberjacks away from camp or their washings, and then the Shagamaw would swoop in for dinner.

While they had good times at the loggers' expense, they would not last forever, as even these folk would grow wise to these antics. Eventually they would identify the Shagamaw and learn how to spot their tracks. Lumberjacks refused to get baited by them, and they would instead start using traps to catch these buggers. While the meat on these creatures was a bit lacking, folk found amusement out of their strange pelts. To have the fur of both a moose and bear all in one! Trappers and hunters would catch them for these furs, selling them as wonderful oddities and quaint trophies. Even as the years went on, the strangeness of a Shagamaw's pelt still delighted folk, and their hunting continued. Thankfully, these creatures are smarter than most other woodland critters and knew when to make themselves scarce. They would eventually retreat deeper into the wilds to avoid hunting, and their populations spent quite a few years in hiding. However, the pressure would soon relent, and the Shagamaw's would start spreading back out again. Times had changed, which helped in some regard but infuriated in others. What were the Shagamaws to do when they found that humans no longer cared about simple tracks?

In modern times, the Shagamaw is an odd relic that earns an amused snort and that's about it. Man was no longer deceived by their baffling tracks, but mostly because they didn't track any more. A person walking the woods would only point at such markings and then move on, never taking the bait. Such deceptions were lost on the common folk, and thus the gimmick of the Shagamaw was ineffective. While the species is still appreciated in some regards, like two-in-one stuffed animals and hunting club mascots, the Shagamaw wound up slipping into unconcerned obscurity. Maybe you may hear the old tidbit about how there used to be the "Shagamaw" unit of distance. Be it "two legs of a Shagamaw" (that is 440 steps), or "one leg" (220 steps) or "four legs" (880 steps). But the most they do now is torment the occasional rookie camper, scaring them with bear tracks near their tent and making off with left out hiking socks.

--------------------------------

"Toteroad Shagamaw"

Okay, may have gone a liiiiittle nutty with the design on this one, but I really didn't want to draw a regular ol satyr for this. Oh hi, Buer!

[staff]

tumblr tuesday: smaugust

Well, August truly is the month of art challenges. And, as you well know, we love a good dragon as much as the next guy. So today, we bring you another roundup, this time of Smaugust. Please enjoy this Smaugust and Smaugust-adjacent art. Just look at these dragons. LOOK AT THEM.

(a small warning that, yes, here be dragons. But also other beasties that look like bugs, mushrooms, or something else you might not like to look at. Proceed with caution, fellow traveler <3)

@vcreatures:

@camelidae:

@pythosart:

@chimeride:

@grimmla-arts:

@bethanyberg:

@zus-a-fungi:

@jackalthesandwing:

@theblackpanther:

@glowyskull:

@tatiilange:

@delyth-thomas-art:

@dazzling-dragon-studios:

@evolutionsvoid:

@wingylalkasartstuff:

@grunesdragon:

@helenetart:

@neon-psychopomp:

@tomdaleillustration:

[a-book-of-creatures]

Regarding the fish with the weird tentacle thing that @evolutionsvoid mentioned, this is it.

No, that is not a spout. Yes, that is a weird fleshy thing.

So what is this supposed to be anyway?

It's referred to as the reversus indicus, or Indian upside-down fish. It is actually a remora.

This interpretation of the remora came from stories of remoras being used to hunt turtles and seals. You tie a rope to the remora's tail, it swims off and sticks to a larger animal, and then you reel them in. The name "reversus" comes from the fact that it sticks upside down to other animals (and generally looks weird).

Somewhere along the line this got interpreted as the remora being this big serpenty fish that aggressively seeks out other animals and uses a sort of fleshy tentacley thing to grab them. As you can see in the picture, there's the turtle and seal!

And yes, that means that there were multiple versions of the remora floating (ha) around, the ship-delayer and the seal-catcher. That's just how it worked.

[dunmeshistash]

Too anxious to just send it to you but.. real treasure bugs

https://www.tumblr.com/james-silvercat/756109949552214016/fleshwizard-evolutionsvoid-bondr3wd-lexingt0n?source=share

Hey I re blogged that on my side blog! It is treasure bugs! :3

Also no need to be anxious, I'm like a bug, I'm more scared of you than you are of me✌️

[iamthekaijuking]

The God children of Ana Q&A

Fun facts I never got a chance to share

I always imagined Locolichi civilization and infrastructure to look something like slave zero and Bogleech’s mortasheen. A world irreversibly polluted and covered in sprawling ungodly huge several mile high cities.

Melalo’s two heads are actually false heads, as his central brain and mouth is located between them, and the false heads have ganglia instead of actual brains. They are also boneless and move much like octopus arms and elephant trunks. They’re really closer to arms or eyestalks in function!

Tcaridyi doesn’t look too hairy but that’s because she’s covered in a layer of more normal sized hairs! Admittedly I should have illustrated it like that.

In the original legend Poreskoro is a self fertilizing hermaphrodite, and I kept the hermaphroditism in the god child version (minus the self fertilization), but I also took the opportunity to insert some more lgbtq rep. So I also made them an enby. So diversity win! The giant biological god of disease who has caused unfathomable suffering is non-binary. Poreskoro is also probably the least horrible person of the god children, as they don’t actually want to cause harm and were essentially roped into their circumstances after their creation.

This entire thing was actually inspired by @evolutionsvoid’s 2022 kaijune! I really liked it and thought “I wanna do a kaiju short story about disease generation monsters of Romani legend”, so I did.

Q&A

Anonymous asks: “How come the art for the Locolichi and Keshali is shaded, but you didn’t you shade the god children?”

I technically could have, but didn’t for 2 reasons. I was already putting a ton of effort into the illustrations with the line and color work and wanted to get one done at least once a week (before the huge break after part 6). The second is that guardians are luminescent, and I don’t know how to illustrate colored light reflecting off bodies or how that would impact normal shading.

Anonymous asks: “Why do all the god children have stuff in their eyes?”

They were meant to sort of be eye trails to convey movement like Nargacuga, and I made them slightly electric by making them wavy and have sparks to convey power. In hindsight I should have just stuck to a tapering line. Oh well.

Anonymous asks: “I was reading the guardian doc and I got to the one about strength so I’m wondering how powerful are the strongest guardians?”

Have you seen that clip of Omniman setting the Flaxans back to the Stone Age? Or One Punch Man?

Anon asks: “The story isn’t very subtle.”

Well I’m not one for subtlety in my writing. I live in America and critical thinking and media analysis are skills that are very hard to come by here, so unless you beat the audience over the head most Americans aren’t going to realize stuff. So that’s what I do. The audience WILL understand the message I’m conveying. They don’t have a choice.

What’s next?

I’m mostly going to be taking things slower now that I don’t have a self imposed deadline anymore. Just slowly chipping away at a to do list of mine, and once it’s done I can actually start writing a book. I’m still of course going to be providing art and occasional comments to Unnatural History Channel, and being a writing consultant for some of my friends like @dappercritter. I also might do a few commissions soon too.

As for what specifically I’m going to do next. I’m going to write a short story and post it to my patreon, revisit and redo character overviews for Gigabash, read a book I promised a follower I’d review, and then maybe make a Humans B Gone fanart.

Anyways thanks to the like 10 people who read the god children!

[james-silvercat]

@fleshwizard @evolutionsvoid @boomer-buzzard

My take on unicorns! I'd really love to make a mythical creature field guide someday, since the Spiderwick Field Guide is what inspired me to start drawing in the first place 🥰

[james-silvercat]

I KEEP FORGETTING TO POST THIS

This here is a comm i did for @evolutionsvoid, of his dryad Chlora taking notes on some captured tiny wet beast she is studying

[james-silvercat]

One of my favourite past times around here is checking @evolutionsvoid account because holy shit, that's cool art and an awesome worldbulding you got there!

Another one of my favourite past times around here is checking @evolutionsvoid liked posts because holy shit, that's an awesome taste you got there!

[james-silvercat]

@fleshwizard @evolutionsvoid @boomer-buzzard

[delta-hexagon]

evolutionsvoid replied to your photo “A bunch of sketchies! Mostly random nonsense including: my old...”

A maggot dragon sounds totally awesome!

Thank you! I’ve had the idea for it for a while but I’ve finally started designing the nasty thing. It’s basically a big blob of pale flesh with gross extendo-jaws hidden away. A real piece of work, it is.

[crabwithglasses]

Ko-fi request for @evolutionsvoid ! Freakin rad design so I may have went a little overboard. Also, for those who love weird creatures and whatnot like this, be sure to check out his work! (plus wonderfully detailed background info)

For anyone else wanting to either support me or want a little doodle (or something more like this if I’m feelin it), go here!

[iamthekaijuking]

The tree is out of the way finally… which means I can finally focus on the God Children of Ana for kaijune!

What this is, is basically me making a “short” spinoff of the setting of my GUARDIANverse novels that is heavily inspired by the Romani legend about the origin of diseases called the Children of Ana, mostly just to show off a bit of my writing and worldbuilding style as well as warm up people to the setting and show how high stakes are in it.

I was actually inspired to do it when @evolutionsvoid made a Kaiju adaptation of the legend last kaijune, but I didn’t think it would take me a year to get around to actually doing mine…

I know for a fact I won’t finish it all in this month, but I’m not going to stop after kaijune is over. I’ll just keep going until I finish the whole God Children saga.

However, I am going to take a day or two to rest because writing for that cladogram really wore me down.

Also happy pride month! Kaijune and pride being in the same month means the kaiju genre is queer. Sorry, that’s the rules.

Any questions are welcome!

[cerothenull]

@evolutionsvoid

they got rid of the classical elements & replaced it with something called the 'four harmonious insects' so now instead of fire, water, etc we have moth, spider, leech and worm.

[tyrantisterror]

Ok, hey, remember that third ATOM Create a Kaiju Contest I held... over a year ago jesus christ?  Well, I was going to announce the winners as I normally do, i.e. by posting the files when they get done, but HAHA it’s been over a year and I’ve only got two done!  Two!  Haha!  Jesus Christ!

So, in addition to Yamaneolith by @polygonfighter and Kukulkuzana by @ariccio50, our winners are:

Fleagor by @evolutionsvoid

Argonautilus and Scuttlebutt by @dragonzzilla

And Jadeera by Sir K, who submitted his entry by google doc

THESE WILL GET FILES, I PROMISE!  And the grand prize winner WILL get their figure made.  Before the end of the year, in fact!  I’ll make it happen!  IT WILL HAPPEN!

In the meantime, hopefully this alleviates the tension a bit

[kaijubrainsart]

Dhismay (Commission)- Character belongs to @evolutionsvoid

[doomedandstoned]

Dare to Enter the Dark Realm of CARCOLH!

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

 Review by Billy Goate 

Artwork by J.r. Erèbe

The rumors are indeed true. That colossal creature known as CARCOLH has returned! Last sighted in 2018 about 174 kilometers north of the ancient town from whence the slimy beast originated, man and beast alike are advised to prepare for its imminent coming.

Once upon a time, in the days of Spanish conquest, the French département of Hastingues decided to take proactive measures to protect its vast wealth. Hiding treasure deep within a complex labyrinth of caves, they discovered they were not alone. Therein lay the great Carcolh.

As it turned out, this fact served an effective deterrent to marauders, for all who quested after the people's gold would soon encounter a monster of enormous scope, described by some as "a gigantic, slimy, shaggy serpent" up to 30 feet (9 meters) in size, encased within a thick, impenetrable circular shell. Worse still, its "long prehensile tentacles" would wrap around your ankles and yank you within reach of its clammy, voracious maw before you even knew what was happening.

Many a fool has ventured into the great cave over the centuries seeking its legendary riches, only to disappear forever. Once the peace of the French state had been secured, the government agreed to seal off the entrance, effectively trapping the Carolh under tons of rock and debris within its ancient mountain home.

Illustration by EvolutionsVoid

Then in 2016, a strange, earth-moving rumble was detected. Scientists were puzzled by its movement, as the tremors progressed louder and louder underground, seeming to settle in the southern region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Some chalked it up to the movement of the earth's tectonic plates, still others to secret nuclear testing or fracking, but the inhabitants of Bordeaux and Saint-Nazaire knew better. On any given Friday or Saturday night, well beyond the sun's setting, they will tell you to pay attention to the shaking beneath your feet and you, too, will feel and indeed hear the ghastly growl of Carcolh, come in search of its next meal.

That same year, a group of musicians assembled -- acolytes of the Carcolh, to artistically interpret the immensity of its movement with electrified sound, grand amplifiers, and words expressing the inner longings that the aged beast was surely communicating telepathically with them.

There was Sebastien Fanton on vocals, Freddy Thomas on rhythm guitar, and Quentin Aberne on bass, joined in short order by Olivier Blanc on lead guitar and Benoît Senon on drums. A first recording emerged, Rising Sons of Saturn, in 2017. Sometime following, Freddy Thomas left on a quest of his own, and was replaced by Quentin Aberne who took up the second guitar. Mathieu Vicens joined as the all important bassist, as he too was drawn irresistibly to Carcolh's call. I first encountered them in 2018, when the band was featured on our compilation, Doomed & Stoned in France.

Since that time, retooled with fresh talent and inspiration, the team began feverishly working on a second collection of chansons. 'The Life And Works Of Death' (2021), they would call it. The world will soon bear witness to the power of this album, with Doomed and Stoned breaking the seal of secrecy today and bearing its full release for heavy music lovers everywhere.

This steamroller of a record features six persuasive doom anthems, beginning with the slow, sorrowful epoch, "From Dark Ages They Came." It's a number in the vein of Apostle of Solitude, Candlemass, and Carcolh's fellow countryman Conviction, with clean, epic-style singing, backed by a fierce rhythm section. The guitar seems possessed six-minutes in and, as it can hold back no longer, belts out an impromptu solo, before the bass scratches at the course, rocky floor and sets the band careening into a headbanging finish. Its galloping hooves recall the spirited strains of Age of Taurus.

"When The Embers Light The Way" is yet another outstanding highlight, calling to mind the bold stylings of the trve metal days, only this time with both clean and gruff vocals. Its chorus may be the most amiable of the entire spin. The common denominator on every track is the epic heartbeat of the creature, its soul-stirring riffage, and the cavernous, forlorn, stout singing style.

"Sepulchre" closes the album in grand fashion, with monolithic slowness, laying chord upon mighty chord and emotive vocal harmonies, eventually fading quietly into memory. Surely, the French quintet's second LP is an epic doom masterwork of craftsmanship, power, and emotional release

Carcolh's sophomore album The Life And Works Of Death was recorded and mixed by Raph Henry at the Heldskalla Studio, then mastered by Benoît Roux at Drudenhaus Studio (who also worked with one of my all-time favorite bands, Witchthroat Serpent). You can get your hands on the record this Friday, February 19th, issued digitally, on CD, and vinyl via Sleeping Church Records (pre-order here).

Give ear...

Carcolh - The Life And Works Of Death

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