#less human humanoids

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

(image description: a digital drawing labeled "making humanoids less human" with secondary captions on each side that say "alternate evolution" and "exaggerated features". above the secondary captions, there are two portrait sketches of very humanoid characters. on the "alternate evolution" side is an elf man with long dark hair. on the "exaggerated features" side is a woman who could be a nature fairy or a dryad, with flowers in her hair.

below the captions, these two characters have been redrawn to match their categories. the elf man has been redrawn with features more similar to a monkey, such as a very flat elongated nose, a small chin, and ears that sit higher on his head. the dryad or fairy woman has been redrawn with huge eyes and angular features, turning her hair with flowers into whole leafy branches with flowers. end description.)

hi i'm still around and i am finally caught up on things in my life, so i have time to catch up with this blog and all the questions people have asked! starting with a very old one. or several.

I had multiple anonymous messages asking me how I would draw specific fantasy beings to be less human, including witches of various elements. Rather than trying to answer each of them individually, I thought it would be more effective and helpful to talk about the general idea of taking fantasy designs that are usually more human looking and changing them to be less human. My favorite option is the alternate evolution, which I have been working and working on with my own fantasy people species.

Elves in particular have been a struggle, because I chose to keep my elves as a type of primate. It's been rough trying to abandon the recognizably human parts of their design and further embrace the simian features, because my brain does still have an internal bias towards the standard "elves are humanoid but more beautiful" trope. But I think I'm finally hitting the right level of "monkey" in their design.

The other option shown here is one I just don't do much, and which could be even further exaggerated into the uncanny valley. Take your humanoid characters and just shove them into the uncanny valley, exaggerate their features, add new things that have nothing to do with speculative evolution and just help emphasize the unique traits you want them to embody. elemental witches who become more and more fused with their element. nature beings like dryads that really just look like they broke out of the center of a tree. etc.

I'll make a few more posts with full body examples for both options, but I hope these portrait examples help a little!

remember, you don't need me to give you every detail of how your character and creature designs should look, and you don't need anyone else to do that for you either. If you want a particular artist to give you a specific design exactly as they would draw it, you ask about commissions and you pay them to do that design for you. this blog exists so I can post my ideas and give advice and occasionally nitpick about common mainstream fantasy design tropes that bother me lol. I'll give you ideas, but you gotta do the work yourself. that's how you improve.

[just-some-normal-jessica]

personal HCs of the human lords in black

yeah i based em off of the canon npmd ones with some nmt-lore-related details. it's all just for funsies rlly

[crowycawcawart]

what year is it

[greenethorn]

Full troll lineup!! :D Featuring my personal headcanons

((Individual portraits to be posted at a later date alongside explanations for previously mentioned headcanons :3 ))

Pretend i posted these on 4/13 that was the plan but i had some delays

[mydogatemymotivation]

Zeb hot take? Are we good with a Zeb hot take?

I don't think he has a good sense of smell. I know it's super popular that he can track people through scent and stuff but I don't think it makes biological senseeeeeeeeeee I'm sorry. Here's the thing, his nose is tiny. It's takes up no room on his face whatsoever. His nose is the size of a house cat's and, yeah, okay, cats have a good strong sense of smell but they also weigh ten pounds. Proportionally, their nose makes sense for the size of their body and it takes up a significant portion of their face. But Zeb is seven feet tall. If he's going to have a brilliant sense of smell, his nose needs to be more proportional to his size. Look at a lion, and how big a lion's nose is compared to the rest of their face. That should be closer to Zeb's nose size if he's going to have that kind of ability.

Also his nose isn't mobile. Part of the reason dogs and cats have such good noses is because of how much they can move, but Zeb's short nose bridge doesn't move at all (and also reminds me of a pug I'm so sorry and I kind of think that breathing problems might be somewhat common for Lasat). Even human noses end in cartilage instead of bone so that we can move our noses while we smell.

A running gag through the show is that Zeb doesn't know what he smells like. The only time he acknowledges it is, I think, the disruptors episode (if I remember correctly) [EDIT: It was Siege of Lothal Pt. I. I did not remember correctly] where Zeb is hidden in a crate and carted around and coming out of the crate he makes too much noise, for which he apologizes and says 'have you smelled me?' and that was when he was in a small enclosed space.

What I'm surprised about is that people don't talk more about his sense of hearing. And his sense of sight. He's picking up radio signals and seeing shrimp colors. Or he might have incredible tactile ability. If he's from a species that can climb I feel like his fingers would be sooo sensitive to what they're touching that he can pick up on so much more than others.

Or when people are writing about him and Kallus and talking about how much he loves Kallus' scent. It's cute and all, but imagine him leaning on Kallus' chest to listen to his heartbeat instead? Or being able to hear his heartrate change? This may be slightly inspired by Superman being able to pick out the heartbeats of the people he loves out of all the humans on Earth, or the one (and only) cute thing Twilight did with Edward being so tuned into Bella's heartbeat, and Zeb has those ears and no one does anything with themmmm. I love the idea of someone with super hearing being able to pick out the heartbeat of their love interest because they love the sound of it. Or with his tactile ability, him feeling Kallus' skin heat up when he touches him? Or running his hands through Kallus' hair so he can memorize the way it feels?? There's so much potential but people focus so much on his tiny little nose.

I want you to breathe in through your nose while you move it side to side. You can feel the air come in differently. That's a decently wide range of smell, and Zeb can't do that.

[penofwildfire]

I lowkey want Zane to meet an android that's significantly older than him, older than his original body even, because they're from a realm that invented sentient androids sooner than Ninjago did. I want him to learn about this whole history and culture and be baffled by how comfortable and proud these androids are in their nonhumanity because he's grappled with it his whole life and the idea of fully truly embracing it is so foreign to him.

[gizmos-n-gadgets]

A Different Form A Different Time

okay so here’s a riddle

What happens when a neurodivergent artist can’t work on their current art project while at school because it needs references that they don’t have access to?

The answer is they fill an entire page in their math notebook with concept art for humanoid bill cipher

I’ve had most of this design planned out for a while, it’s just that the pose I wanna draw with it has been kicking my ass, that and also I’m working on Carnival au Wisper rn.

FYI, these r concepts, not everything will make it into the final design. Also, this isn’t bill turned into a human, or bill (still with all his power) appearing as a human (however I do plan to design my versions of those some day), this is just another form that’s a bit more humanoid, emphasis on the bit and the oid

[volpestarks]

sanderson ‘s characters continued Kal + Syl

[aibouart]

i super regretted doing lines for these instead of coloured sketches so the lines are pretty shoddy. designs are subject to change but anyways

if you wanna read abt these guys: https://toyhou.se/26958153.puppeteer-info

more doodles:

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

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!

[web-novel-polls]

Have You Read This Web Novel?

If you’re in the process of reading this web novel, please choose whichever option best fits your situation. You do not have to be completely finished with it to answer “yes.”

If you’ve never heard of it, please read the description below the cut!

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Novel Updates:

The world where the Hero and the Demon King continue to oppose each other. The grand magic from the Hero and the Demon King cross over worlds and exploded in the classroom of a certain high school. The students who died in the explosion will be reincarnated in a different world. The protagonist, who had the lowest reputation in the class, was reincarnated into a spider. Nevertheless, she adapted quickly to the present condition with strong willpower. This is a story of she who has become a spider trying whatever she can to live.

[windor-truffle]

i doubt it would make any sense but. Sophie and Richard role swap. I think I just wanna see a sparkly Richard face off against a cold-hearted Sophie 😅

[spkyscry]

"...You know, I miss back in the day-" Oh, here it comes. "-when it wasn't standard that 'Gods' should take on the vestiges of mortalkind to comfort them. That we could look more.. abstract or even animalistic whilst still being deified. Now, it's expected that deities are in humanity's image, so as to not unnerve them. I'll confess it does make me feel close to my more humanoid children, but it's a touch... restrictive."

Really, dressing up like this every time she's on the mortal plane is like squeezing into something a size or two too small. It's not that big of a deal in short bursts, but it can feel a touch uncomfortable after awhile.

[celestialfcllen]

Still revamping my Lucifer's original Cherubim design, a form only those who knew him before the fall or his family would know what it looks like

[royalreef]

(( Honestly, while I do talk up merfolk and seeing merfolk as providing the same instinctual and automatic reaction and sensations as seeing a large predator much too close to you, and the deep fear that that provides — that is something that mainly applies to people who are less familiar with Miranda and, thus, less familiar with merfolk. People who are more used to Miranda and have acclimated to being around merfolk a lot wouldn't have that same reaction, or would only really have it in specific circumstances or when they are particularly thinking about it.

Mostly I talk about it a lot just because I'm interested in writing merfolk as truly inhuman, and it's one of those things that I have gripes over in xenofiction. Miranda's expressions aren't human, her body isn't human, none of her reactions are human, and that's a huge gap to try and cover between merfolk and humanoids! It really does feel more like you're talking to a particularly smart tiger, and she breaks a lot of the fundamentals of basic socialization for any other species! It's hard to get comfortable around her for the same reason people often have huge issues with anything that strays radically from the human facial plan or that they can't immediately sympathize with!

This is also the same reason why this starts to go away as people get closer to Miranda — not because she's any less of a merfolk or any more human, but because it's easier to automatically associate what she does with her moods and thoughts and her as a person. It's a degree of familiarity that starts to get so ingrained that it becomes subconscious, not just taught or learned but lived.

Think of it like the difference between someone who doesn't know anything about arthropods, and thus groups them all into "scary" and "frightening", and someone who has learned how to tell them apart, what the different species are and what their different body parts are, how to read their body language, how they move and what they do and how to behave around them. Even if the latter doesn't necessarily have more positive feelings about them, they still no longer possess that immediate jump of "this is not like me and I cannot understand or cope with that."

And, yes, this is why so often the narration and Miranda's actual emotional state or thoughts don't actually line up. Miranda might not think this as anything special and might be comfortable and relaxed, but not every muse will have the familiarity and understanding of her to realize it!

[itsbrucey]

Also idk what au I'm even crafting at this point but they own where the Dads are monsters. And Henry is a Harpy. I have a Harpy hierarchy/species guide I was making for my own use/OCS that helps categorize harpies based on like.....their heritage??

It's 3 tiers and it's Matriarch Harpies, Mother's Blood Harpies, and Mother's Tears Harpies. They're all based on certain depictions of harpies in media/myths, with Matriarch being the least human and Tears being the most human.

My OC Vali is a Matriarch harpy, and they're based on ancient green myths/"classic" harpies which tend to just be large bird months with a human's face and head. Mother's Blood Harpies are more human but still pretty large and birdlike, having human torsos and heads but still majorly Bird. Mother's Tears Harpies are like the modern day Harpy, with wings for arms and feathers/bird feet, but human torsos, legs, and heads, and they tend to be the smallest/most human sized.

Maybe I'll make a diagram someday but it's IRRELEVANT bc it's just A CONCEPT I MADE FOR OC NONSENSE. the point is I'm using is for Henry as a Harpy and I think he'd be a Blood or Tears Harpy because it mimicks his elf heritage. I think he'd be a Tears Harpy while Bearry would be Blood Harpy for the sake of it?