#speculative design

[joitiks]

muscovy raptor concept

[lizardsaurus-art]

A little something something with my punnett cubes

This is one of the “heads” of my recent alien design, they have antler-like projections that I decided to test out the three possible allele types. The classic is dominant A, recessive a, and my addition, alpha as the third option. It’s not perfect for I’d most likely have to rework the whole genetic system cause dominant vs recessive is a pretty binary mechanism and it’s hard to imagine how would a third option affect the organism’s phenotype. Here I’ve decided to test it out on the percentage of the antler that gets covered by flattened out surfaces, with both the dominant and the alpha allele increasing its surface area, the difference being that the dominant allele creates fewer large disks, while the alpha allele creates many smaller disks that branch out like cactus leaves.

Enjoy my crappy notes again:

[handful-of-seagulls]

✨ Predator and prey ✨

[total-convergence]

Some Yuo Yowa house ideas

All of them have a circular floor plan

Distribution:

And some sketches from last year that I decided to expand upon:

Enjoy my very comprehensible notes.

The houses don’t have typical windows, but instead they have ornamental carvings in the walls (as seen on the older sketches) that let only some sun/moonlight in, and also create light pattens on the inner walls of the houses. Yuo Yowa prefer dim light and during this timeline don’t spend too much time inside. Yuo Yowa are somewhat arboreal, they fing comfort in sleeping above the floor and climb effortlessly, thanks to their claws they can even scale wooden walls, so in more densly populated areas with thieves the walls can be sloped to prevent unwanted climbers from breaking in from the top.

These would be the houses one would see around during the time Maia and Owen for example, were alive. During this time, the very first civilizations have already appeared, but the majority of the planet are hunters/hunter gatherers.

Left to right: Owen, Kob, Maia. Last pic credit: Miininit

[prismatixxkhaos]

Alien lmao

[eatthesunshootthemoon]

Seraficus plant life cycle - Concept art for Alberta Slow Jam 2 themed 'solar'.

My friends and I weren't planning on joining the jam since everyone was busy during the 2 weeks which the jam was being held on, but I think we got hexed into doing as much as we can in the little time that we had to work on it.

We decided to make something with a super simple mechanic and applied a coat of world building on it. The whole idea is that the game goes through the life cycle of a seraficus plant. It starts its life as a seedling whisked out to desert dunes and uses its unique physiology to crawl towards the sun or tiny lil' light elements. Once reaching maturity, it stops moving, grows into a small bush and grows a flower like a daisy that scatters it seeds via the wind, restarting the cycle.

I tried some designs of the plant at different points of its life, but ended up with the wheel and spoke design. One of the guys noticed that it looked seraphic so I decided to really lean into that design.

We didn't actually complete the game in that time, but we did finish it enough that we wanted to polish it up over the next week or so. If you'd like to try it out: Seraficus

[foxybouquet]

DRAWLLOWEEN/GHOSTOBER, Day 26:

“MASK.”

I used both Mabgraves’ and Gonst’s prompt lists for this one, because I wanted to try my hand at an original Ghoul design. I kinda love it. What if the new ghouls were maybe a little scarier? What if they were all unmuzzled? (I also like the idea of bright white sclera, but not everyone can manage contacts).

Anyway, I do love the deep red-burgundy color. Era V is getting hella interesting to anticipate!

Alcohol markers on grey-toned paper.

[primalmuckygoop]

"It was by the third piercing scream echoing across the lowlands, in harmony with the shrill whistle of dozens of thaumometers, that Rathbone concluded their scouting team was wildly undergeared for this reclamation survery"

@iguanodont has a fun abandoned wizard tower

[amalgamationillustration]

Finished design for the Eastern Serix, which I made using the Fundamentals Of Creature Design book. I really recommend picking it up if you want to really challenge yourself on really researching and having several passes at creating fictional creatures and really thinking about how and where it would live, feed, walk/swim/fly, breed, sleep. Really useful stuff to practice and full of great examples and references.

I wanted a tree dwelling hunter, so i tried to combine traits from a Fossa, Emerald Tree Boa, and a created gecko, I also threw in some inspiration from lemurs and frilled lizards.

The Eastern Serix is nocturnal and hunts mice and small birds, it uses its long, bristly tail to suspend its body from branches and releases when it wants to drop onto unsuspecting prey below. It then wraps its tail around them and the bristly fur stands on end and sticks into the prey, holding in place like thousands of tiny needles. It is then able to unhinge its jaw and swallow prey whole. The striped fur along its neck can be extended to form a frill to scare off predators.

[shreyareddz07]

Exercise 1 : Draft 1

Dupatta 2.0

Asha’s Dupatta: A Future Wrapped in Power

In 2124, under neon lights, Asha glides through a bustling market, her adaptive dupatta shimmering in soft blues and silvers. It hugs her shoulders like a second skin, light and elegant—just a stylish wrap, or so it seems.

Suddenly, she feels it—a shift in the crowd. Danger. Without hesitation, the dupatta reacts. Segments slide across her arms and chest, forming sleek armor. A mask slips over her face, concealing her identity. The edges coil into whip-like strips, humming softly with energy, ready to strike.

A stranger moves closer. Asha's heart quickens—so do the sensors in her dupatta. It shifts into active mode, glowing bright red at the edges. With a flick of her wrist, a flash of light blinds the stranger. Smoke bursts from the fabric, and in a heartbeat, Asha vanishes into the crowd.

"Wow, what just happened?" whispers a passerby. "That wasn’t just a scarf, right?" another marvels.

Unseen, Asha whispers a command. The dupatta sends an SOS, sharing her location. Confident and unshaken, she blends back into the night, her dupatta shifting once more into a light shawl—elegant and effortless, as if nothing had happened.

This isn’t just a garment; it’s her guardian, weapon, and ally. In every thread lies tradition, in every transformation, innovation. And as Asha disappears into the neon-lit streets, her dupatta whispers its silent promise: freedom, safety, and strength.

Wouldn’t you want one too ?

[ritsdhesh]

Breeze of Tomorrow: The Evolution of the Desert Cooler

In 50 years, the desert cooler had evolved into a sleek, AI-driven climate control system. Its exterior, once a bulky box, was now a translucent, self-healing surface that blended seamlessly with the walls. It was no longer just a simple cooler but a smart ecosystem that anticipated weather patterns and adjusted the home’s climate accordingly.

Embedded with nano-technology, it could transform any room into a refreshing oasis, pulling moisture from the air and generating clean, breathable coolness. The cooler was powered by solar energy and harnessed the power of local water sources, making it not only eco-friendly but self-sustaining. It could even create a micro-climate inside the house, adjusting humidity levels to keep the air crisp and comfortable all year round.

The coolest feature? It communicated with other smart devices in the home, analyzing individual needs. A family member with asthma could receive purer, cleaner air in their room, while another could enjoy a light, cooling breeze in theirs. The desert cooler was no longer a simple appliance but a crucial part of life in the future, creating a healthier, smarter, and more sustainable home environment.

[vachnajain]

The Frozen Past

Set in the year of 2100, Mumbai is one of the busiest cities in India which a young archaeological student discovered within the trench an unusual object which was dated back to the Harappan civilization. Unlike the other relics, this one pulsed with a faint, ethereal glow. Somewhat like any other ordinary young professional; as a rule, she moved it to her hepatitis adviser, on the professional aspect of the ancient Indian civilization and culture.

somehow appears to hide an energy signature beneath the surface”

With the help of advanced holographic apparatus, they demonstrated the same image of the artifact that had been projected on the screen and most complex patterns were observed the intricate ones and movements were seen amongst the symbols. With the assistance of Artificial Intelligence, they set out to unravel the code that had been quiet for too long.

The code, they later understood, was the operational principle of the instrument, an instrument which is capable of taping the energy of the earth and turning it into an unlimited source of power. The Harappans had apparently possessed advanced technology way back then.

Still eager to make the device available to all the people, they formed a work group of scientists, industrial designers, and historians. To their great dissatisfaction, however, they could only study ancient manuscripts, examine the materials of the artifact, and construct the schematics of the device structure.

But the device was more complex than just a scientific wonder. It was emblematic of the greatness of Harappan civilization and demonstrated their remarkable legacy. As they engaged in their activities, they experienced a sense of communion with the primitive culture of people.

[handful-of-seagulls]

A colored rendition of a throne world citizen of the Imperium of Agurh. A mere cog within the imperial machine, gone pale within the enclosed megastructures their grand cities are built within.

[total-convergence]

Hearing Ranges

This video visualizes the range of hearing in four of my sophonts from TC..?. I have purposefully exported it with only the original audio playing, not with the effects applied to it. The way we percieve sound is tied to many things like neurobiology and psychology, not just the ear anatomy, so I didn't want to give off the impression that bypassing a frequency is all I have to do give you an idea of what my sophonts hear like. For example, the Xa may have a pretty slim hearing range of frequency, but they can discern all kinds of sounds played together at once extremely well. Now try to transform this into something similar a human can percieve.

Pale yellow line is the original sound (what you hear), bright yellow line is what the creature would be able to hear. You can see what kinds of frequencies in the human speech are cut off. Red line is the tool of the sound equalizer or however you'd like to call it, and visualizes possible spectrum and its intensity for the creature. The row at the bottom is in hertz, the collumn in decibels (in terms of audio editing, it's not the actual decibels you hear, that depends on how you set up your speakers (don't look at that collumn (it's not important))). A reminder that the maximum hearing range of a human is 20Hz - 20 000Hz. I don't think throwing a speech banana over this thing would be enough, it doesn't show the range of frequencies each sound makes or how it interacts with other sounds. Like this you can watch how different kinds of letters wiggle around in what parts of the spectrum.

The fact that it's Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting In A Room has nothing to do with the topic, I just wanted to test this on a clear recording of a person speaking and this is the first thing I remembered.

[troythecatfish]

Here’s my personal recommendation of a YouTube video to check out:

[eatthesunshootthemoon]

Some thumnbail sketches I had for the different forms my dwarves can take shape in Ormauk.

My core approach with traditional fantasy races in Ormauk is to play into the cliches and push them further, making them distinctly non-human but in a playful way. It's kind of hard to come up with compelling new races, so I thought maybe I can just go off of what's already been established in the genre. At its surface, dwarves made of rock or mechanical looking dwarves isn't anything new. Where I try to create a fork with my Duendirs is in their ecology.

I started with the concept of ever-growing rock creatures. In their primitive stage, I imagined that their movements alone would carve out their joints to allow continuous movement. Lack of movement would lead to overgrown joints, and given enough growth, they'd die of starvation because of the lack of movement.

Should these creatures be sentient, I'd imagine that body modification, chiseling, and artisanal carvings would be baked into the culture.

In terms of reproduction, I thought it would be fun to play with the old LOTR in-universe rumor of there being no female dwarves. I used this idea to come up with Duendirs having exposed super-heated cores that contain pliable molten mineral. When producing offspring, two or more Duendirs can take a part of themselves, mold it together over a course of time. If compatible and successful, one of them deposits it into their core, cover it up to start "cooking" the new Duendir until it's ready to come out.