#sylvanids

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

(Image description: a sketchbook page with drawings of three sylvanid babies, all of them wearing a simple diaper and looking a little pudgy. Their big ears are held alert and their eyes are all very round and wide open. From the top and then clockwise:

A baby stroi in a meadow, already able to walk on it's knuckles and toes, with its tail held high and slightly bent. Next, a baby drow trying to climb a rock, one arm outstretched, with its tail held in a curled shape. And lastly, a baby elf clinging to a branch, looking very apprehensive and curious with its tail held in an upward curve.

At the bottom of the page there is a note that says "all babies are being carefully supervised by off-screen adults". End description)

I have been hanging out with my new baby niece recently, so I had to doodle some babies.

[digital-dryad]

[memento-morianon]

Elvish Ear Binding

(Image description: a sketchbook page showing elf ears in various shapes as a result of ear binding. At the top is a normal elf ear, below it is a narrower ear that looks rather folded inward due to ear binding. The next ear down is fully folded inward like a tube of ear, the result of over binding. The final ear has collapsed into a flopped over shape like a dog ear. On the side of the page there is a simple sketch of an elf wearing bindings on their ears, tied with a bow and having the strands hang down. End description.)

The written notes on the page will be described below:

Ear binding is a common practice amongst the wealthy and noble families in several elf cultures worldwide. It is believed that the narrower ear shape is more beautiful and more "pure" in some cases, distinguishing them further from the lower classes and other sylvanids like drow and stroi who have wider ears.

It is achieved by tying very tight bandages, often alongside bits of metal or wood for shaping, around each ear. It typically begins from infancy and continues into young adulthood. Much like real world body modifications, such as foot binding, extra tight laced corsetry, earlobe stretching, and many forms of plastic surgery, it comes with health risks.

Ear binding always causes permanent damage to the ear cartilage. It cannot be put back into a normal ear shape after the binding has done its work. Other less certain risks include impeded hearing, chronic ear aches and infections, and skin problems on or around the ear, such as an increase of acne or cysts, skin flaking, and built up dead skin that can smell quite bad. It also becomes more difficult to remove earwax, which can lead to its own set of problems.

Over binding can also cause enough damage to the cartilage that the ear shape collapses and it hangs down in a floppy way. But this also happens with age, as the ear cartilage of any sylvanid will eventually degrade the older they get. It is not uncommon to see an elderly drow with bent ears, for example. But the effect is much more severe for those who have had their ears bound.

Not every elf culture does this, but it also isn't limited to a specific region of the world. Ear binding has been around for a long time in many different cultures, coming and going according to current trends wherever it crops up. Lower class elves and even other sylvanids have also practiced it, just to keep up with the trends and emulate famous or powerful figures who have had their ears bound.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Hello, hope you're doing well.

I am! Holidays have been good to me so far and I am hurrying to complete illustrations for a children's book my uncle wrote. Really should have gotten them done sooner, but here we are.

Anyway, sorry I haven't made new posts while I'm so focused on that project, but in the meantime I do have a new doodle page of my sylvanids (elves and their cousin species).

(Image description: a series of doodles showing various faces. At the top, there is a monkey face next to a somewhat personified monkey face that's been labelled as a sylvan ancestor. Below this, there is a side profile of a human face and then side and front views of elf, drow, and "vampire" faces, my sylvanid people. They all have larger ears, flatter foreheads, and longer nose bridges than the human face. The drow have the largest ears and the vampires have a smaller chin with a cleft lower lip. End description.)

Sometimes I gotta redraw my sylvanids to make sure I not drawing them too human lol. Still kinda want to make a new word for the drow and vampires. Drow because it's too easily associated with DnD and vampires because they really aren't vampires. They do primarily eat blood and soft internal organs, having evolved to hunt armored mammals like porcupines, armadillos, and the like. I even gave them semi digitigrade feet and the ability to run on their knuckles to protect their sharp nails.

So they've kinda escaped the definition of "vampire" and I need a new word lol but I'll figure it out later.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

omgomg another question! (sorry!) how do you handle half-races? like, half-orcs?

seeing as your races are definitely more like species, distinct from each other and evolving from different ancestors, do you even handle them? -or do they simply not exist in your world?

seeing as they're all sentient species with communication abilities, is it taboo for them to couple up?

is there magic that would allow them to procreate? would that be taboo?

haha I think I may be bothering you with many more questions to come, I just want to slow down right now lol. maybe this'll be the last one tonight

-Bat(ty) gob Anon again :)

Hi! I'm gonna get to your other questions when I have a bit more time, I'm wrapping up a paid project and its almost new years so I'm a little backed up on questions at the moment lol.

But I love talking about my personal project! So I'll answer this one while I have some time.

The main half races I do are between orcs and their tiny cousins (gnomes and haufin aka "halflings", because I thought it would be fun for the smallest people to be related to the big beefy ones lol)

They're all still closely related enough that they can mix and match. I did make a doodle page for them, I'll link it later maybe. This leads to fun combos like gnorcs, gnaufin, hauforcs, and the triple combo "urukin" because they end up looking more like the common ancestor which I named after Tolkein's uruk-hai.

So they're a lot of fun. Gnaufin are the most common mix because they're both small, and any cross with orcs is like 98% a result of gnome and haufin males looking at a tall beefcake of an orc lady and saying "challenge accepted" which results in some hilarious mixed families. In fact, in the story I'm writing, the protagonist's gnomish wife is 1/8th orc because her maternal great-grandpa was *adventurous*

The other related people species are the sylvanids, being elves, drow, and "vampires" (until I think of a better word)

They don't mix as well as the orcs and their kin, because they've diverged a lot more. Orcs, gnomes, and haufin are practically all the same, they just come in different sizes and have different teeth arrangement and a few distinct adaptations for different lifestyles. But the sylvanids have wildly different adaptations for much more niche reasons.

Orcs are built for pack hunting, gnomes are built for climbing, haufin are built for burrowing. They're all omnivores because they came from ancient wild boars.

Elves are built for semi-arboreal bipedal life with ambush hunting, vampires are built for sprint hunting while running on all fours and walking bipedal otherwise and also they mainly consume blood and guts and nothing else, and drow are built for eusocial live in deep caverns with an extremely unique endocrine system and semi-prehensile tails. They just diverged way more than the orciformes did.

Vampires are capable of having children with either of the other groups, but their genetics usually win out and just produce more vampires, with some visual similarity to the other parent.

Elf/vampire is more common than drow/vampire. Drow/elf is technically possible but they will almost always be infertile because most drow are infertile. The only real chance of drow mixing with anyone is from the handful of wandering fertile male drow who ditch their social systems to go be loners (actually a necessity, because they help keep the gene pool diverse) drow matriarchs are pretty picky about who they have babies with, so the chance of a matriarch having a mixed baby are next to none. It's possible that a non-matriarch female drow might undergo the hormonal transformation without telling anyone, if she triggered it the natural way instead of with medication (referencing the way naked mole rats do things) so a "rogue matriarch" might have mixed babies.

As for other combos, they're entirely impossible and no one has found a normal magical and medical way to change that.

Except the one time a Life Entity (basically a deity) was upset to see humans going extinct, so she used a large portion of her limited power to mess with genetics (she was a geneticist in her mortal life) and found a few ways to get human genetics to continue for a while.

The easiest one was altering dward DNA ever so slightly so they could have kids with humans, being the only other remaining hominid species. A harder option that she did anyway was altering some elf DNA (with the help of other Life Entities) so they could also have kids with humans. This was as far as she could stretch the genetics of a non-hominid species, as elves are simian rather than ape and just happened to evolve a similar niche to the earliest hominids.

As a result, it's uncommon but not unheard of for these mixed half-elves and half-dwarves to also reproduce together, but the genetics break down more and those kids are all infertile.

The final thing this Life Entity did was to sneak around behind Death's back to do some illicit soul recycling and craft a new people species from scratch while bypassing evolution, creating my bird folk, the quetzalin. They are basically just bird bits and human bits shoved together and micro managed until evolution kicked in well enough for them to be a properly functional species. They can also have infertile children with the dwarves and elve that still carry human remnant dna. This is how my protagonist was born!

And that is all I have on mixed people species in my world building. Yes, I did make up a whole deus ex machina explanation for the quetzalin when I realized I had a cool idea but had gone too far into the science side of world building to make it make sense XD even I have to use "rule of cool" sometimes.

[digital-dryad]

Dana Howl's most recent video is making me think about makin a vaporwave terrain set. A large multifloor mall (represented as sections probably) with a liminal pool basement/sewer. All tiles and neon and palm trees.

Speaking of palm trees i was also considering a potential kill team/army made for the space and i started thinking abt my beloved sylvaneth. I have my Sylvanids (Tyranid/Sylvaneth kitbashes) already but another little thematic set wouldnt hurt :3

I think using vaporwave style palm trees as awakened wildwoods complete with like, concrete planters and similar thematic items could be so cute.

I do wonder what id kitbash the sylvaneth with. I was offhand thinking necrons.

outside of the sylvaneth concept, im tryna think of what factions would be thematically appropriate with vaporwave and a hypercapitalist/accelerationist setting...

[memento-morianon]

magic system

there are three methods for using magic in this world. ambient magic is a natural part of the world, filling every living thing. souls seem to be deeply connected to it, and they are the main conduit by which magic is channeled. those who can see souls, by way of magic rituals, say they resemble a circular aura around the head.

standard methods of magic channeling:

written magic. runes, sigils, and other forms of magic symbols. this is the most recently developed form of magic, though it's still very old. anyone can learn it, as it does not require so much soul concentration compared to other forms of magic and is much less draining as a result. it requires a bone stylus and ink made from organic materials, or it must be carved directly into a natural material, using a bone tool. many mundane home devices utilize written magic. heat and cooling symbols for water faucets and stove tops. glow symbols for lights. heated floors. many of these are carefully made so the lines of the symbols are done on moving parts, connected to switches and dials that can break or reconnect the lines in order to activate the magic. written magic is most frequently used for simple tasks, but there are ways to use it for more complicated purposes, particularly being used to stabilize the other forms of magic. however, at a certain level of complexity, non-magic methods end up being the more efficient option for most things. written magic effects last as long as their symbold remain intact. those who study written magic in depth are called scribes or scholars of magic.

vocal magic. this is perhaps the oldest recorded form of magic, and as a result it still uses the ancient languages that would otherwise have been forgotten when the sylvanid and urukainid people groups split into their own sub-species groups. (elves, stroi, drow, and orcs and gnomes). it is always done as a form of singing, and since it is so old, it has become the default definition of singing, with other non-magic forms of singing getting more specific titles. it is much more difficult to use and learn, and far less efficient than written magic when it comes to simple mundane tasks. writing a heat rune is a lot easier than focusing hard and using an ancient language in specific vocal tones and rhythms to make something hot. the effect also only lasts as long as the singer can keep up their spell. it is typically used to manipulate organic living things, such as singing a tree into an open form that can be made into a house, or singing to aid with healing a severe wound. singers usually work in groups, called a chorus, to ensure that no one has to keep up the whole song on their own. medical singing is a prestigious career, being considered one of the most important skills someone can learn. most only sing carefully memorized standard spells with specific and proven purposes. but those who study the ancient languages well enough to be fluent in them can create newer songs and improvise. magic singers are generally referred to as either singers or vocalists, but those who make their own spells are called lyricists. physical contact with the patient, plant, or other living thing is required in order to channel ambient magic through them. medical singers will usually lay at least one hand on a patient's head to directly channel magic through their soul. vocal magic is limited by the natural functions of the subject it affects. speeding up or slowing down normal processes, changing the flow of energy, etc. if the spell pushes things too far away from the normal functions of the subject, there may be a severe backlash that causes damage to the soul of the singer, as well as damaging the subject itself.

sacrificial magic. this is the most niche, dangerous, difficult, and limited method for channeling magic. it is most commonly used for spiritual purposes, and those who use it are typically given religious titles. priest, oracle, shaman, etc. it requires one to enter a trance or meditative state, tapping into the deeper parts of the soul to access magical energy more directly. the sacrificial title is because this also involves ritualized self harm, using a bone tool. the head must be left uncovered, and no inorganic materials are allowed on the body. for the most intense rituals, partial or full burial in water, mud, or dirt ensure a deeper connection to the magic energy but increase the risk. meditating too deeply, being fully nude without any anchoring accessories, and failing to exit a burial in time, all carry a high risk of death. witnesses standing by and singing their own spells can aid in keeping a ritual safe. sacrificial magic is used to gain soul sight, communicate with the souls of the dead, and in a pinch it can heal more grievous wounds than singing magic can, though this will draw on the caster's own life energy. there are some methods of soul magic that are forbidden, such as binding two souls together or attempting to revive the dead. soul-binding allows two people to heal each other with their own life energy and share an empathic bond, but if one dies, the other will also perish, and the empathic bond can drive the subjects to madness if they are unable to control and suppress it. reviving the dead is a fully impossible task, as a dead body can no longer contain a soul. but with force, energy can be bound to a corpse and force it to move again. this is a high risk ritual, likely to kill the caster and anyone who volunteers their own life energy to help animate the corpse. even in successful animation, the corpse continues to rot, and if an actual soul is bound to the corpse in the ritual, it will become highly unstable and create a sort of explosive backlash against any living soul around it. nothing good comes of trying to revive a corpse, unless your only goal is temporary bragging rights for managing to do it without killing yourself in the process.

all forms of magic can be combined in various ways to stabilize complicated effects, make a difficult process more efficient, or enhance an effect beyond its usual levels, but this too carries some risk. magic that becomes too complicated is likely to drain the casters' life energy, create backlash if the task fails, or create too powerful an effect and cause new problems. as a result, magic is only relied upon for proven tasks and things that cannot be done by any other method.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

What kind of magic exists in your world?

oh boy I have a whole lengthy document that goes into detail about my magic system lol. I'll try to giev you the simplified rundown, and while I don't want people to outright copy all my personal story ideas, I don't mind if people take inspiration from it. I like sharing my ideas!

essentially, the world is full of magical energy. it's referred to as "ambient magic". This ambient magic can affect different species in different ways, being connected to souls and usually manifesting in some form of enhanced ability by way of the nervous system. I haven't decided how much this applies to animals. It is also a matter of debate amongst magic-biologists whether people get extra powerful abilities because they are people, or if having the extra powerful magic boosts is what drove them to evolve into sapient people.

through the nervous system, pretty much every people species has experienced some boosts to their endocrine system, allowing them to have longer lifespans than their base species might usually have. This is why elves live multiple centuries. Some people species simply got a bigger endocrine system boost than others, and it seems to be shifting in recent generations, bringing some longer lived species to a shorter lifespan while the shorter lived species are gaining years. Like the ambient magic is starting to balance them out.

Outside the endocrine system boost, pretty much every people species has a bonus ability. In the sylvanids (elves, vampires, drow) it varies more. Elves have the most varied abilities, because they adapted to a wider range of environments. So one elf might have a boost to the muscular system, but another might have a boost to their immune system. Vampires and drow kept their enhancements in the endocrine system, with vampires specializing in the production of chemicals in the salivary glands and drow just going hog wild with their bizarrely specific hormones.

The orciformes/urukin (orcs, gnomes, haufin/"halflings") the boost went to the occipital lobe. they each have a different form of "vision" that aids their lifestyles. It's kinda like a species-specific form of synesthesia. Orcs can "see" the way ambient magic gathers around living things, gnomes can "see" the trace lines between things like stars and safe hand/foot holds on cliffs, and haufin can "see" by scent.

There's a lot more people species, of course, but these are the big two groups of related people. So that's a sample of how the ambient magic affects people by giving them some form of enhanced natural ability.

Outside of this, I have three methods for controlled magic. People discovered ways they can get ambient magic to do specific things.

the easiest and most mundane form is written magic. Dwarves and gnomes pioneered this. Runes and sigils carved into wood, bone, or stones/gems/metal, as well as those written with organic-based inks or blood, can make magic do a few simple things. it's used largely as a replacement for many things we might use electricity for, such as stove tops, indoor lighting, and water heating. Circular magic sigils created on flat surfaces that can be moved to break or join the lines allow people to turn them on and off.

spoken/singing magic, largely developed by elves with some unique forms developed by other groups like goblins and merfolk. this form of magic requires more careful study and focus, as a caster cannot break concentration or fumble their words/song. It's inefficient for mundane tasks, but has a much wider range of uses than any other form of magic. Controlling organic matter is a main function of this type of magic. Elves will sing trees into homes, doctors will work with a chorus to aid in medical operations.

the final and most risky method is soul magic. ambient magic is connected to souls, after all. people have developed a lot of spiritual rituals around this form of magic, so it is mostly used by religious leaders, like clerics and priests. To channel magic through one's own soul, deep meditation and a strong will are required. Many rituals involve harming one's body in some manner, always with a bone tool. This is because you can access much stronger magic if you put yourself closer to death. these rituals are usually supervised with magic singers around to ensure the soul magic user does not die. anchoring items like heavy ceremonial accessories or incense are often used as well. It is a very niche form of magic. It can be used to enhance one's personal ambient magic ability, use one's own life energy to heal another person in an emergency, and also communicate with the dead.

There are also some ways to combine the three forms of magic, though this usually just means a combination of spoken and written magic. Experimenting with magic can lead to dangerous results. There are also forbidden things, such as necromancy, soul binding, and time travel. these are all forbidden because they come with devastating side effects and don't actually work the way people want them to. there are limits to what magic can do, and trying to force it to do the impossible will always backfire.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Okok I'm back to ask another question just because. (Hi I'm the anon asking about bat goblins! Though, unrelated to this ask, kind of)

Are your amphibious goblins, perhaps, related to grung in some capacity? Do you even have grung in your world?

Sorry, it just popped in my mind! Hope it's not too much of a bother to answer my asks, but since I asked for help, I might as well ask for you to talk about your world for fun! :)

i hadn't actually known about the grung before i read through this lol. they look adorable. poison dart frogs have such fun colors and make an interesting base for a people species.

My world building is already full of like. uhhhh 3 sylvanids, 3 orciformes.... goblins, dwarves, pixies, centaurs, ogres, kobolds (2 varieties) merfolk (various?) quetzalin, and i had a concept for marsupial satyrs (2 varieties) i think.. i think that's all of them. as u can see, it is. A Lot. and there are so many more that I could add! gnolls! bat people! minotaurs! but for the sake of keeping my world building from getting too messy, i kinda. have to delegate which species are actually relevant to the plot. where they all originate from, how many of them have actually spread around the world and which ones are more localized, etc.

a lot of my worldbuilding is just going to end up in a supplementary book where i can be like "look at all these cool details in my world that were totally irrelevant to the actual book i wanted to write!" and give people a fun sandbox to play in.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Tumblr community guidelines are finally going to allow nudity again. I can make detailed posts about my sylvanids having ischial callosities and my orciformes having multiple sets of mammary glands and other such interesting anatomical things! Hooray!

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

I've been redesigning my elves and their cousin species because they looked too much like stylized humans, so here are my redesign sketches.

(Image description: a sketchbook page of inked and lightly shaded anatomy drawings. It shows four columns and three rows of drawings. From left to right; human, elf, drow vampire. From top to bottom; full body skeletons in profile, faces in profile, hand and foot from the palm and heel side. I will explain the differences in further detail below the cut. End description)

The human category (homo sapien) is here for comparison. Upright posture, no tail, tall round forehead, all the normal human proportions.

For the elf (sylvanus hominoid), I still wanted them to look like they evolved to fill a similar niche to humans. Upright posture, extremely reduced tail that is hardly more than a vestigial nub. They're a little smaller, the arms are a little longer, and the skull is longer from front to back with a shorter forehead. Their hands look just a little longer in the palm, but mostly the same as human hands. Their foot would look more human from the top view, but on this bottom view it becomes clear that their big toe is still more like an opposable thumb. They are fully bipedal and still prefer to live in trees.

The drow (sylvanus arachne) are shorter than elves and have a longer snout area and larger eye sockets. Their hands reach their knees, their fingers and toes are long, they can easily use their feet as secondary hands. They also have long semi-prehensile tails, very large ears, and sensitive facial whiskers. They live in naturally formed caves where the terrain is often very uneven, and they crawl on all fours as often as they walk on two feet.

And finally my vampires (sylvanus draculan). They are not vampires in the way most people make them. They're very alive, just another branch of the elf family tree. Highly specialized for a very particular niche. They have a shorter lower jaw, large sharp front teeth with all the other teeth very reduced, aside from the canines. Their forearm and finger bones are thicker, their shoulder sits more forward. They have a short, stiff tail, about as long as their femur. And their legs are the odd ones out here, because they are in the process of transitioning from plantigrade to digitigrade. As such, it looks a little awkward and off balance. Their foot is still short, but their toes are large, round, and thickly padded while their heel is small. They could rest their heel on the ground, but they'd have a hard time walking that way. Their hand looks far more muscled than those of their cousins, with longer fingernails that look like claws. Their knuckles are also much thicker. Vampires evolved to be sprint hunters in forested areas. Their semi-digitigrade feet add extra power to their lunge, their stiff tail gives them balance and helps them turn faster, though not as well as the tail of a cheetah. They can stand and walk upright, but they go on all fours quite often. They used to be primarily scavengers, but that changed with the extinction of some predators in their area of origin. They use their knuckles when running on all fours, to keep their sharp nails from breaking on the ground. Their main prey is smaller mammals, birds, and reptiles. As scavengers, they specialized in consuming the innards of carrion, evolving their strange tooth arrangement for the purpose of cutting through belly skin to get at the softer guts. They also have very strong immune systems to combat things like gut parasites and all the bacteria that might be found in whatever might be left in the stomach or intestines of a dead animal. As a result of this specific dietary adaptation, they continue to only consume the soft guts when they hunt their own prey. Their lower lips are stiff and cleft to the chin as a channel to let blood drip down, and their shorter lower jaw allows their large front teeth to have plenty of space. They don't have to move their whole jaw as much when their main teeth are free to stab into flesh mostly unhindered.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Did a sketchbook thing, perfecting some designs from my own worldbuilding.

(Image description: a sketchbook page of several faces in profile. On the top, three related people species; orcs, gnomes, and a halfling or hobbit equivalent called "haufin". On the bottom, hybrids of the three in different combinations. They all have a pig-like snout and ears, with the same beard and braided hair style. More detail below the cut.)

I thought it would be fun if the orcs were related to the smaller folks. A matter of island dwarfism, perhaps. The gnomes and haufin diverged, got real small, and then diverged again as one group went underground while the other group stayed in the mountains. They're still closely related enough to interbreed, which results in some interesting combinations. Most often, when you get a criss if the smaller folks and the orcs, the orc is the one giving birth. And if the mixed species folks have more mixed kids, it starts to kinda reverse the divergence and bring back the genetics of their common ancestor. I've called the full mix "urukin" because the scientific name I made for this whole species group is based on Tolkein's Uruk-hai orcs.

This group is the "orciformes", and they're closer related than the elves and their cousin species, which are grouped together as the "sylvanids".

Orc: specialized for hunting large prey. Longer snout, big tusks, large ears.

Gnome: specialized for climbing cliffs and trees. Shorter snout, smaller ears, no visibly large teeth, rounder forehead.

Haufin: specialized for living in underground burrows. Shorter snout, folded ears, large forward-facing tusks on top and bottom, sensory whiskers.

The hybrids:

Hauforc: teeth! Similar tusks to the haufin, but larger. Basically just a beefier version of the haufin with a longer snout. Also has sensory whiskers.

Gnorc: "corgified" orc. Small tusks, rounded forehead, basically just a petite orc.

Gnaufin: short and stocky. Smaller teeth than a haufin, with a slightly more gnomish skull shape. Very round. Also has the sensory whiskers.

Urukin: a blend of all three, which tends to bring back some recessive genes from their common ancestor. Beefy, tusks on top and bottom, but not facing forward like a haufin's tusks. Longer snout, thick neck, very hairy.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Welcome!

This is my side blog for analyzing and correcting professionally designed fantasy anatomy, especially wings. My submissions and ask box are open so please send me creature designs with bad anatomy to analyze and fix (include sources), your own art for friendly critique and advice, or descriptions of creatures that I can use as a design challenge! commissions are open on my ko-fi page as well.

This blog is not intended to make any independent artist feel bad about their style, technique, or skill level. I'm just tired of looking at professional fantasy art people get paid to make for official purposes like D&D book illustrations and seeing so many horrible anatomy choices for things that are easily fixed just by doing a little basic research on real life creatures.

I am not a paid professional, but I've got years of self taught art and college art classes and I have a serious passion for thoughtfully designed wings and functional fantasy anatomy.

I may occasionally post my own work in fantasy anatomy and speculative evolution.

My main blog is @miss-m-winks.

More details about the fantasy story I'm writing can be found at @memento-morianon

I tag by source and creature name as well as post theme like wing analysis or redesign process.

This blog is also (mostly) screen reader accessible! Yes, it makes all my posts a lot longer, and yes the purpose of this blog is primarily to point out flaws in visual art for the sake of other artists who may be trying to learn from my posts. But I'm going to do my best to make it accessible to everyone. **sometimes i forget or do not have the spoons to do full image descriptions, especially when reblogging other people's posts.

I also reblog other people's tutorials sometimes with the tag #outside resources, so check that out.

Masterpost links under the cut:

Fantasy pronoun chart

Vrock (dnd 5e): Intro, Wing Critique, Alteration 1, Skeleton Fix Part 1, Wing Bone Explanation, Alteration 2, Redesign Intro, Redesign Sketches, Final Redesign

Shredded Wings Pet Peeve

Pet peeve about boobs

making humanoids less human

Digitigrade legs: Three Common Problems, Exploring The Problems, An Improvement, pants/chaps, shoes,

Centaurs: clothing, internal organs,

Humanoids with wings: Feathered Wings Intro/Masterpost, (skeletal anatomy, musculature, adding feathers, why a tail) insectoid wings, Membranous Wings Intro/Masterpost, (skeletal anatomy, musculature, wing shapes). Putting clothes on winged humanoids, dragonfly wings,

Unique humanoid ideas: interspecies pregnancy, bee abdomen humanoid, marsupial humanoid, insectoids, adding a tail, serpentine,

Pop culture fixes: Maleficent, Rito, Tmnt, disney fantasia centaurs,

Personal designs: Teo, Goblin masterpost, Orc masterpost, Drow masterpost (these are all old and need a redo)

Wings in motion: media examples, basic animation test, take off/land

Dragons: DnD 5e redesigns (Brass, Black), real world physical features, some dragon heads, masterpost of other people’s dragon designs, masterpost for my own dragon designs, list of common pitfalls for dragon wing design

Ratings: Harpy, 

Armor Problems: Feminine, Poorly Fitted, Spikes, Other Sources

Non-primate Humanoids: Skull shape, Hands and bodies, Expressive faces, Worldbuilding tips, feline skulls, reptilian shedding tools, hippo people, talking with a beak, triceratops, reptile faces,

Merfolk Masterpost (old, needs a redo) cephalopod mer,

Extra Things: iridescence, baby animals, two headed giant, hyena culture ideas, clothing help, horns/antlers, making humanoids less human

My personal worldbuilding: magic system, drow outsiders, vampire scars, my drow vs dnd drow, vampire portrait, orciforme faces, sylvanid comparisons, bee pixies, orc redesign, centaurs

Using references: humans, non humans,