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thomastapir β Chiropterape Head Study
Published: 2009-06-20 02:54:37 +0000 UTC; Views: 2033; Favourites: 31; Downloads: 55
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Description
Another mediocre sketch, but I was too excited about the concept not to post it to my regular gallery, at least temporarily!Idea is probably pretty obvious: a Chimerape with orangutan-style facial flanges developed into a bat-like sonar apparatus. These guys are entirely nocturnal and may be almost entirely blind (yes, I am aware that bats are not). I picture them running through the forests at night screeching, like Dougal Dixon's Night Stalkers ([link] ).
Check out a full-body sketch at ([link] ).
Stock paper background courtesy of ([link] ).
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Comments: 33
I want to see this exact bust on a attenuated gorilla body. Β Terrifying!
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WHOA-HO, now I'm imagining some sort of coiled "snake-a-rilla!"
Thanks for the feedback!
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At your service my friend.
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That's a terrific concept! It deserves a full painting.
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Thanks, my friend! I'm glad you like it. Thanks also for the fave!
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I didn't realize what this was in the thumbnail but when I saw it full view I was startled to laughing XD
It looked a bit like a flower with a maw in the center to me.
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I can't find a picture now, but Dougal Dixon had a creature exactly like that in After Man! The "Flooer"...It was a flightless bat that would sit there with its face petals turned upward and snatch the insects that came to pollinate its head.
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XD '
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This thing is every shade of scary. It'll haunt my nightmares. Not to mention imagining its screams...
The top and bottom flanges make sense, but wouldn't it be easier (evolutionarily speaking) to just enlarge the earlobes for the left and right audio dishes? Or is this guy doing something else as well with his flaps of flesh?
Visual connotations include bishops, penitents, and inquisitors. Given the general theme of the chimerapes, it works jolly well.
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If it's any reassurance, your screams haunt his nightmares as well.
See exchange with ~Rayn-Hammer (above) for my thoughts on this issue ('cuz I'm too lazy to re-type them all! : p ).
Thanks!
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Okey-dokey.
Incidentally, I went ahead and read Larklight, as you recommended.
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Oh, right on! Whaddidja think?
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Actually, I enjoyed it, right up until Mom appeared. I didn't mind the wacky physics, I could live with the sentient storm-system, but the mother appearing out of nowhere and turning out to be a billion-year-old omnipotent alien was a bit too much. I was like "okay, I thought I was reading something, but now I'm reading something else, and I don't get it".
Oh, and on the subject of omnipotent aliens - I was totally rooting for the spiders. Explain, please, why it's a good thing to commit spider-genocide in order to reform a solar system, and (at the same time) explain why the solar system as we know it is inherently better than the asteroidy one ruled by the spiders. Besides, the spiders fail to kill a single character in the entire book, while spiders get squashed/burned/chopped up by the score. And we're supposed to sympathize with the genocidal Shapers?
Another quibble: what has the author got against scientists? Every person of the scientific persuasion is either a harmless idiot or a raving psychopathic loony.
Finally, the regular paeans of glory to the British Empire made me very uncomfortable (but it's a cultural thing - my part of the world literally collapsed due to British meddling).
On the positive side, it is a very enjoyable book. The illustrations are great, the aliens are awesome (Nipper and the Lovecraftian Squidley and Yarg are teh coolness), and the in-jokes laughed me out of my chair. Myrtle's War of the Worlds reference deserves an award.
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I totally see where you're coming from with the discomfort regarding the British Empire, but I have to play the devil's advocate and say that I interpreted most if not all of that hearty nationalistic drivel as intentionally satirical and ironic. How much more absurd is cultural chauvinism when extended not just to other nations and "races" on Earth, but to the myriad sentient life forms of the solar system?! So I think there was a lot of tongue-in-cheek satire of that sort of clueless superiority complex, taking advantage of that particular setting and the revised circumstances to exaggerate and thus lampoon cultural foibles. The thing with the scientists I took as a sort of ham-handed attempt at political correctness; "Look at what Evil has been wrought by the cruel and heartless Science of the White Man!" I thought they laid it on a bit thick, and thus preferred the more understated satire inherent in the handling of the setting and characters.
I share your reservations about the Shapers, and--if I remember correctly--one of the characters in Larklight actually expressed similar concerns. Again, I think this was intentional. I saw them as a sort of extended metaphor for the British Empire, serving a similar satirical narrative purpose. They kind of represented an expansion of that naΓ―ve cultural bigotry to a universal scale. And yet, there was also a moral ambiguity to them that I found compelling; they were, technically, genocidal "colonialists" and "biotic chauvinists" (to coin a phrase, I hope)--yet "we" wouldn't exist without them, and they truly were concerned with the welfare of their "children." I suppose that's the thin pretext upon which their ostensible sympathy lies (though probably a less effective ploy with spec-bio-oriented readers, I'd imagine!). But in a sense, I saw them as beyond judgment in the same way as the spiders; they seemed only to be carrying out a kind of overriding instinctive mandate to "Shape" the universe as they saw fit, and they happened to possess the power to do so. Is it possible to apply anthrocentric moral standards to beings capable of cobwebbing solar systems--or, alternately, treating them as petri dishes to be stirred in the hopes of producing diverse new forms of life...?
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Who knows what's best? The spiders already exist. The shapers wipe them out to make way for something that does not exist yet - that may never evolve.
Oh, and one more thing: the white spiders' webs are remarkably wimpy. Even though they can tie asteroids together, they can be torn by human hands. Regular earthling spider silk, scaled up, should be like steel.
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re: Myrtle's hyper-femininity--probably my favorite scene in ANY of the books was in the second one, Starcross, where Myrtle takes over the narrative and is describing this event where she awakens in the middle of the night to this silvery beam of light shining in through her window. She says, "I have given Mr. Wyatt permission to illustrate this event for the edification of our readers, under the express condition that he not depict me in my night attire." You turn the page and there's this huge, elaborate, Gustave-Dore-style etching of Myrtle standing there in her nightgown in this dramatic pose, and the tiny caption reads "Myrtle in her night attire."
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My heart friggin skipped a beat when I saw the thumb of this. I'm not even kidding. Like, for real. I felt it. Badass.
I LOVE the way that you incorporated the orang cheeks into the sensory 'ears.' But what makes my stomach drop is imaging the SOUNDS these terrifying things would make.
I'm going to have to make a bunch of Mr. Tapir tribute drawings during my net hiatus. These are like a challenge. I can't help it.
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Thanks man, I really appreciate that feedback! I was thinking (hoping!) this one might resonate for you because the tall, miter-like head ornament and stylized flanges sort of recall, for me, some of the surrealistic aspects of your own approach to creature design. Almost a folkloric, Flatwoods Monster-type effect ([link] ), but also hopefully with some subliminal religious overtones created by the faux ceremonial quality of the "headdress."
Thanks again, and I can't wait to see your Tapir drawings!
How close are you to the Big Date, anyway?
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Haha, i DID really like that '
Ahh, i love that term, folkloric, also .. i'll have to keep it in mind. I lived in the woods as a little kid and feel a strong draw toward folk art & music (mostly from the particular post-hippie/ethnic swedish population mix up there) as well as woodsy things. I'll be thinking about this a little too.
ANYWAY, with my monster generations having served its psychological purpose in most respects, I think that that offline month I'll be giving good chunks of time to the tapir arts
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Aww man, I totally get you on the woodsy connection. I used to have this amazing wooded area right down the street from me, until they steamrolled it and built a subdivision when I was 17. Half a lifetime ago, but I'm still devastated. My subterranean-themed CYOA was largely based around an abandoned well I discovered on the periphery of The Woods, and just the whole sense of adventure and discovery involved in exploring its myriad trails and hollows (of The Woods, that is, not the abandoned well!). And I think the reason so much of your art resonates for me is because it captures the feel of my own near-numinous experiences out there; the wonder, mystery, and sometimes-malevolence of being in those environs. There is a raw, primal energy out there. I read once that when Roman legionnaires first reached the periphery of the Black Forest in Germany, they panicked and wept. They had just never seen something like that; they were awed to be in the presence of massive vegetable life. It was an alien experience to them, and that makes total sense to me.
Ah, anyway...It will suck to have you out of commission for a while, but I look forward to seeing your new art when you return--Tapir-related or otherwise!
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Hurrah, woods resonance! Your description hits the bullseye on many points about the experience of being in the woods ... "the wonder, mystery, and sometimes-malevolence." I think in many ways the experience of just being out in the woods has almost singlehandedly cemented the fascination with 'life sciences.' Being out there hits you in so many levels ... the constant sensation of discovery at the micro level, on the ground, seeing all the plants and bugs crop up in constantly new varieties (also learning to recognize & learn more about each one) & good things to eat like berries... at the personal level of being out in a deep expansive environment filled with dynamic interactive spaces, full of light and smell and the subtle sounds of trees & animals ... and also the constant hint of malevolence, finding strange and odd spaces, plants that can and will casually stab you for your clumsiness or simple presence, inclines to fall down onto, rivers to hurt yourself in, bones from expired things, and of course the possibility of dangerous animals in their natural environment. & more & more & more than I could put down here as just a simple comment. i know I've even left out major things that could have been said, even. Also, you pointed out something that I think was very appropriate, the sensation of something alien that I think personally matches a sensation in ourselves of our own alienness. Anyway...
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This is fricken awesome!!!!! BUT! Aren't the facial flanges in front of the ears in orangutans? If so maybe a neck flange? This reminds me of this dream I had where the loose neck skin old people have is actually a a frill and when they become angered they display the frill and spit out venom, a process made easier by a loss of teeth. Picture a skinny old codger with a frill a la Dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park, toothless with projectile venom..... Frightening I know.....
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Sounds like some of the old people I deal with at the library!
re: placement of ears relative to facial flanges--Hmm, I guess you're right, I hadn't thought of that. Oh well, this *is* a crazy space ape, after all.
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unless you can figure out a way for the ears and flanfes to fuse in giant cheek ears?
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Hm, I'm not really sure how (if?) that would work, assuming these guys are bound by the same evolutionary conventions as orthodox terrestrial life. I mean at that point it would have to be the ears somehow migrating ahead of the cheek flaps, and I just don't see how it would happen (though I'm certainly open to suggestions). I guess I'm inclined to imagine the flaps forming a kind of sonar baffle or reflector that transmits sound to the ears lying beneath, either mechanically or through a communicating system of nerves. But as I say, these guys are more aesthetic/biological fantasy than intellectual/spec bio, so I'm not that troubled by the issue.
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True true. Even if it doesn't work, it still is rather cool. Oh, and I just noticed, youv'e never made any serpentine chimerapes..... Now that would be different.....
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No serpentine Chimerapes, though there are some with tentacles. See exchange with ~whale under ([link] ).
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you guys really go in depth with these ideas.... oh I just thought of something awesome!!!!!!!!!! you know how that dinosauroid thing dale russel designed was basically just an anthropomorphic lizard, you should make a sketch of what one of Nemo's Dinosauroids would hypothosize an primate would have looked like had they become intelligent (if I am correct, some scientist believe primates evolved 85 mya?). Basically it would be an ape with a theropod body plan. Oh the satire!!!!!!!!!!!
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Hah, you should suggest that to Nemo!
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eat your heart out, Morlocks.
(unless the Orang Chiropterapes get to you first)
I can picture these {Orang Chiropterape} guys moving about on the ground, in the trees, leaping from tree to tree...and even flying forms.
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I like how the side flanges resemble ears, sort of a clue to their function.
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