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whalewithlegs — Giant Roussa
Published: 2009-06-19 14:04:49 +0000 UTC; Views: 1297; Favourites: 29; Downloads: 48
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I was thrilled to see one of these the other night ... Roussa are very hard to see in the dark and always move with utter silence even in rocky and leafy environments. Our scientists are still trying to explain this, but conjecture from hair samples that their coats give off some sort of distortion that produces a muffling effect on the air surrounding them. I have perhaps experienced such a phenomenon on my several encounters with these creatures ... often a sighting is preceded by a realization that the surrounding forest has gone totally silent. It is my personal opinion that these creatures are deaf, having no audial capability at all.This was by far the largest roussa I have seen to date, possibly a separate species from those of the documented sightings to present. Though there is hardly enough evidence to support this hypothesis, the creature exhibited quadrupedal locomotion and a possible divergence of foot structure. I would not be surprised if in the future a superflock sighting were made, even of this solitary nocturnal creature.
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Revisiting an old theme. I admit, inspired by 's wonderful Ring universe aliens & stories. I make no apologies nor have any illusions about my writing ... I'm going to bed now after a long long night of insomnia.
Also, a little explanation - superflocking is an imaginary phenomenon in which creatures of several closely-related species are observed together in congregation or acting as a herd, usually with one or several unusually large representatives of one of the more 'highly-evolved' species presiding.
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Comments: 24
I once drew something like this but it was smaller and had claws and stubby legs.
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I can easily imagine a Miyaziki film with these guys... little kids exploring a forest grove and finding them milling around.
Or else feels like something one might encounter in a Haruki Murakami novel.
Love the concept!
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Haruki Murakami ... something new for me to check out! Haha, I've come to be more & more embarrassed by this piece .. a neat concept that I ended up doing sloppy work on in the technical details, but thanks anyhow! 
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Nah, don't be embarrassed. The idea totally gets across. You could spend 10 more hours on polishing, but without making any huge advance on the concept.
I thought of Mononoke too, except it was the big black worm blobby guy.
Murakami is an excellent contemporary Japanese writer. My thesis advisor turned me on to him, and it has been a lasting gift. 
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This looks like if Dr. Seuss made a book called "There Are Horrors Beyond Your Comprehension."
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Hahaha ... a little off subject, i have for a while now toyed with the idea of using a pen-name of something like 'G. Seuss' or 'J. Seuss' ... i don't have much to write, however, much less something appropriately humorous!
I like that title though, especially as a Dr. Seuss book. It's the kind of thing that one could make and disavow copyrights on, just to get it out there
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Oh definitely. I want to write and illustrate a book of that sort called "Is Your Mommie a Commie?" in the style of a certain Stephen Kellogg classic.
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haha, wow. I haven't thought of that book in ages .. hmm, now I'm flashing back on Chicken Soup w/ Rice too.
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That was a fun one. Did you ever see the animated adaptation? It had a really cute tune, and it perfectly mimicked Sendak's art.
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hmm, maybe i have ... i'll have to look it up.
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I think I would have added this to my favorites for the fantastic concept of superflocking alone, but the drawing and the accompanying notes are just perfect icing on a perfect cake.
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thank you!
I actually am beginning to be embarrassed by the drawing .. it was so late and I just wanted to finish it 
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I think it looks great like this.
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Awesome...It's the facelessness that gets me, I think--that and the kinked, attenuated fingers, which seem to possess a sort of malevolent life of their own. I can see them squirming and grasping... :shudder: The whole being is like an inky, living shadow. I was wondering if the name was inspired by Henri Rousseau--I flashed on ([link] ), especially.
I love that idea of the creature's complete soundlessness...Got me started thinking about active noise cancellation ([link] ), which I haven't heard about for a while, at least in terms of large-scale applications--silencing aircraft, etc. ...Somehow a passive trait seems to fit this creature better, though.
That "megaflocking" or "metaflocking," superflocking, is also a really cool idea...Reminded me of Deathworld (as many things do!), where the wildlife was all telepathic and had kind of a "survival override" where all species would cooperate against an overwhelming threat (volcano, tidal wave, etc.)--at least for the duration of the crisis. Then it was back to life as usual as soon as the danger had passed....
I think the writing here is great. It's clear, concise, it flows well...It's interesting, descriptive. Has an authoritative and believable "scientific voice." I don't think you have anything to feel self-conscious about here.
Beautiful work--as always.
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I had a slightly hard time with the fingers, because I drew this on printer paper and it almost became too cramped ... I redid them about 4 times before liking them. This guy's hands and feet are the major anatomical divergent point between the smaller common roussa (and the size of course) ... the little ones have rather small and stiff arms and very humanoid feet and legs.
Actually, this guy started coming into being after I had been thinking about some plot for the comic I'm still working on .. i had this really vivid dream in which one of the little ones steals a lantern from us while we're camping out in the middle of the night. Contemplating this dream one day, I walked out our front door and flashed on this chimpanzee sitting on the patio just to my left, about 3 feet away .. the combined shapes of a shadow and a car seat had for a split second fooled my imaging center and freaked me the hell out. I started to get this idea of waking up in the middle of the night and seeing one of these in the tent but not realizing what it was because it was so dark ... turning on the lamp and its like right there, a few feet away. To cut it short, the little guys kept growing and I ended up with this.
I do like Rousseau, at least most of the time, I'll admit. I think for me his vegetation rather than the animals are what draws me, however ... also the eyes of course.
Noise cancellation is a great expectation ... the movements of its body causes the fur to rub together in a way that baffles noise, maybe?
Hmm, i'll admit I got bored with Deathworld faaar before that, so I'll have to rely on you for a sensory interpretation of the textual concepts
It may help to explain that in my mind the 'aliens' from this world, (Which I'm leaning toward officially calling Muir now) are supposedly meme-based life with fractal-based bodies made of shifting/sliding/interlocking/fanning(etc.) platelets of matter rather than being composed of cells. I try to break down the fallacy of DNA-based life from totally alien sources ... time will tell if I succeed or not
I'm glad the writing sounds decent .. .I should do all my writing at 3 in the A.M. with half a beer in me. Too stupid for insecurity, ha!
Thanks, man.
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Holy--! I remember that little guy, "Something Steals Our Lantern," right? And he grew into this beast...Who woulda thunk?
Once again, I'm fascinated by the way dreams inform, influence, and fuel your art. To paraphrase from Salvador Dali, "(you) are not a surrealist; (you)...are surrealism."
I've been thinking about the premise behind your creatures ever since I first read it a couple of days ago...I immediately saw exactly where you were going with this--or at least I think I do. If I'm reading it correctly, these creatures are *not* conventional "aliens" in the sense of "extraterrestrials," but rather are denizens of another domain of reality...Es verdad?
That whole concept of meme-based life is just so--incredible...The word is inadequate, but I don't know how else to characterize it. Sublime, transcendent? It was like *everything* else about your art, your creatures fell into place for me when I read that. All the apparent paradoxes and mysteries were resolved, all the loose ends tied up. I realized that I had been laboring under the misconception that the development of your creatures could be viewed in terms of the mundane conventions of terrestrial evolution, when they are governed by a completely different dynamic process: their evolution is "memetic" rather than "genetic." It finally makes sense to me...I know you've said as much before, but I guess the fact that I'm so entrenched in terrestrial biological principles impeded my ability to really "get it" until now. I even imagine a scenario where their incidence comes full circle, where we meet the Creator that spawned them--and it is you. Their origin lies within the vast mind of a dynamic living system, one which has spawned an entire alien ecosystem from the near-boundless processing power of its myriad dendritic connections. (dentritic = tree-like; coincidence?)
The only other fictional context in which I can place this (idea) is some of Lovecraft's "hypergeomtical" beings, which rather than being biological "organisms" are simply expressions of universal axiomatic principles. There's one creature in particular I have in mind, the description of which I would like to regale you--but that will have to wait until ~RPGcomicker returns my Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters.
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Woo, took me a long time to get back to you!
Yep, that little guy! It's been interesting to me too, to have dream elements crop up with such potency, and also be obvious solution to creative problems. I'd started seeing completed paintings in my dreams, and now I've started reading stories in my dreams that seem to hold together relatively well themselves. Unfortunately, a lot of them aren't continuitous with each other and would have to be used for entirely different projects .. but I shouldn't complain!
Well, they are and aren't ... I think more accurately they could be called metamemes or mutualistic memes. If memes are opportunistic and express themselves through us, you can think of these creatures as having bodies that are highly susceptible to memetic divergence. Memes are already operating on a slightly different plane of reality that has points of contact with our own, is what I imagine to be a good answer to your idea? Additionally, however, I do imagine these guys being from an alternate earth that possibly does have some alternate physical rules, though nothing extremely different. Maybe some different mathematical constants. Dunno really. But they are also seed organisms, so perhaps having them be from yet another alternate reality is a good idea ... i'm kinda getting into Greg Bear territory there though. My original conception though was that most earth animals have been killed off by the invasive 'seed organisms', which for some reason don't bother certain animals, like some insects, and most plants.
So yes, however, their evolution has a very different dynamic to it than the terrestrial norm. Some of my favorite creatures, the wandering nut and another thing I'm currently working on, are both hybrid meme/gene creatures with correspondingly confusing reproductive cycles. They go through maturity cycles in a way that I can only liken to the idea of time travel across parallel timelines, with the gene-expressed '
I'm actually really glad that you mentioned dendrites ... I had also been thinking that the seed organisms originated on a very low-gravity planet of moon-like size, but with dense 'trees' that branch out into space and 'triple' the functional diameter of the planet ... having basically a very low-gravity thicket or jungle all over the entire planet. Your idea could work really well with this, in that the 'fractal trees' could basically end up being a 'dendritic soup/jungle' in which certain memes evolved that gave rise to these creatures, sort of a massive fractal/biological sleeping mind or proto-intelligence, but complex enough for memes to come about and/or take root, maybe even harness lower-level creatures and form a mutualism that eventually leads to a multi-component fractal/meme organism.
Hmm, i'll have to look into Lovecraft a little more .. i have kind of a love/hate lovecraft thing.
Hope you don't mind me brainstorming off your comments! Thanks Gigantically!
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This is going into my favorites immediately. I'm often in awe of those things that are exotic and constantly memorable enough to be drawn in and captured by my imagination, particularly something as refreshingly weird and wildly daunting as this. Damn, I envy your skill. The posture, the shadow, the facile but energetic hands...just incredible. Simple, and at the same time, not simple at all. I can feel it moving. That's the kind of thing that makes a guy like me rock and roll. I keep looking back at it. Again. And again.
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Ha! Thanks, man. I almost feel churlish, coming back to this theme again and again, forcing it on all you internetters. But it was one of those dreams man, the utter shock of what was going on .. i'll never forget seeing this thing. Maybe I'll see another one someday.
I was and am pretty happy with the stance! I'd change the hind feet a little, just foreshorten them differently, if I were to do this again, though.
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