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alexries

alexries

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alexries posts

Progress

Homing in on designs as well as an ecology and gender dynamic of these little beasties:

As with the birrin, they are to be sequential hermaphrodites in a  similar manner to clownfish, ...

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Idiran Patreon Reward WIP - Masking

The awkward adolescent phase of a digital painting - setting up the layers you need in any random color that does the job!

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Final Line Art

Completed the Idiran line art. Proceeding to color!

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Idiran Progress

Starting the final line art for the Idiran reward image.

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Hummingbirrin.

Let the sketches begin...

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Netjaw

While waiting to begin the hummingbirrin, I thought it might be valuable to share this: abandoned years ago as a failed experiment, nevertheless an interesting early experiment in designing flying lif...

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Hoverlings

Decided to make the small flying creature the focus of the next artwork!

Ecologically, it will fill a similar niche to the hummingbirds and hawk-moths of Earth.

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Idiran Combat

Work on the high tier reward: an illustration of an Idiran, enemy of the Culture from the Ian M. Banks series. I am thinking this could be a civil protection/internal security type, lacking the heavy ...

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Up Next...

For my next piece I would like to explore another of Chriirah's creatures!

I am trying to decide between these two: a large, elephantine leaf eating beast, or a tiny nimble hummingbirrin.

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Chriirah

The map is complete, our first look at the surface of the birrin world!

...and a link to a 2016-02-01 16:55:29 +0000 UTC View Post

Final Pass

The map is essentially done!

It will be uploaded at a high enough resolution to see the smaller text once I have done a final naming/editing pass, feel free to point out any errors you see.

<...

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Change of Focus - Chriirah Itself

At this stage, I have decided to push designing the entire solar system to a later stage, and focus in greater detail on the birrin homeworld itself. I will release a high resolution version of the pl...

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The Blue Marble

While I finalise the planet, I thought it worth sharing a link that helped me break planet rendering down into manageable chunks. Robert Simmon created an excellent simulacrum of Earth using multiple ...

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Chriirah from Space

The first test render of a semi-complete planet! I might need to balance things out with a continent fragment/large island in the upper left if the globe is to be rendered from this angle for its beau...

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Land Bridge

That big land bridge, an interesting possibility for the story, is somewhat hard to explain geologically, and looks rather silly when rendered in 3D.

By expanding the southern continent across t...

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Closing in...

Almost have a final continent layout, with climatic zones (will add rain shadow deserts/green zones later)

Coloring will be interesting, as Chriirah plant life has red leaves! It will be a very ...

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Subduction

Suggestions by Patrons prompted some research, and I am redoing the tectonic zones to match more realistic science. Basically the two large continents were once a single unit, and are being divided by...

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Continental Masking

I am largely happy with the arrangements of land masses, and added a little more southern Kiln, taking into account suggestions made here and on DA.

I have been mapping it onto a sphere within 3...

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Kiln Zone

To clear up some confusion of the apparently limited number of landmasses, here is a quick illustration of the rough range of the 'kiln'; the superheated region which inhibits birrin habitation.
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Cartography 0.1

Today I spent some time trying to develop the landmasses and oceans of chri-irah, balancing aesthetics with realism and story functionality. Quite a bit harder than I expected, and interesting that wh...

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Up Next!

Hello!

I want to thank my patrons for a successful first image, and welcome my supporters. You are all much appreciated!


Up next, I am going to design an aspect of the Birrin universe ...

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Irridalli Redesign

While I prepare the rewards for the Antlerworm image, here is the complete redesign of the Irridalli RO!

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Irridalli Progress

It Begins!

I have moved the fins and wing back, which opened up a large area of dead space in the middle of the fuselage. Experiments now begin how to fill it, either with observation windows or...

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Irridalli Upgrade

Welcome to 2016 folks!

Starting out with a quick freebie before moving on to the next major piece: several people on Deviantart pointed out that the design of 2016-01-01 16:46:23 +0000 UTC View Post

Complete!

Here it is, folks! 

I shall begin putting rewards together, and distribute them when payment has been processed. Anything in particular my Level 3 and above patrons want to know? Drop in a ...

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Final Candidate

Pretty much done! I will add some polish, toy with the colors and write up the description. 

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Happy Holidays!

Thank you to all my Patrons! I present to you an older design I wish soon to fully develop; a hummingbird-like relative of the birrin, and important friend to the plants of chri-irah!

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Almost there...

Not too far to go now. I have removed the detail window which would show the closed jaws, since this species no longer uses the plug-shaped mouthparts and is a more active hunter. That will require so...

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Iterative Saving Madness

As I work, I make a new save every time I make an important or irreversible decision. As you can see, this can get rather out of hand!

This is the working folder for the current Antlerworm.

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Reef

Working out the details of the reef, not too far to go now!

This reef is dominated by filter feeders rather than the active predatory corals that dominate tropical reefs on present day earth. On...

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