Life on Zoalula

My blog for speculative evolution artwork and content. Blog style and such are currently a work in progress! Find my personal blog at @potatosapien5 I'm gonna be reblogging artwork and posts that are still mostly canon to the world, the ones that are outdated will stay only on my personal blog.

[puddleorganism]

Legitimately if you find yourself wanting to use AI (image generation specifically), please just go find some Creative Commons photos to use

It’s probably easier, takes a similar amount of time to find the photo you’re looking for, and consumes far less energy

Here’s the Creative Commons search portal: https://search.creativecommons.org

And here’s Wikimedia, which is pretty much all licensed under Creative Commons: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

[astrobiosphere-studies]

been spending my time fucking around on gplates (I have been doing art but it’s taking a while to iron out my lore) and oh my gods it is SO tedious

maybe I can put this on my resume I guess??? (probably not)

[astrobiosphere-studies]

Thinking more about baby designs and mawuli clothing… top right of the first image is technically meant to be a baby, but the head isn’t quite neotenous enough for my tastes.

Anyways, since mawuli have (fur? feathers? pycnofibers? setae???) …fluffiness, they don’t have the exact same norms about clothing as humans. Genitalia are the most likely part to be covered, which sometimes means pretty baggy pants for their hindmost legs, but sometimes it’s more a pretty simple strip of leather anchored with decoratively braided rope. The left guy also has some simple claw-sheaths tied to their arms for if they would want to switch to quadrupedal walking. Also seen are some simple sandals. Shoes are generally more common in flat urban environments, and are rare in rural, heavily forested areas.

The clothes on the second image might be seen more during the late evening and twilight, when the temperature starts to go down, or perhaps this dude is just very into human-esque fashion. Could be either!

Third image guy is definitely wearing cold-weather clothes, probably during the winter night. This sketch is much rougher, the anatomy is kind of off.

Non-functional body ornamentation includes mandible notching, jewelry, spiracle piercings, shaving or dyeing fur, and rarely, decorative scarring.

[astrobiosphere-studies]

everybody say WORM SNAKEEEE

[astrobiosphere-studies]

i think this this post isnt showing up for some reason. Maybe this will fix it? I hope.

Aaaaaanyways here’s some lore!

Wormsnakes are basically what they sound like. They’re part of a separate phylum of terrestrial animaloids from any other creature I’ve shown. This one mostly uses pit-eyes, whiskers, and thermoreceptors to sense its prey. Wormsnakes have very low metabolisms and are used to going a long time without food. Most species like to hang around in forests, eating small arboreal or aerial fauna. A few species have been domesticated by grove forests, but that’s a story for another time.

[astrobiosphere-studies]

everybody say WORM SNAKEEEE

[astrobiosphere-studies]

Rough approximations of the vision of two aliens. The first is the maluwi, and the second is an alien I haven’t introduced yet, cause I created them quite recently and they’re not a native of the maluwi moon.

More info under the cut:

Maluwi have six simple eyes. The first pair is the primary pair, and does most of the functions that human eyes do. These eyes are binocular and have vision comparable to that of most reptiles, with high resolution and focusing ability. Unfortunately, these eyes also have mediocre night vision at best (they do have some adaptations to maintain color vision during both night and day, but their resolution goes way down). The second pair is in charge of peripheral vision, partially since maluwi necks aren’t very flexible. They also serve as the primary source of vision in darkness, since they have a high density of rod-analogous photoreceptor cells. Maluwi are more diurnal than most life on Zoalula, but due to the ridiculously long nights on the moon, and the uncomfortably hot temperatures after midday, they are forced to be active at dawn and dusk as well. Maluwi switch to much slower behavior when it’s dark out, since they need to conserve energy, and since their secondary pair of eyes doesn’t have as good resolution as their first, even during the night. Their third pair of eyes is angled upwards. This pair watches out for aerial predators, monitors weather conditions, and helps in regulating their circorbital rhythm. They do have more resolution in these eyes than, say, the ocelli of flying insects, but their use is still more so to tell light, shadow, and movement than to pick out details.

I’ll give some basic info about the second alien too. These aliens, called Lindworms, have two large complex apposition eyes. They have good night vision despite this, with adaptations to nocturnality. Due to having eyes larger than any living arthropod’s with magnitudes more ommatidia, Lindworms have pretty decent resolution, though they are still quite nearsighted. As nocturnal predators, they compensate by relying on their good senses of hearing and smell to hunt for prey. (They are also a sophont species, though one that is much less fleshed out. They’re also probably close to the most humanoid alien I’ll ever design, which is fun.)

[astrobiosphere-studies]

First contact. I apologize for the shit quality, it turns out that the notes app is not amazing at scanning silly artwork.

Mr. Old-Man-from-the-Village is extremely confused about what the tall bipeds in masks are trying to tell him, but he humors them anyway.

[potatosapien5]

fun and awesome update- my tablet is officially in its death throes, so unfortunately I won’t be able to post any art for a while (along with having a shit ton of work to do). I might post some sketches and stuff, but nothing decent

idk how long it’ll be before I have a solution but hopefully it’ll be soon!

[astrobiosphere-studies]

woagh… a deer

I’m too tired to explain what they are (I put way too much Biology into this speculative biology and it’s hard to explain), so I’ll probably save explanations for a later post on Zoalula’s aerial biosphere, or if anyone asks specific questions. best summary I have for now is uhhhh deer-sloth-flamingo-thing but with bioluminescent algae-like aeroplankton rather than phytoplankton

[astrobiosphere-studies]

Rough sketches of some beasts from a bygone era. They’re related to the earthrazers. 

Infodump under the cut:

Zoalula, being the moon of a gas giant, endures a much higher frequency of asteroid impacts than Earth. Scientists wondered how the diversity of Zoalulan life forms survived what must have been many catastrophic events throughout the moon’s geologic history. 

The answer? They didn’t. 

Zoalula has harbored complex life for even longer than Earth has in the present day, and with that long history came multiple iterations of dominant terrestrial clades. The modern Zoalulan biosphere is quite recent, with the main clades seen on land only achieving their prevalence around 30 to 40 million years ago. Before this time, a completely separate mobile clade ruled the land, one that had independently made the transition onto land well before the current dominant clade. 

This clade evolved into a striking variety of forms, many unlike anything alive on either Earth or Zoalula today. But their success couldn’t save them from their eventual demise in the most recent mass extinction event. The earthrazers, a family of only around a dozen species, are the only remaining members of this clade around in the modern day. Even this is still impressive, considering that the clade has existed on land for over 300 million years. Their extinction is analogous to that of the trilobites, but at an even grander scale. 

All three of the creatures shown here existed at the very end of the reign of this clade, and showcase some of the adaptations that this clade evolved before any other on the planet — seen in their cursoriality, megafaunal sizes, and reduction in limb number. 

[astrobiosphere-studies]

ABHORENTLY rough draft of the maluwi respiratory system. I was trying to work on their ref sheet and got distracted making this. This system is probably not canon, I need to refine it a lot more and the current setup is a little strange, but the concept is there. 

uhhh yea

[astrobiosphere-studies]

Some mawuli being goobers. For some basic fun facts:

mawuli have three pairs of eyes, one pair for frontal vision, one pair for lateral vision, and one pair for dorsal vision.

mawuli speak through two spiracles in the middle of their chest area, meaning they can and often do make multiple vocalizations at once!

mawuli are scansorial! they are quite adept climbers, thanks to their centaurized hindmost limbs that are adapted for upside-down brachiation. The pose of a hanging mawuli looks a lot like that of a bat!

I hope this piques your interest! I am quite fond of these guys, and there is much more I need to illustrate about their biology and culture(s).

Bonus: child!

[potatosapien5]

Sorry it’s been so long y’all! I’ve been quite busy with school stuff, unfortunately, and life has generally been quite chaotic, so I don’t have any new finalized artwork at the moment. In the meantime, here are a few sketches of my updated designs for the aliens!

I am still working on updating their design, but I think I am definitely getting to a point where I’m satisfied with how they look! Hopefully I can introduce them officially soon- keep in mind that some of the stuff I wrote about them previously is probably outdated now.

[potatosapien5]

Meet Lycognathus(otherwise known as the spiderdog)! This small carnivore wanders the plains that grow between forest colonies, preying on a wide variety of both small and large ‘animals’(aka mobile heterotrophic organisms). This creature may be small, but it packs a powerful venom in its two intimidating fangs, which it uses mainly to dispatch prey, though it won’t hesitate to bite in defense if it feels threatened. This species is mainly solitary, but will occasionally hunt in pairs or engage in mobbing behavior when scavenging. Lycognathidae is a large and diverse class, but most lycognathids are small and nocturnal. 

This took way too long to do, I really need to work out a style that both looks nice and doesn’t consume an extreme amount of my time. Hopefully once I figure that out I’ll be on track to making more finished pieces faster! 

Detailed lore below here: 

The genus Lycognathus was one of the first mobile organisms on the fluffbugs’ planet to be named scientifically by humans. Several small species were named before, but they quickly became invalid when the Interspecific Cultural Exchange Act was passed. Within this act were the negotiations conducted with delegates from the fluffbug planet, who agreed that no official human designations for any living organisms (and also some non-living artifacts) could be assigned unless the people who live in the same region of an organism approve its designation. 

The fluffbugs did have a reason for this. They made the case that humanity couldn’t know if their taxonomic conventions would apply at all to a completely different planet, and that many organisms already have names, just ones unpronounceable to humans, along with cultural and religious significance, and so therefore ignoring these facts is tantamount to a violation of a people’s right to cultural heritage. 

Despite a few reservations, human scientists agreed, though still stressing the importance of classification in scientific research. Therefore, when necessary, a human science organization could propose a designation for approval of the fluffbug cultures and their delegates. 

Most organisms are referred to with rough translations of their native names, which ends up in names such as earthrazer(aka “the one who uproots the ground”). This system is flawed, but it has mostly succeeded in keeping relations between the two sophont species peaceful. 

Lycognathus was, as mentioned before, one of the first species to be approved. This isn’t to say the fluffbugs of the world(since lycognathids exist across all nearly all dry terrestrial regions of the planet) weren’t hesitant, but most didn’t have too much personal history with the clade. Several attempts were made to domesticate Lycognathus species specifically, and despite them having many tendencies that would make them prime candidates for hunting aids, all attempts failed, mainly due to the danger these species posed to anyone who wasn’t careful. It’s hard to want to keep around your new pet dog-spider after it kills your child in one bite.

Hopefully I can get into successful domestication cases soon, and talk about one of my favorite aspects of fluffbug culture. But for now, my wrists are hurting like crazy haha. 

[astrobiosphere-studies]

UPDATED LORE:

The 'fluffbugs' are now officially called mawuli.

Human scientists do sometimes use scientific nomenclature to describe Zoalulian organisms, but it's still a very messy science. It's less due to any tension between cultures that scientific names aren't assigned, and more that when you are "discovering" a dozen completely new organisms every day, you have to call them something. The earthrazers will also likely get a scientific name soon, but that doesn't stop the colloquial names from sticking.

[potatosapien5]

The Earthrazers (spec evo)

The earthrazers are a clade of basal terrestrial ‘vertebrates’ on my as of yet unnamed alien planet. In prehistory, this clade was very diverse, with earthrazers taking up many unique niches. The earliest earthrazers were generalists, snatching up anything nutritious with their bristled arm-jaws, but they quickly specialized for herbivory, carnivory, and even pursuit predation. Unluckily, most of the earthrazers were outcompeted by other clades of pseudo-vertebrates. The few remaining earthrazers are mostly herbivores, with a few more generalist omnivores. This species is mainly herbivorous, stripping bushes and small trees of their leaves with the tooth-like combs on its arms before passing the food to its proboscis. 

The well-developed proboscis of earthrazers is a telltale sign of their early divergence from other land ‘vertebrates’, as most other clades have moved their proboscis within sets of jaws homologous with the forearms of earthrazers. This proboscis is inefficient at best at chewing and swallowing food, so it is unclear why this trait has been conserved in the earthrazer clade. 

This species of earthrazer also has a series of large spines, which are actually heavily modified limbs, on its back. These spines provide a defense against predators, and have limited mobility that allowed them to be turned against an attacker without significant effort.

The earthrazers are just one clade of many organisms from this unnamed planet, but hopefully they provide a good starting point. 

Here are some earlier sketches I did of them while I was still working on their design. I may end up changing some more things later on, but their general anatomy will stay the same. 

[astrobiosphere-studies]

Edit: slightly outdated now, see this post for better info