#mermaysozoic

[bonnettbee]

Ok so this channel I follow on YouTube is doing a really fun thing where they mash up Mermay and Maysozoic, and I’ve been giving it a try? I’ll post the results of my drawings later, along with some of the reference images I used, but here is their official (updated) list and a link to their channel. :3

Subjectively

SUBJECTIVELY We started as a group of five friends sharing our opinions about art in popular media. Now, we're giving you our opinions in t

[warriorsofficial]

Day 1 CONULARIIDA

[pleniluneworks]

Mermaysozoic Weeks 3 & 4: Prehistoric Miscellany

That's right everyone, we've covered the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, but now it's time for some prehistoric Merms from other eras of the ancient past!

Day 22: Aegirocassis

My friend @tipu-tipuan noted that the body of the Aegirocassis looked like a spinal column, and I am never able to unsee that.

Aegirocassis is a marine arthropod from the Ordovician, and one of the largest organisms of its time. It was a radiodont like Anomalocaris, however instead of using its front limbs to capture prey, it was instead a filter-feeder.

With the segmented body evoking the shape of a vertebral column, and by translating the front limbs into filamentous sleeves, you have something that resembles a skeletal, almost alien-looking priestess, conveying messages to spirits of the past, now forever entombed in the sands of time..

Day 23: Langstonia

Now I know that this technically doesn't count as an aquatic creature or.. even a Mesozoic creature for that matter.. but what am I to do with a prompt that featured a fully terrestrial Miocene crocodilian?

Anyways, I turned her into a ferocious croco-centaur warrior with a mean attitude. She WILL count herself as part of the mermaid club whether you like it or not. Langstonia girl doesn't give a fuck about semantics.

Day 24: Stylonurus

Stylonurus is a member of the eurypterid or sea scorpion family, and what a spindly, spiny critter it was!

This was one of the hardest ones to do this month. So much so that I had to scrap the original sketch page completely! Something about all the legs, segments, and spines really had me struggling.

The end result is worth the trouble though, love me my eurypterid monster girl.

Day 25: Yawunik

A Cambrian arthropod belonging to the Megacheiran or "great appendages" family, of which those claws were thought to be used to capture prey.

This was another one that took a lot of redrafting before coming up with a design I liked, but I knew I wanted the "great appendages" to be the main feature.

At first I didn't quite know what to make of a Yawunik Merm... I went through several revisions, before deciding that... Screw it, let's give her atomic arm cannons. And thus the nerdy gunsmith motif fell into place.

Day 26: Livyatan

While everyone talks about (Otodus) Megalodon as the greatest marine predator of its time, many are unaware of the formidable macroraptorial sperm whale relative Liviyatan melvillei, which was of comparable size and would've given Megalodon a run for it's money.

This was another piece that I tossed in a fun reference, given the species name of this animal, this Merm is both a grisly old peg-legged (or finned) sea captain, and the white whale rolled into one.

Day 27 & 28: Helicoprion and Edestus

What's this? TWO for the price of one??

When I saw Helicoprion and Edestus placed back to back on the prompt list, I couldn't resist myself to go with doing a duo piece for these freaky Eugeneodontid fish.

I went all in with an edgy spiked sawtooth motif for Helicoprion, whereas for Edestus, a scissor-jawed Futakuchi-onna seems approriate.

Day 29: Anomalocaris

The Radiodonts are personally some of my favorite groups of extinct life, in part due to their fascinating, unusual appearance unlike anything the world has seen since. Anomalocaris is by far the most well-known, in part due to it being one of the Earth's first "super predators", and possibly also a certain internet video that brought it to life in the public's consciousness..

Decided to play around with the anatomy with this one. Those hair buns are her actual eyes, and yes, that is a gaping hole of a mouth in her chest..

Day 30: Tullimonstrum

Even now, paleontologists still don't understand what on earth the 'Tully Monster' truly is. Some kind of strange mollusk? A primitive chordate relative?? Something else entirely??? All we can be sure of is that it is some kind of... bilateran. An animal whose body is symmetrical on both sides. That's it.

Whatever it was, it was a fascinatingly bizarre alien-like creature, whom I've chosen to depict in a suitably eerie alien form..

Day 31 (WILD CARD): Dunkleosteus

And we finally end Mermaysozoic with the wildcard prompt, to which I've selected Dunkleosteus!

I knew I wanted to end the month off with a bang, or at least a satisfying conclusion, so here is a knight lady bearing the maw of a giant armored fish.

I was nine days late when I initially finished this piece back in June, (now 198 days late posting it here at the time of writing :/ ) but whatever. Boom. Finally done.

And with that, I can finally, FINALLY mark the end of my Mermaysozoic posts... It had been a long time coming, and long-delayed with posting it here, but.. hey, at least the year hasn't ended yet!

[indigo-inktropy]

its enrichment

[missszena]

Mermay day 5

This fish looked very friend shaped

[bonnettbee]

Mermaysozoic Day 1: Conulariida

Here’s my attempt at Conulariida, along with some of the reference images I used! The in-color one is from Vladislav Egorov (3D model) and Jaagup Metsalu (render) - I sadly couldn’t find clear references for the publications the others came from at time of posting, but I’ll try and track them down and I’ll update this post if it find them.

I found out while researching these guys that, unusually for a Cnidarian, they could produce mollusk-like Pearls, which are often found inside their fossils! So this little gal’s(?) “eyes” are actually Pearls that she’s holding in two of her tentacles, so that other creatures that use their eyes/faces for emoting find her more intuitive to talk to (I assume she uses some form of telepathy to communicate, and probably has some other psionic mechanism that she uses alongside chemoreception and mechanoreception to sense her environment) :3

Took a little bit of inspiration from the Jerrys (and Terry) from Pixar’s Soul, since I always really like the idea of potentially sapient creatures with a very different anatomy from us or any other vertebrate (and even many other invertebrates!) doing their best to communicate with other species by adapting their anatomy in unique ways to Accommodate their natural social behavior better, and the idea of an ancient Anemone Relative making a cute “lineart” puppet out of their feeding tentacles that can be as amorphous as they need it to be just matched really well with the friendly but otherworldly vibe/behavior of something like the Jerrys.

This is the most complicated work of Topology/Knotwork/Braiding I think I’ve ever drawn too, it took me SO long and I’m actually really proud of how it turned out! :D

[pleniluneworks]

For the past month I have been partaking in a monthly drawing challenge.

A preface and first week

This isn't the first time I've done so, but it is the one I have done to such a consistent degree.

When I saw the prompts for a full month of PREHISTORIC mermaid designs, I immediately jumped into the challenge. The prompt choices were varied, and also filled with plenty of obscure genera. Many of which I probably would not have drawn otherwise, I mean, have you heard of Cycleryon? Eretmorhipis? Yawunik??? Die hard paleonerds probably have, but even I was unfamiliar with some of these prompts..

With so many different and varied creatures with different forms, body types, and biological families, it proved quite the interesting challenge to portray them as unique and coherent mermaid designs. But this is part of what made it fun to do, I've had to think outside the box for some of them, and even for the more straightforward ones, I've done my best injecting my own creative juices in making interesting Prehistoric Mermaids.

Credits to the prompt by Subjectively on YouTube, or @magik_jack_art on Instagram. I have been following him along for some time for both his fakemon and creature designs, and they are just genuinely creative and fascinating.

With that out of the way, let's get on to the first round of Mesozoic Merms:

Week 1: Triassic

Day 1: Conulariida

The Conulariida are a group of shelled cnidarians that lived from the Edicaran period; some 545 million years ago, all the way through the late Triassic period. They were sessile animals that likely possessed tentacles to capture prey.

My first thought when I saw this prompt was "what the hell is this?" And then afterwards "It's a marine flowerpot." Flowerpot or not, this was what I had to work with. I went with a gorgon-inspired look, and she turned out pretty cute for a day 1 piece. Looking back, she did end up looking a lot simpler than many of the later works in both concept and execution, but I still like her regardless.

Day 2: Cycleryon

Cycleryon was a crablike decapod that lived in the Jurassic period (not Triassic! I didn't make the prompt!). Anachronism aside, My design for it was fairly straightforward. At first I didn't quite know what to make of this creature, but after looking through many species of crustaceans and the like for color reference, something suddenly clicked:

Tokusatsu crab.

It's probably the least human-like of my Mesozoic Merms, but they're an interesting one to me.

Day 3: Eretmorhipis

Eretmorhipis is a marine reptile from the Triassic of China known for its broad, fan-like fins (its name literally means "oar fan").

You can clearly see where the influences lie, now :]

Her color scheme is personally one of my favorites. A little bit of Chinese water dragon, and a touch of lotus flowers, all wrapped up in an elegant assemblage of flowing fabrics, fans and bows.

Day 4: Cyamodus

While it looked like a turtle, Cyamodus was actually a Placodont, and a member of Sauropterygia (for non paleonerds, Sauropterygians included animals like Plesiosaurus). It was a durophagous, feeding on hard-shelled organisms like shellfish.

This one partly inspired by ancient Chinese armor, which some of them did use turtle shells! (I know it isn't a turtle, but close enough.) I still went in with the details though, including the hair tied in reference to the segmented shell, and all that damn armor detailing..

Day 5: Chinlea

Chinlea; named after the Chinle Formation, was a freshwater coelacanth, not unlike the modern day genus Latimeria, though it did go extinct by the end of the Triassic.

I was suggested by @temoti to give her a lil meat on her bones, and thus, we have ourselves a chubby Coelacanth for this week!

I'll be honest she might be one of my favorites I've done for this week. The colors, the personality, even the little freckles sprinkled on her.

Better watch out for that Saurichthys though..!

Day 6: Trematosaurus

Trematosaurs were large temnospondyl amphibians. Uniquely for amphibians, they were tolerant of saltwater, and as a result, one of the few fully-marine amphibians.

My design was.. certainly an interesting take on the animal. I was looking for a way to somehow integrate the creature's long snout as part of her design, and I eventually landed on a long cap. It took several redos of the sketching and color scheme before eventually deciding on a fire-bellied newt, and leading into a spunky streetwear-inspired girl by the end of it.

This month's designs were all originally planned to be 'one shots', but I like to think that she and the Chinlea gal would make a cute duo. A spunky, hotheaded gal and her more laid-back companion. Might make art of the two in the future, we'll see!

Day 7: Prosaurosphargis

Capping off the Triassic week, Prosaurosphargis was a fairly recent discovery (2023 at the time of writing).

It is a member of the Saurosphargidae (another family in the Sauropterygia) from the early Triassic period 250 MYA, only 1-2 million years after the Great Dying that wiped out

On to the Mermaid — or I suppose Man in this case, I don't have much to say, but I did reference leatherback turtles, and free divers. Oh, and I can't forget the cute little ammonite.

That's it for week 1's works. I'll soon get to posting the rest, and eventually all of them..! Once I get to finishing them...

[indigo-inktropy]

fish