On this day five years ago, I posted art online for the first time. It was on my (now deleted) DA account, and I didn’t post it anywhere else. Today, I decided to redraw that piece. (Original under the cut)
Team sports are quite important in pyotab society. This individual is a referee holding a rattle (their version of a whistle). The geometric design on his “mask” is meant to represent a sports match: the squares are players on a field, the line is the divide between the teams, and the triangle is the “ball” (shaped like half a football, roughly pyramid-ish) in the local team’s court.
[Pasted alt text: A digital art piece of a pyotab, an alien shaped like a bipedal dinosaur. He has dark red scales (drawn as skin), a barrel-shaped torso with one visible pair of eyes on the side and another eye on the chest, a long proboscis “neck” with a white bone “mask” for a face, and three bifurcated fingers on his hands. He is rearing up and holding a very oddly-shaped rattle in his left hand. There is a geometric design drawn on his “mask”, and a thin pink necklace around his neck. He is standing on a mound of dirt. Behind him is a chain link fence, with black fields and a red sky with a brighter red sun beyond it. End ID.]
This was the original pyotab design. As you can see, I’ve significantly changed their anatomy. This was for the best.
[Pasted alt text: A pencil drawing of an earlier version of the design described above. The alien is more humanoid, with a fully upright posture and no tail. His toes are also bifurcated and end in hooves, and he has a sort of “dewclaw” on both hands. He has short spines protruding from his shoulders and scales visibly drawn on his upper arms. Two pairs of short stalk eyes extend from his neck, and another eye is visible on his lower jaw. He is standing half off the mound, one leg bent up onto it. The rattle has three handles, one for each bifurcated finger pair, and the geometric design on his “mask” is also different. He is also wearing a metal band around his lower torso, hanging from his shoulders by suspenders. End ID.]
Two pyotabs boating. One of them is pretending to be a heron-like predator common in the region.
Worldbuilding stuff under the cut.
The pyotab home planet formed with a high amount of sulphide minerals in its crust. As a result, sulphuric acid makes up a significant portion of the liquid on its surface: the night side, twilight zone, and outer parts of the day side have a mixture of sulphuric acid and water (the violent exothermic reaction of those two compounds usually doesn’t come into play as they are naturally found in the mixed state), while most of the day side has just sulphuric acid (as its temperatures are above the boiling point of water) or no liquid at all. Accordingly, life on the planet uses a water / sulphuric acid solution as a solvent.
Pyotabs are from the outer edges of the day side, close to the twilight zone but not quite there. Their optimal temperature range is 80-90 C°.
If you look closely, the “fish” have a similar overall body plan to pyotabs: they have eyes on the underside of the thorax-analogous region of the body, and the eel-like creature has its gills on the upper back side of its body like how pyotabs have their breathing openings above their hips. (The tadpole-like creatures breathe through their skin.)
Pyotabs usually don’t wear clothing, finding it uncomfortable (in part because many arrangements of clothing would obscure their vision to some extent.)
The yellow box contains collapsible fishing rods and other gear.
While I'm still on my linguistics / IPA kick, here are the pronunciations of some of my alien species + location + character names (the ones that can be represented with IPA, anyway).
Txentx: Txentx produce speech sounds in a cartilaginous box at the join of the breathing tubes, with a complex internal structure analogous to that of the human mouth (with a mobile protuberance as a "speech tongue" and small ridges as "teeth"). "Bilabial" sounds are made by "popping" the nostrils, "labiodental" sounds by partially closing them, and "nasals" by horizontally contracting part of the voice box. They have no way of making uvular, pharyngeal, or glottal consonants, or any retroflexes (the "speech tongue" isn't flexible enough for that). They also don't usually enunciate vowels in full.
Txentx: /təks.ən.təks/
Gexge: /gəks.gə/
Taigex: /taɪ.gəks/
Sezten: /səzt.ən/
Yaxtan: /jɪ̈ks.tɪ̈n/
Kurex: /kᵿ.rəks/
Tetet: /tət.ət/
Kemtan: /kəm.tɪ̈n/
Reithan: /ɹeɪ.θɪ̈n/
Kaxtege: /kɪ̈ks.tə.gə/
Gytege: /gjə.tə.gə/
Vutege: /vᵿ.tə.gə/
Pyotabs: Pyotabs produce speech sounds in the mouth, like humans. Their lips are short and not as mobile, so they substitute bilabials with labiodentals, but otherwise it's fairly similar.
Their ancestors were partial scavengers. While they've evolved into almost exclusively hunters, they still have the ability to eat carrion. Some cultures purposely leave meat to rot for a while as a sort of delicacy, comparable to blue cheese.
Surprisingly, they're one of the sophonts whose anatomy allows them to pronounce human vocal languages. I haven't yet worked out the details of that anatomy, though.
Since they don't experience a day / night cycle, their circadian rhythm is entirely internal and not influenced by light levels or other external changes. They have a very precise sense of time.
I've been playing with the idea of them having a ridiculously male-biased sex ratio (something like 6:1), resulting in most cultures having polyandry as the norm.
They're from a tidally locked hot eyeball planet. The combination of only being able to inhabit a narrow strip of their planet, being large carnivores, and not having much interest in space travel / settlement makes them one of the lowest-population sophonts in the Celestial Community.
[Image description: A small pencil sketch of an alien on lined paper. They resemble a bipedal dinosaur with long arms, several eyes arranged around the torso, and a bone “mask” covering the upper surface of the “head”. They are standing up and looking upwards in confusion as a drop of water splashes on their mask, and another one falls above them. End ID.]
Basic pyotab anatomy sketch. The torso should be a bit longer, and the arms slightly further behind the eyes, but I like this doodle so I’m posting it anyway.
They would be able to move around on all fours if their wrists were stronger and stiffer. As is, it’s uncomfortable for them to put their weight on their arms.
Pasted image description under the cut:
[Image description: A pencil sketch of a pyotab, an alien shaped like a bipedal dinosaur with long arms (would easily touch the ground if not held folded). Their eyes are at the front of the torso — a vertical pair is visible in front of the shoulders, another pair where the sternum would be (always looking down), and a single eye at the back of the neck (always looking up). Instead of a face, the top of their head and upper jaw are covered with a “mask” of bone. End ID.]
