Do you have any tips on designing an alien species? I fell utterly in love with your Voltron (specifically Galra) art and fics, and I want to try designing a species of my own to write about but... kinda have no idea where to start 😅 This also feels like a big ask and a very broad question, so sorry about that!
omg thank you okay 🙈 no worries, i’ll do my best XD
first off, disclaimers: i haven’t designed much alien species specifically, so if you want to get into the really nitty gritty stuff like ‘but what if they’re not a carbon-based lifeform’ i’m the wrong person to ask
i rarely start “from scratch”? (i mean, in fairness, i don’t think anyone ever does 100%, but, y’know)
SO.
if you Are starting from scratch, sort of, I think step 1 is figuring out in what space you want to play in
figure out the basic category: they’re not even carbon-based (clouds of electrical energy! gas planet but it’s a person! etc.) vs classically humanoid (bipedal, lateral symmetry, head+limbs+torso) vs CreatureTM, etc. sky’s the limit
anything more specific you think is cool or interesting. personally i tend to do a lot of ‘based on x animal(s)’ and then branch out bc there’s just SO MUCH WEIRD COOL SHIT on our planet alone
like it doesn't have to be super big or specific or well-thought out! just Anything so you have a handhold, y'know. "i want them to have movable spine spikes"<= there you go, that's enough
literally don’t worry about being ~original~, pick what concept makes your brain go Neat I Like It
next!
find a reference point: you can’t do creation in a vacuum, that’s just how it is. e.g. you want a humanoid species but they have a hivemind and spawn clones to reproduce? look at mushrooms and how they do shit, plants that propagate via scions, stuff like that
what do you know a lot about? (or even just a little) what do you think is really interesting? use it. all of it.
like my scientific background is largely reproductive biology, so i’m always like, OKAY HOW DO THEY REPRODUCE? if they have sexes, do they have di/tri/whatever morphism and what does it look like? how does that interact with the culture? and also i go slightly unhinged about fictional monster reproductive systems. mindflayers and darkspawn i’m looking at you
like when i write dragons in my own settings, they usually have Very obvious sexual dimorphism (tri, i guess, bc there’s two kinds of male morphs)
but they don’t have a cultural concept of GenderTM. bc i think that’s fun and interesting (especially when they interact with the humans, bc those Have gender concepts
you DO NOT HAVE TO copy any real-world functions etc one-to-one. actual biology and physics and chemistry is really interesting and cool but you Don’t have to stick to it religiously, just use it as building blocks and jumping off points, don’t let it break an idea you really like
(of course, if you Want to make your species as biologically/physically-feasible as possible, you Can do that! that can also be really fun! but it’s not a requirement)
literally so much of the culture/species-building i do is ~just~ “i think it’s cool”
…and then think about what that thing could/would imply for other aspects of the biology, or the culture(s)
(see our movable spine spikes guys. are the spines decorative? defense? something completely different? is the motion subconscious or like a prehensile tail? are colorful spikes seen as something positive, negative, secret third thing? does the appearance matter at all?)
like i slap milk lines on any mammalian species i can bc i just like them! they’re a cool design thing! human boobs aren’t The Normal Kind, they’re just a version of mammary tissue
…so galra, being a very varied species, have different ‘lengths’ of milk lines, they’re all about Efficiency so they only develop mammary tissue when it’s actively needed, etc
there’s a skink species that has green blood (several actually, iirc), even though they have the same haemoglobin that we do. i thought that was super cool! so now elves in one of my stories have red blood, that turns green under [redacted] circumstances
…and there’s a whole cultural sacredness around it, bc it’s a Very visible change, and occurs rarely, and often in old experienced people
sooo, uh. i hope that helps?
