#specposium

[jfs-worldbuilding-and-art]

Specposium's Spectember day 30: Your favourite spec critter!

I like many spec projects but one that i like the most is @iguanodont Birgworld here on Tumblr. The birgs are simply so charismatic and nice to draw so i used this as an exercise with gouache, i like it, in the middle of the process i hated it but it came out nicely after the lineart. Not sure about birg's color variety tho.

This was a nice spectember challenge and it was a good exercise at spec and art, looking forward for the next one. Back to the normal posts now.

[jfs-worldbuilding-and-art]

Specposium's Spectember day 29: Speculative biome

As i said on day 19: Commensalism there is an unique biome only found in a specific area in a specific continent of Cavat. There lives a species of eusocial (day 7: kin selection) alien that is an ecosystem engineer.

This one species farms huge monolith-like "fungi", these fungi require lots of dead matter to grow to such heights. So the aliens domesticated a species of grass-like plant, it grows very fast and was selectively bred to grow even faster. The plants are constantly cropped out by the aliens to feed the fungi.

The area where the fungi grows is around entrances to the vast system of tunnels of the colony, a colony has atleast three queens but colonies with more queens are not uncommon and so these "farms" can be kilometers wide like what is shown in the picture in the bottom left.

The aliens are very protective about their fungi but not as much about the "food of their food", the plants, what allows for some herbivore diversity in this biome such as the alien from day 19.

[jfs-worldbuilding-and-art]

Specposium's Spectember day 28: Spec at the cell level

Speculative unicelular organisms are kind of tricky because there is a high chance that your spec microbe is a thing in real life already.

Here we have a gigantic algae that creates a membrane that is filled with aether, making it float. The membrane is translucent so sunlight can reach the algae and so it can photosynthesize. A common aerophytoplanktonic organism in the skies of Aerrhea.

[jfs-worldbuilding-and-art]

Specposium's Spectember day 27: Revamp the dinosauroid

The dinosauroid was a dinosaur species created by Dale A. Russell in 1982. Russell theorized that if a dinosaur such as Stenonychosaurus had not perished in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, its descendants might have evolved to fill the same ecological niche as humans. Or in other words sapient dinosaurs. It was very anthropocentric and had a human-like bodyplan, something doubtful.

So here we have my take on the dinosauroid, a small theropod with digging habits. It is very smart because it has a complex social system and also need to overcome its prey in their burrows and its predators. It has lost its arms as they weren't useful for digging instead evolving robust claws and a short body.

[jfs-worldbuilding-and-art]

Specposium's Spectember day 26: Break a biological record

Today i had to break a biological record, that means i needed to make an organism that was in the lines of "largest ever", "smallest ever", "longest ever" and such.

So here we have the longest snail ever, the giraffe snail, it gains its name by having a long "neck" that it uses to reach vegetation, it also has strong tentacles for the same purpose.

It is a record breaker because it is more or less 30 centimeters long, the biggest snail alive today is roughly 20 centimeters. It is from Batrachiterra 5 Millions of Years since seeding.

[jfs-worldbuilding-and-art]

Specposium's Spectember day 25: Ontogenetic niche shift

Ontogenetic niche shift is when animals have different niches throughout their lives, example would be some frogs that have herbivorous tadpoles and become carnivorous in adulthood.

Here we have a semi-aquatic species that starts its life as a swift "fish" predator, it has a long beak and short pedipalps and antennae to reduce drag but as they grow up they become heavy durophagous with a strong beak and pedipalps used to crack shells open and remove them from the sea floor respectively. The antennae also grow with time and help it navigate in the deep sea in search of food.

This species has lost its eyestalks for hydrodinamics, now the eye works more like the ones of chameleons or jumping spiders.

[jfs-worldbuilding-and-art]

Specposium's Spectember day 23: Camouflage/crypsis

Crypsis is when animals actively try to hide from predators via nocturnality, fossoriality, mimicry and camouflage.

Here we have an alien that has the texture of the bark of a tree, in the same way as yesterday's post these aliens can change their color.

[jfs-worldbuilding-and-art]

Specposium's Spectember day 22: Interspecific display

Interspecific display is any display that is meant to target other species such as threat displays, prey lures, distraction displays and aposematism.

Here we have a centipede-like (ecology-wise) alien that has a venomous bite, when threatened it will display flashy colors using either chromatophores like in cephalopods or using salt crystals in the skin like chameleons.