Alien Species Concepts

Still not pictures from today, but much more recent! And all these descriptions will be modern! Exciting!

I just really like drawing aliens. These guys are a part of that! From left to right, top to bottom, we have Alriah, Exe, Sammy, Koteroi, and Tylingo! The crew of a small space ship from a sci-fi story that I've sorta been wanting to write since I was a kid. Haven't gotten to it yet, but maybe I will someday!

A fun fact -- everyone on the bottom row is actually based on creatures I made in Spore when I was young! Anyone remember Spore? I remember Spore. I've read in modern times that most people didn't like it very much, but my gosh, I loved that game. That game was a massive part of my life for several years, and got me into both video games and aliens, and I'm sure it also helped instill a desire to get better at character design, 3D work, and biology. As for the top row, Alriah is from a short story (which was basically just a skin for an exposition dump on the fundamental physics of pulsars) that I wrote in middle-school science. Exe, on the other hand, is just a big photosynthetic dinosaur that I came up with one day. 

The Quetzel

"I… I just really like species-creation, okay?

Anyway, I bought Stellaris from Steam about a day ago, and the second that I opened up the “create custom empire” function I knew it was love. I can’t get enough of stuff like this… I spent two hours in that creator before I even started the actual game. Naturally, as any sane person would do, I had to flesh it out a bit on my own, outside the game. So here we have the Quetzel – my arid planet-native, Irenic Bureaucracy-having aliens that I’m currently taking for a spin around a fictional galaxy.

They look like this in-game, and that portrait really is much prettier than what I drew, but hey, I was bored and didn’t want to spend more than an hour or two on it. Mostly because I wanted to get back to actually playing the game. Let’s see if the actual game-play is as good as the creator… It’s gonna be tough competition."

 - 2018 Brennan

"Lowpoly Koteroi"

"IT’S DONE! My first 3D model. It took so long. I wish I could get an awesome-looking, high-quality render of it, but… I can’t seem to do that, since I’d want to render it without shadow at all, but I have no idea how to do with that. So have a cruddy screenshot! (Seriously, though, if anyone knows how to make a blender render without shadows, I’d highly appreciate any advice!)

If anybody’s curious, the handsome devil I chose to model here is Koteroi, a character of mine."

 - 2018 Brennan


I have a nice PLA print of them sitting on my desk as I write this. : )

And even though the little plot I've been working on that they're a part of has been in the works for multiple years, I still haven't figured out a definitive name for it.

"Cricket"

"So here's a little alien concept for you! I love designing non-bipedal or invertebrate body plans for sentient species. There are a few things you've gotta have if you want a sentient species: senses, the ability to move around in the environment efficiency, a way to manipulate its environment with precision, a large brain (or brain-like thing) and a thing that protects that, and a way to communicate with other species. Now, human bodies can do all that in ways we're familiar with, but how could another species do that? That's what I like to think about and figure out. It's like a puzzle!

Anyway, this critter (who I'm calling Cricket) is based more off of starfish and slugs. They're normally quadrupeds, but can stand up on two legs (or three, if they use their tail as another limb, which they often do). Those antennae up there are for smelling, which these guys do very well, and they can secrete a substance from their tongue that encourages cell growth! How 'bout that. (That last bit might be less than scientifically accurate, but hey, it's cool.)

Forgive the somewhat sketchy line-art in this one, it started out as a sketch and wasn't meant to be colored or shaded. By the time I got to coloring it, I really didn't feel like redrawing the lines to be neater. Or fixing the color overflow. Luckily, since her colors are so light, it's sorta hard to see. But it's there."

 - 2016 Brennan


For the record, I still love doing this.