New Species Portraits! (Starks and Pennies)

 

After three thousand years, I've finally redone the species portraits! ...Or, well, most of them. Pennies and starks have some spiffy new pictures on the Platform website. They're also completely image-mapped, meaning that you can hover over each character in the images to see their names, and click on them to view their biography, if they have one. You can see them here! It was fun to get to draw Caeder's domum after all this time, and it's always a joy to draw baby Blik and Vera. Who doesn't want to see baby Blik and Vera? Humans, strelks, maskers, and kangies still need updated pictures, but that's for another day... Just these ones took way longer than they should've, ahah. 

(Also, dang these pictures are tiny -- clicking them is probably best if you want to actually read the text.)

In the meantime, I've also uploaded a new MAP part to my Youtube channel (which can be watched here), featuring Janus and their wife Solei! It has a more detailed explanation in the video description.

The reason that I've been so busy for a while (beyond school work and actual work) should soon become apparent... A new video should be out later this month! I hope you all like it. : )

The Bird in Good Humor

 

Toying around with some new art of Caeder! It's been a while since I've drawn an updated fullbody of this guy, and he's gotten significantly beefier since last time. I also got to show off the new leg and arm updates for pennies, which is exciting! I love that talon-y look they've got to them, and they're now the only major Platform species to be digitigrades, which sets them apart from the rest a little. Whatever my reasons for drawing him, though, it looks like he's enjoying himself.

A fun fact! I posed him to obviously be sitting on something... And then didn't draw any background at all. So it looked like he was just floating in a void on his rump, which was a little odd. Hence the oval thing in the background now -- at least it looks like there's some sort of ledge he's sitting on. Messy, but effective.

Also, I tried a new method of drawing peacock trains. And while I think it looks alright in the end, oh my gosh, it was incredibly hard to draw. I spent five hours just on his train. I know I'm a slow artist, but even for me... Dang. 

Platform Site Update

 

Aaaand the updated Platform website is done!!! Complete with a new layout, updated content, and a URL that actually makes sense! Let's celebrate with this creepy creepy infographic I made about Sehens.

This all stems from the fact that old Google sites is, sadly, going away, and I really hate the look of the new service. So, I've gone through all my old Google sites and deleted the ones that I no longer use (with many a tear...) But the Platform is something that I still use, so I needed to find a new place for it. So I tried out Wordpress, and I think I was able to make something even better than the old version! It looks much cleaner. It'll still be sad to get rid of the old site, though -- so much of the Platform world-building was written for that site, since I was fifteen and writing whatever came to the top of my head just to fill space (and only later came to flesh it out). Ahh, youth.

I also went and updated a whole lot of pages while doing this, since so many of them (looking at you, cities page...) were painfully outdated or very bare-bones. So, the cities, religions, and culture pages have been completely overhauled, and the species and Sehen pages have received some major updates, too! All this updating really made the site transfer an undertaking, though -- it took me almost two weeks to get everything ready. But now it is! Yay.

My wrists hurt. A lot of these updated pages are long...

Rimewell

Rimewell, lookin' extra spiffy! The guy deserved an update, considering that the last reference I drew for him is from 2017. His design is one of my favorites! I love plating, lots of arms, spikes, suits, teeth, big ol' ears... And he has 'em all! Very fashionable.

He's also one of the few Platform characters not to wear both a shirt and pants. I think we can forgive him... That'd be a lot of arm holes...

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. 

Some Updated Character References

"It’s Skylette! A giant warrior bird queen, for those who aren’t familiar with her. She’s the same species as Cider: a pennie, from Rett. I thought her bio picture could use a redo, so I made a new one! I’ve got a lot better at drawing muscles since then – not perfect by any means, but better than before."

"From left to right: Terrak, Janus, and Nobles.

I had some time, so I revamped a few character portraits that were either super old or just didn’t look quite right. They all look much better now! More… Them-ish.

(It’s strange to draw Terrak in color, now, after drawing him in black-and-white for so long while working on Things with Wings.)"

 - 2018 Brennan


Originally two separate posts, but I merged them together! I also made the pictures super small, so just click on 'em if you wanna appreciate their beauty.