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elytracephalid
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# Statistics
Favourites: 2108; Deviations: 87; Watchers: 219
Watching: 76; Pageviews: 27090; Comments Made: 651; Friends: 76
# Comments
Comments: 239
You have such original ideas, it's not fair!! But you do have great art as well.
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There are many ways to have inspiration for an alien biology. Firstly, make sure you understand the biological processes of evolution and keep in mind that whatever creature or sophont you illustrate must have somehow come about to function efficiently on their native planet, along with all the other contempory organisms. Fortunantly, there are ways for practically ANY shape to evolve under the right conditions and chances. One way to do it is a tip I myself learned for the great Nemo Ramjet. Many of his "aliens" are alternative biologies of earth. His most recent deviation (which I can see in your faves--the spiders) are prime examples. Take a "lesser" creature like a spider, and mold it into an advanced new phylum of living things. What if some other creature of the cambrian period became the ancestor of dominante land life? Imagine further evolution of the armored fish, conodonts, trilobites, ayeshaia, halkieria, lichenoides, or opabinia. Future evolution of cephalops also has many possibilities. Sometimes you can take a characteristic of some creature of earth, and apply it to a different lifsyle. Take the way male deep-sea angler fish fuse to the females for mating, and try to imagine a flying creature or a grazing animals with that sort of breeding method. Remember that the enviornment shapes orgnisms to a great extent as well. What about high gravity, or low gravity lfe. Or perhaps a very think, or very thin atmosphere. That sort of development requires some basic understanding of physics as well. How do think atmosperes form?--high preassure, geologic activity, large planet/fast orbit for high gravity. And what sort of developments may occur in the creatures of a think atmosphere? Think air carries sound faster, so it may be a sonar-based sense, like Barlowe's Darwin IV. I often try to combine characteristics of many strange creatures of earth into some novel body form. Imagine a cross between a gecko, an octopus, a starfish, a spider, and a flying squrril. Or aybe a cross of a wholly mammoth, a moth, a hermit crab, a squid, and a sunflower. Or you could come up with an idea fom combining an adjective, a noun, and a verb, like the COW series. Firey-fish-stomper; armored-jelly-poker; and so on... I even get ideas from inanimate objects. Try to think of a creature derived from your ipod headphones. Or the hose of a vaccum (that is how my dk'dk came about). I once had an idea from looking at a powdering hairbrush at some store at the mall. So you see, there hints of what could be out there all around, just make sure to notice those details...
Hope this helps.
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"Well excuse me for having enormous flaws that I don't work on!"--Homer Simpson
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Yikes, that was huuuuuuugggeee!!!!!
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Oh, and don't forget there are other life solvents! Sure, things may evolve in water, but there are also sulfer, ammonia, methane, hydrogen, flourine, hydrochloric acid, butane, propane, and many other hydrocarbons. And remember the range of worlds, from super-jovian to water world to europan-type world to countless others. And keep in mind the STAR! Red dwarfs, yellows, blue giants, red giants, greens, binary systems, trinary systems, also remnants such as white dwarfs, black dwarfs, black holes, white holes, pulsars, and neutron stars. AND the exact nature of the planet; lithosphereic density, number of moons, position in galaxy, type of galaxy, time of formation/general position in universe (older means more heavy elements, younger possibly stronger weak-force). AND (phew), silicon, boron, pseudocarbon, hydrogen, gaseous, dissolved, weak-force, nuclear-force, gravitational, takyon, magnetic, covalent, and energy-based life forms are also possible (if you know under what circumstances they may arise).
Again, hope this inspires you, and thanks for the fav!
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"Well excuse me for having enormous flaws that I don't work on!"--Homer Simpson
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This information will be really helpful!
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hey, thanks for more 
I took some time to go through your gallery, honestly you show some serious quality and promise considering your age, the anatomy of your creatures is especially strong and obviously well thought out. I think you'll have no problems finding your way as a concept artist.
With that in mind... added to watch 
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You're welcome
And thank you very much!
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Your doing some awesome work! You have a good sense of dynamics and shape!
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thanks for the
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ah, I recieved myoppy of 'the alien life of wayne barlowe' today, and I now know of the painting from which you took your name! XD
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Ah yes! Such a bizarre alien isn't it?
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acctually, I find it to be one of Barlowe's less imaginative designs, mainlybecause of its humanoid shape... and it's eye. of course, it is still quite awesome, the vestigil face covers were an ingenious idea, and I find it interesting tagine all of those stalked sensory organs wrythering about...
in the next few days, I should be recieving my coppies of Barlowe's inferno and Brushfire in the mail, I am quite happy! viewing images on the interned cannot compare to viewing them on paper.
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sorry, I meant 'My Coppy', not 'myoppy'
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your work is very inspiring-
i need to draw more creatures, as you do yourself.
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I demand more finished work! *watches*
Srsly. Love what you got!
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Thanks for the fave on my parasitic trilobites!
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