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ChatlaninKyr — Sketches
Published: 2017-06-28 19:56:48 +0000 UTC; Views: 1429; Favourites: 6; Downloads: 2
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Description
Decided to upload some recent (and one not-so-recent) digital sketches.The top left one was made about a year ago. It was supposed to be part of a drawing illustrating a couple of aspects of Ziants' global species improvement program, but was never finished. Now the design of the Ziant on the left is outdated anyway. Ironically, the heavily modified sophont on the right is unaffected by the change of the species' basic appearance and is still "canon". The creature between them is a laboratory animal bred from Ziant DNA to be as biologically similar to its creators as possible. It is used as an obligatory field test of all intended modifications of the basic genetic line. Since the testing is supposed to detect all possible negative side effects, including those which may manifest decades later, these animals have unnaturally long lifespan. The one depicted here may well be older than both Ziants combined.
On the top there's a relatively recent Ziant basic design, better than the original one, but still scrapped as being somewhat too humanoid. It may remain as one of modified subspicies though.
The top right one is a creature drawn in the process of further revision.
A dragon is, well, just a random dragon.
The bottom left one is a concept of Maxwell's demon — a being that can violate the second law of thermodynamics. While entropy manipulation potentially have lots of interesting applications, the one depicted here is relatively simple — the ability to hover by constantly heating air under a half-spherical object. I guess this creature would fit well into some fantasy setting.
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Comments: 19
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Cant say im familiar with the concept of maxewells demon
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In simple words (because I won't pretend to know the mathematics of it anyway), the second law of thermodynamics, among other things, states that heat will always spontaneously transfer from hotter to colder object until they reach the same temperature. We can extract energy from this process, but we will always require more energy than that if we want to transfer the same heat back to previously hot object, or transfer even more heat from it to the other object.
Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment that is supposed to violate the second law of thermodynamics: by sorting fast (i.e. hot) and slow (i.e. cold) molecules during their spontaneous motion, the demon can again make one object, or, in this case, volume of air, hot, and the other one cold. In theory, it would allow to create a perpetual motion machine. Say, you have a limited volume of hot air which you used to rotate turbine and produce work; then the air behind the turbine becomes hot again all by itself, while the air outside becomes a bit colder (proportionally to the volumes), and you can use it to produce more work — all without spending any energy.
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I think I follow, so its that if you could get the molecules to be where you wanted them, you'd be able to transfer energy without losing it?
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Yes, that seems to be the idea, if I didn't get anything wrong.
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I love all of these, especially the Maxwell's Demon! It's great to see more from you.
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Thank you, Doug
Well, Maxwell's Demon is probably the most original of these concepts, and I really like the way it turned out too. A pity it can't exist in I.S. universe — it needs a world like your Erenverse, but I don't have such setting of my own.
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You're welcome! 
It's a neat design and the actual concept is one I had never heard of before. Definitely something I enjoyed reading about.
Well, the Erenverse is more expansive than I've let on, so I'm sure these types of beings do exist in some corner of that iteration of the galaxy!
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They are all very nice! the one to the top right remind me of theropod dinosaurs.
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Thanks
Yes, sadly, by trying to make Ziants look less like Earth organisms by reducing their similarity to humans, I eventually turned them into alien theropods. I guess it can't be helped.
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Your welcome ^^_^^
Well, dinosaurs are cool, even if it makes them a bit less alien. It could fit as a Ziant body-modification or another species though.
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Actually, I have to admit, the current final version of Ziants is not much different from that creature... So, let it be space dinosaurs 
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Yeah, I'm going the convergent evolution excuse too for the strangely familiar aliens. Officially at least.
Myself, I think the current look of the Ziants and their variaty of modification is pretty grounded, at the very least from a story-telling perspective; they are definitely non-human, but at the same time similar enough that we can recognise them.
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The fact that you think so means a lot, thank you
In retrospect, maybe I made their appearance relatively familiar unconsciously to make their modifications more apparent to everyone including myself. I mean, if a creature is already totally alien, modifications that are drastic to it will look like minor cosmetic changes to us. Not to mention the fact that coming up with them would be much more difficult.
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^^_^^
Yeah, it's possible. if they are sufficiently alien, those modifications might seem like individual differences instead (except the obvious ones, like extra legs, arms, and wings).
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Very interesting sketches. I like your designs and the way you perform them.
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