Intelligent Design
 

I'm not really that much of a fan of cut-and-pastings in my Space Empires. I firmly believe the coolest user-created content is the stuff you can't find in a movie, or televsion series, or video game. It kind of saddens me that people are clamoring for Star Trek and B5 races and images and mods instead of using them as inspiration to create their own.
MM has given us a blank canvas for Sci-Fi beyond our wildest dreams (or, maybe, exactly what's in our wildest dreams)

Let's use it.

In that vein, I want to get something going relate to race portraits - in my eyes, one of the most overlooked parts of SEIV, and it seems like it's being given new importance in SEV.
Mr. Shane Watson's race portaits really set the bar high this time around, and they're all... well... alien-looking.
(my number one complaint about Star Trek and the like: new head-wrinkles does not a cool alien make)
I can't say I can reach Mr. Watson's level, but I've been painting for a while and I would like to try if I could produce a few of these for the community.
So I'd like to ask you for what you think an interesting alien ought to look like. How would it move? What would it eat? What kinds of senses would it have?
Think up an actual, viable alien, and I'll try to render it as best as I can.

To get this started, here's an in-progress save of the one I'm working on:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...051/scrins.jpg

(Too anthropomorphic, I think, but too late to turn back now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif )
Still needs a lot of work - bottom's unfinished, needs a background, and general shape and blending stuff. This one served to help me switch from PS:CS to PainterIX.
A Scrin, he's called. I have some ramblings and concept art that I'll post later, because it's getting late.

Let's get this going. I'm excited already.
(PS: The weekdays might be slow. School's gotta come first)
(PPS: Mods, if you don't want this thread image-heavy let me know and I'll try to knock together a web page for this stuff)

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Good idea. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I can do shipsets, but FORGET about the 2d stuff. I'll have to see if I can whip up some matching sets.

That image would actually work as-is, though more stuff certainly wouldn't hurt!

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Yep good looking picture. Your on to something here...there are plenty of artists, and plenty of modellers, and plenty of writers...all 3 can get together, and make some new races to add to the universe...

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Wow, great painting! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif You actually painted it with real paints and paintbrushes? Looks good!

When first I saw the title of this thread, I thought it was going to be a discussion about evolution, creationism and intelligent design and what should be taught in schools. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Nice work! I can see stuff like this being added in a future SE:V Image Pack!

Re: Intelligent Design
 

When I saw that picture I thought to myself "AHHH! ITS RENEGADE 13!" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

But seriously...that is great work! I wish I could draw/paint like that.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

He doesn't look too suited to technology usage though, kinda barbaric for a space-faring race IMO.

Grumpy today,
TT

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Wow...very nice indeed!

As far as "what he eats" I'd file that under whatever he wants. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Intelligent Design
 

He's got some fight'n hands and some bit'n teeth, good job.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Hey now, I never thought I was quite that vicious looking! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Looks great by the way. No way I could do anything that good http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Intelligent Design
 

I don't think anthropomorphic is that big of a problem. The general "humanoid" form of two walking limbs, two manipulating limbs, and a head where the sensory organs are concentrated, is actually a pretty efficient layout. I can imagine evolution tending to settle on some variation of it for most sapient species.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

I strongly doubt this.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Something similar happens on Earth already; its called convergent evolution. Very distanctly related species have very similar body plans, because that body plan is best suited for where they live.

Look at sharks and dolphins. The shape is nearly identical, yet you'd have to go back hundreds of millions of years before you'd find a common ancestor between them.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Still light years away planet might be more different than 2 region on the same planet.

The truth is I don't know what they would look like but I don't like the "human-centered" view that all who is sentient must look like us...

Re: going back hundreds of millions of years
 

Here's something that get's me tweaked:

I have two parents, and they each have two parents, and they each have two parents...If I go back only 33 generations, then I exceed the entire planet's population.

So that family tree heirarchy can't be a good model, because we're all inbreeds from just a few generations ago?

Sorta makes the evolutionary model a shallow pond, doesn't it?

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Calling it human-centric is irrelevant.

You could look at squirrels, who like to stand on two feet, hold a nut with two arms and chatter away with their sensory-and-processing organ laden head.

Heads:
- The speed of chemical signals is actually pretty slow. Keeping the brain close to the main sensors means faster reactions. This is also why reflexes don't go all the way to the brain, but just to the spine. You gotta get that hand out of the fire NOW, or you don't get to reproduce later.
For the brain to be near to more things, you have to concentrate those things in all the same place, thus forming a head.

- Appendages: Four is nice, but two are all you really need to get around, and using the other two for manipulators allows a lot more flexibility...
Raccoons, squirrels, and dogs use their front paws to manipulate stuff when they're not using them to run.
And those water-running lizards are pretty cool on two legs too.
Two manipulators are far better than just one, of course. Three dosen't add much more aside from juggling ability.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

I feel it is easy to explain the existing feature and find out how very practical there are and then conclude that it must be the optimum configuration and so the only one.

Yet I'm not so sure living being born in the mist of a Gaz Giant would have a head. They could be ball-like, with the "brain" located in the middle of it (better protected that our easy-to-shout heads), yet close to everything, with some kind of wings, or even only floaters whose weight can be chemically altered to navigate.

I mean that some living environment can be so different from ours.

Then of course if you find a planet similar to the earth, then maybe (and only maybe as so many parameters, like sun light, matter, gravity, atmosphere, ...) some aliens could be "similar" (I'm just thinking than on a oxygen-full planet one being could move by burning down oxygen while being of course fire proof.

Just my idea...

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Natural selection dosen't select against "easily shot" until after intelligence arrives on the planet. Or at least technology that originated from something intelligent.

If you've got a gas sac for floating, suspending the brain in the middle is not very good.
More efficient to attach it to the outside (it will naturally rotate to the bottom, like a gondola). Right near the mouth, and the feeding apparatus and any manipulators for getting said food.

Putting the sac on the end of a tail so the critter can lunge with its head to get food would be advantageous if the food is multicellular... filterfeeders won't need anything but shifting winds to blow the plankton-equivalent past them. Having multiple flotation sacs might be good if the environment occasionally pops them. It wouldn't help against predators, tho.

Floater predators could be avoided by climbing higher... the highest prey would survive, and the low/slow/weak ones would get eaten, thus driving both populations to float higher and higher.

Winged predators would be like woves on sheep. Not much that can be done except to live in herds. Face any adults outwards, maybe have some stinger tentacles to wave and discourage them unless they're actually hungry.
Although, floating higher could help somewhat here too... If it takes more work for the wingers to get up to your altitude from wherever they rest, then they'll go after the lower, easier prey.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

However, natural selection does select for the ability to withstand accident. Having the primary processing center of the human body located within the most protected part of the body just makes sense, as it would and does with other species. If the brain wasn't encased in a tough shell, a species probably wouldn't last too long.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

The operative word there being tough...
But still not bulletproof.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

I think it's very unlikely to expect all aliens to be humanoids, there are plenty of viable alternatives, and a few billion years of evolution on earth has produced a few nice examples.

Take the crab or the octopus for example, they have body structures that are very different from humans, and they don't even have a head that's seperate from the rest of their main body, they also have a number of very usefull manipulator limbs.

What if evolution had gone differently, it is a game of chance after all. What if crabs had evolved into warm-blooded creatures millions of years ago, and mammals had not? Would those crabs have evolved into having four limbs, and would they have started walking on their hind legs? unlikely. If you look at evolution it seems like that when a certain design is succesfull, it becomes hard to change. All insects have 6 limbs, and all mammals have 4, even though some insects and mammals may have started using those limbs in very different ways. If you would rerun evolution on earth the outcome would likely be very different, and whatever creature would have evolved intelligence, it would be unlikely to look like us.

Back on topic, great drawing Jarena, I'm really looking forward to the non-humanoids you can come up with http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Well, you are going underwater there, so that changes things, much like the gas giant.

Having a neck isn't the issue tho.
It dosn't matter how the head is attached, just that there is a gathering of the main sensors and the processing core for large creatures with slow chemical signaling.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

The crab design, or some simillar design (spiders with crab claws) would work on land too.

The gathering of the main sensors and processing core is a valid point though, some variation might be possible since aliens are unlikely to have evolved the same nervous system that we have.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Although I thought there is a size limitation on how big an exoskeleton can be before it couldn't support it's weight (at least in Earth's gravity. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif)?

Re: Intelligent Design
 

There is. Its the same reason you don't find 6-foot wide cells.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Thanks for the compliments, everyone. Hopefully I'll get better as I go along.

Fixed some stuff with the original picture, still a wip though. I was inspired by the Japanese style dragons. I imagine my creature evolved from something akin to an Earth Alligator or Kimodo Dragon. Eventually the spine bent upwards and tool-using hands formed (were refined?) to get at hard to reach prey. Brain size increased, and they went from there. Not sure if I like the musculature or the 5-fingered hands, but I think I might just finish the background and stick a fork in this one.
...maybe he should wear clothes? Jewelry? Tattoos? I'll have to think about his society a bit more, I think.

Henk: I've got some stuff in the sketchbook that I think you'll enjoy. I'll try to get my old scanner out later tonight and post it up.

As far as gas giants go, I want to create a race that is purely organic and hyper-evolutionary (kind of like the WH40k Tryanids) that grow their starships instead of building them (I never liked building Mineral Miners on Gas Giants). Maybe everything's orchestrated by city sized wandering hive-queens, who feed off the dense carbon-based gasses and photosynthesis from their trinary star system.

That, and I have an idea for a purely psychic race (that isn't a Protoss clone) that I want you guys to rip apart.
Expect an update soon!