JCC [Image heavy]A thread for art: See note on page 776

Mother Barbarian by DrMistyTang



Perfect Writer Barbarian by DrMistyTang

"Mother Barbarian’s adorable Wife. <3 <3

In Barbarian culture you’re the Wife if you were the one kidnapped/asked to be the kidnapper/askers mate. It’s a title~"


Barbarian Joe by DrMistyTang

 

https://www.deviantart.com/lorddoomhammer/art/LANDER-Backstory-Video-817792742

 

Ktak avians by darth-biomech

Spoiler

"Did that short time ago for a challenge. These are Ktak, avian aliens, one of the core members of the Alliance.
Originating from a small world with a fraction of standard gravity, but thick atmosphere, those are somewhat unique sapient being that managed to retain fully functional flight ability.
Despite they being second species encountered by the raharrs, and third core member of the Alliance (those who were present and have participated in the creation of it; the ony two other species, besides raharrs, that have such status, are Sashli and unnamed yet civilization), ktak do not have very extensive presense on the galactic scene. Being able to fly have its drawbacks - ktak are extremely claustrophobic. Space flight is a constant test of will, and majority of them decide to travel only if it is absolutely necessary, and preferably in cryosleep the entire time. Their ships thus are automated to a ludicrous degree, and sometimes, despite not having AI crewmembers (reasons below), acting almost independently.

Ktak are, despite being fairly advanced, highly religious people. Their religion is monotheistic and worships the Creator Of All That Is. They do not view Ancients as any sort of holy beings, concidering them to be just a precursor species have no greater importance to the fate of the universe than anybody else. Due to their spiritual beliefs, they consider every person to have soul. This, though, does not extend over to synthetic minds - AIs and Uploaded like Azinarsi. While ktak see them as sapient persons and individuals with rights, they view such beings as "Lamentable Ones" - without a soul they are incomplete and thus must have enduring pitiful unfulfilling existence without a future and ultimate goal. AIs are not allowed to work on ktak worlds, and any research of either AI or mind copying is prohibited as well.
They have very strained relations with Iss, since their uncanny resemblance to a now extinct predator of their homeworld, who hunted prehistoric ktak, and remained a vicious threat until the invention of gunpowder (which, ultimately, lead to it's extinction). This does not spills in all out xenophobia, but for ktak any interaction with an iss is a source of constant stress, and in some cases it even resulted in severe panic attacks.

Ktak do not have feathers, instead their bodies covered in short soft silk-like hairs that significantly reduce air drag. Avians have acute hearing, and their vocal cords are quite complex and capable of replicating almost any sound (Quite similar to Earth's lyrebird), which granted them fame of great singers and musicians. Ktak typically have wingspan of around 5 meters.
Ktak can fly in earthlike environment, or at least soar, but it is exhausting to them, and most likely they would be unable to maintain more than half a hour of active flapping flight (on their home world they can stay in the skies pretty much all day)."

Biomechanical species by darth-biomech

Spoiler

"This is azinarsi - civilization that exist in the Alliance world, but is not part of the Alliance itself. These guys are on the top of setting's totem pole in terms of technological progress (if we count out the Ancients and some other extinct civilizations). Their technology is on that level, where it stops being mechanism ans starts behaving like alive organism. Not biotechnologies though, make no mistake here, these guys are completely synthetic in nature. The members of the species are on a post-singular level, being transcended Uploaded digital-dwelling beings.

The thing on picture is their Encounter Body, which they use to interact with physical world. Nobody knows if it is resembles their past biological bodies at all, and they don't tell. The entire galaxy is drooling all over their tech (especially the uploading of a consciousness, since nobody yet managed to do that correctly, despite numerous attempts), but they refuse to share any of it, claiming that the other civilizations are basically not grown up enough yet to play with these toys. Their region of space is similarly off-limits for any organic species, although they do take in refugee AIs.
They possess only a few planets, mostly keeping to themselves and slowly building Matrioshka Brains around their stars to house Virtual Realities for their ever multiplying digital population (if you count each "fork" of a person a separate being, then their population far exceeds the entirety of the known galaxy, measuring somewhere around thousands of trillions). Some of them like to roam the galaxy, studying and exploring the other cultures, but it is relatively an nonexistent minority of their population, since their virtual realities ever change so rapidly, that being away even for a month means that almost everything you knew about your home will already be severily outdated. Those who roam the galaxy are basically exiles, not planning on returning in their society in the foreseable future, voluntarily limiting their perception speed to that of the organic species.

When I was designing these guys, I was thinking that my setting is too much even-leveled in terms of technology - everyones is either on the same level, or falling behind. So I needed to create a civilization that exists somewhere inbetween the average tech and the Ancients (but still way closer to main races rather than to the Ancients, of course). Idea of a biomechanical species came by itself, as decent example of exotic superscience, while not being so super that it falls into realms of abstractions and "how the f* it's doing what it's doing? On that matter, WHAT it is ever doing?!" exclamations. I tried to not fall to the pitfalls of biomechanical designs where you got either plain cyborgs, something insectoid-like, or something Gigerian with his "liquid metal and tentacles" style.
Did I succeed?)"

Insectoid Alien by darth-biomech

Spoiler

"Another species for my setting. These insectoid aliens meet Alliance very rough initially, almost starting war with raharrs over cultural differences and wrong initial impression when they make first contact with the raharr colony ("Oh god, giant creepy-crawlies!" "Oh god, fleshy inside-out monsters!" *fight ensues, insectoids overreact a bit and blast raharr colony from orbit*), but with help from sashli, who made contact with insectoids too and wasn't very squirmy about them, due to total lack of any significant insects in their homeworld history to be instinctively afraid of.
Sashli managed to get both sides to negotiate peace with each other, and some time later insectoids become official Alliance members. They are still touchy about that first contact catastrophe, and constantly trying to make up to raharrs for that mistake.

So, besides their exoskeletal appearance, there is actually very little of actual arthopod anatomy in them. Their main eyes are NOT faceted, and have very good resolution.
The main setback of large arthropods on Earth is their crude breathing system - which is passive and consists of small tubes that lead oxygen directly in the cells. Insectoids got past that to true lungs and oxygenated blood, plus their exoskeleton quite sturdier than chitin, with larger amount of silica and iron in it.
Their hands may look like having not enough dexterity for complex tool-making, but they are kinda like fly's pulvilli, being able to wrap around the object and grip via Van der Waals force (Like gecko's toes) and are actually pretty good at holding almost anything. Although they DO somewhat less convenient than true fingers - fine arts and manipulations are significantly harder to do, so majority of their stuff can feel crude at a first glance. But this isn't true, of course - although simple and minimalist, their designs are refined for absolute optimal performance.
They can consciously manipulate their core temperature, which make them essentially both cold-blooded and warm-blooded at the same time, depending on the actual temperature of the surroundings. They communicate by your average "screech"-type of sounds expected from insrectoid aliens, that made by rubbing their second pair of legs against body or each other. Besides that, the can produce loud humming low-pitched noises via their spiracles. They also use pheromones, but mainly as mood markers, since they are insufficient to convey complex meanings. So if insectoid is happy, he also smells happy. X)
This means that they must carry translators with them, and most of insectoids actually do. There's many who go a step further and implant more advanced model directly in their chest exoskeleton, which is then connected directly to the nerve system and allows for smoother, faster and less error-prone vocalization.
They also think funny - their brain is a two-parter, one part is in the head and responsible to stuff like reflexes and instinctive motions, while second part, located in the chest and responsible for high brain functions and hosts actual consciousness of the thing. Since almost all primary senses are wired to the head brain, insectoids have significant delay between input and conscious reaction to it (in some worst cases, up to 500ms). This results in situation where insectoids have lighting-fast reflexes (fastest of all the species of the Alliance, in fact), but they always "catch on" to their actions, and thus have reputation in Alliance of impulsive personalities who act first and think later.

What do you expect from ant-looking insectoid alien? Hives, with hivemind or overmind-type "absolute communist no individuality allowed" society, right? Joke's on you, since these insectoids are quite individualistic, no less that any other species of the Galaxy. Although their society is kinda similar to ants, in that they're largely females and have queens that lay eggs. The Queen, though, is basically just egg-producer, and while this position is elite and respected in their society, queens themselves have absolutely no ruling power over insectoids. That honor goes to an assembly that's best described as "board of directors".
Their cities are mostly dug up in the ground, but rather than resembling ant colonies, they remind more of an artificial fissures and canyons, with pathways and rooms dug in the walls of these canyons. Surface is not always barren either - stuff like roads and industrial buildings is still more economically sound being build on the surface.

I have my own wiki for the project now, and it contains article on insectoids, but it is in Russian, I didn't have time to start translating yet.
raharrs.itstudios.ru/wiki/ …
I think I'll made separate Journal entry when I translate most of the text."

sashli'sftonodo v2.0 by darth-biomech

Spoiler

Sashli were the second oldest alien species in my setting that I brought up (the first were raharrs, obviously), and I thought that their design need some minor changes, since a couple of things about the old one I feeled was questionable. So I changed the shape of their "hands" and overall posture, making them more curly.
So, to recap their profile - they are cold-blooded molluscs evolved to land-dwelling. Their main disadvantage is their sight - they cannot move their eyes much, and they are near-sighted. But they can see ultraviolet and distinct three times more shades than human eye can. They are famous in the Alliance for their optics and their art, but also they are known to be kinda bigoted in relation to the rest of the species - they believe that sapience derives from amount and dexterity of appendages that can wield tools, and other civilizations are noticeably behind the squids in amount of arms, so they see them... Well not as inferior species per se, more like little underdeveloped brothers. This irrates very many, but sashli are usually cautious and polite to not directly offend others. Their language is notoriously difficult for other members to learn and speak (their writing system is even more complex), so it is actually easier for sashli for trying to speak Common language, even if their vocal anatomy is different.

Iss by darth-biomech

Spoiler

"Yet another species for my setting. These are reptiles that call themselves "Iss". They come from a deserted world that is severily lacks water (only 47% of surface is oceans, and even these are for the most part relatively shallow), and fertile grounds on shores had huge value. So main point of their space expansion was to get to those ice asteroids and comets, haul them back to their planet and dump them in the oceans. They did not discover any tech from the Ancients, so they had to do it old school way, with tech that is roughly our level of advancement. They did that for then thousand years already, and it still get them to only enlarge ocean to cover 55% of the surface. Iss are VERY conservative species, their civilization had thermonuclear fusion thousands of years before raharrs even get to space, but they advance their technology on such lazy and cautious jog, that when they contacted Alliance (by sending a cryogenic sleeper ship at sublight speeds to the nearest star with potentially habitable world; it flied there for about 430 years, and when they finally get to the planet, they discovered that there was a joint Alliance colony setted up for half a century already), they actually already fallen behind and now need to catch up with all the fancy tech, which causes their society to accelerate to unnatural, from their point of view, pace. Their slowness is purely cultural thing though and have nothing to do with their coldblooded physiology, so they adapting rather fine, although not without distress and turmoil in their society.
They are obligate carnivores, this causes some naturally expected issues with some herbivore species of the Alliance, but mostly Iss doing fine and are not very aggressive.

This particular gentleman is some sort of a shady salesman of that kind which usually hang around spaceports to catch careless tourists, trying to sell you some weird poisonous bug, claiming that it have profound effect on males and makes them, err, last longer, he can bet his word on it and it cost only ten credits, where else you can get such good offer, eh?

I feeled that I need to add some undoubtly reptilian species to my work, so that I could point people at it with words "no, no, these other aliens are not reptilian *points* THIS is how a reptile looks like!""

 

AyyaSAP ❤️ : Elvira, Mistress of the Dark

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ba5X2d

 

What if..... by Mech-Maker



What if, part 2. Colored by darth-biomech

 

X-Men: Apocalypse, by Mike Krome

 

https://www.deviantart.com/montag451/art/Autumn-Stillness-817787209

 

Just found this short story Spiderman comic online. Titled, "Leah", the artist and other contributors are mentioned in the intro cell. Spoiler for its length.

Spoiler

 

https://www.deviantart.com/pascalcampion/art/Secret-Gardens-817765441

 

AyyaSAP ❤️ : Lily of the valley

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YK1m6

 

No title, by Tyler Jacobson

 

AyyaSAP ❤️ : Carol Danvers

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/1n6JGL

 

INKTOBER #23 by mattPLOG

 

AyyaSAP ❤️ : Scarlet Witch

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/k4oXYK

 

Muscle by eddie-Mendoza

 

AyyaSAP ❤️ : Rogue

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Bmv4ol

 

Ikki and Esmeralda - Saint Seiya by tommasorenieri

 

AyyaSAP ❤️ : Chun Li

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/k4mrWn

 

Xeno Mercenaries by LordCarmi

"Doomed ones...you have killed Imperial Pioneers...shame on you, and may the Golden Throne save your souls: They have hired the most dangerous bounty hunters of the sector. Beasts of unknown origins...They are xenos, some sort of ****ing bastard aliens....Inquisitors don't care of them, authorities blame only their methods, not their results..."

 

AyyaSAP ❤️ : Cassandra

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Jlg5GD

 

Inktober 2019 - Day 23 by Lipatov

 

AyyaSAP ❤️ : Supergirl

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3od3lo

 

Zaku Patrol by Furin94

 

AyyaSAP ❤️ : Valkyrie Mercy

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/A9qn4W