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| How do you design? | |
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| Topic Started: Apr 11 2011, 07:19 PM (1,040 Views) | |
| Cephalian | Apr 11 2011, 07:19 PM Post #1 |
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Adolescent
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Working on Terra Mollsuca and Urban Jungle has made me really think about how people design creatures for their speculative evolution projects, and I'm curious how you do it. For me, I typically pick a niche and figuring out what available nearby life-forms could evolve to finish. I try and keep the niche as specific as possible - ambush predator is a broad one, ambush predator that strikes from water is better, ambush predator that strikes from shallow rivers much better, ambush predator that strikes from shadow rivers in temperate forests is best - if I want to fill similar niches, (for example, tropical rain forests shallow rivers, shallow rivers in plains), I can take the original creature and modify it mildly. This, obviously, is the route I took with the Swampgrasp. That then leads to "what does this creature prey on/preys on it", and can create an overall ecosystem. How about you? |
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Check out my settings, either Urban Jungles or Terra Cephalapodia! Also, I apologize in advance to sometimes responding to quoted posts separately, my iPad makes it nearly impossible to multi-quote multiple posts. | |
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| Dragon wasp | Apr 11 2011, 07:42 PM Post #2 |
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Prime Specimen
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well, to tell the truth, the ideas just come to me, then i make it much more plausible |
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| Cephalian | Apr 11 2011, 08:18 PM Post #3 |
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Adolescent
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I do tha sometimes too, honestly. It's mainly when I'm doing a single creature I had the idea for - such as the Morsi for that contest. I definantly see the fun in doing it that way - I'm just typically really bad at that.
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Check out my settings, either Urban Jungles or Terra Cephalapodia! Also, I apologize in advance to sometimes responding to quoted posts separately, my iPad makes it nearly impossible to multi-quote multiple posts. | |
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| Kamidio | Apr 11 2011, 08:54 PM Post #4 |
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The Game Master of the SSU:NC
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I usually come up with ideas while in the shower, on the shitter, or at the sink. Hence why I call it my "Thinking Room." |
SSU:NC - Finding a new home. Quotes WAA
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| colddigger | Apr 12 2011, 12:54 AM Post #5 |
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Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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Well basically I just whip my hair back and forth and it all falls together. |
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Oh Fine. Oh hi you! Why don't you go check out the finery that is SGP?? v Don't click v Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| Holben | Apr 12 2011, 02:16 PM Post #6 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Cooooold, you shouldn't post these things... I generally start with a drawing. The centrepiece and any background organisms get a profile. Then i fill in the rest of the niches. |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| Ook | Apr 12 2011, 02:28 PM Post #7 |
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not a Transhuman
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ancestor + niche + habitat + some feature = new critter |
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| Ànraich | Apr 12 2011, 03:16 PM Post #8 |
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L'évolution Spéculative est moi
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I start by looking at the environment. Since I mostly do exobiology, this usually means generalizing the biomes of a planet (specifics come later, when species are established). I then attempt to think of kingdoms of phyla or large groups of animals that will share common characteristics (usually using modified archetypes from Earthly organisms, such as "mammalian" or "reptilian," though modified to be analogs rather than copies). Then I pick out specific environments and work out the plant life first. After that its pretty easy to think of how they all might change while interacting. Basically I work from the ground up. |
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We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar. "The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming Tree That Owns Itself
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| Empyreon | Apr 12 2011, 03:56 PM Post #9 |
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Are you plausible?
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For me to say that the ideas for Nereus "just come to me" would be like me answering "How do you go to the bathroom?" by saying "In the toilet." ![]() The processes for specific nereids are manifold. Sometimes I will look at a specific species and say ask myself, "What does it eat? What eats it? And what eats that?" Tightly knit food chains develop that way. Conversely, I could start with an apex predator of a specific biome and extrapolate its prey. At other times I could look at an empty habitat and think of aliens to populate it, or come up with an interesting creature and figure out what kind of environment would allow it to thrive. Another crucial point is a certain degree of flexibility and revision. There has to be back and forth in order to make sure the ecology balances. Even after coming up with an apex predator, some later interesting feature for the biome's plantlife can effect the inhabitants profoundly and require a few adaptations to make them truly fit. I've found that it's this process of revision and reworking not only improves the plausibility of relevant species but it also generates some of the most interesting adaptations. If you really want your speculative evolution to have some pizazz, do it twice. |
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Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus! COM Contributions food for thought
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| dialforthedevil | Apr 12 2011, 04:07 PM Post #10 |
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Frumentarii Administrator
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Hmm for my main project i take the myth and then shape it into my world. When i come up with creatures from scratch i tend just to have them spawn from somewhere i work much like DW and Fakey |
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| DorianGray | Apr 12 2011, 04:18 PM Post #11 |
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Infant
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I pick two creatures, the creature i want to take the niche in the future, and the creature that holds the niche today. Then, i smash 'em together and add in some scientific details and adaptations to their environment, as well as traits from other creatures which held the niche. And boom, new creature. Case and point, my Ratcroc. It's a rat molded with traits from Crocodiles and Archaeoceti, in order to create a new animal. Or i just come up with a design and supplement with facts, biology and an environment. Like the Chimerathere for example, i began with Hadrosaur-type design, and i added features like it's short, naked snout for sticking it's nose deep into carcasses. The large nose which allows it to sniff out anything on the plain, excetera. |
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| T.Neo | Apr 12 2011, 04:30 PM Post #12 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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To be honest, I'm not really sure. I just come up with ideas. I'm not sure if they're coherent with the world they're supposed to live in. Indeed, I'm not even sure if they're coherent within themselves... |
| A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork. | |
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| Dark-Matter | Apr 12 2011, 05:02 PM Post #13 |
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Adult
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Well the ideas come to me,usually when I'm in school in the science class or in any other class that show any thing that I can use for any critter. But the thing that never fail is when I made a concept(mostly a extraterrestrial creatures) of a creature and I made a line behine him of it ancestore until I get the most simple ancestore.Then I start to make another specie from one of it ancestore and end up with a new clade or group, sometimes I start with the simple organisms first.This could either way give you a great Idea for a alien creatures,habitat(because I have end up with some critter that I have to invent a different habitat(Yes I know that the enviroment is not going to be the same as Earth, I ment like unique event that happen on that planet) or an entire concep for a ecosystem of a planet. The only thing that is very difficult for me is the plant concept, I sometimes end with plant like creature but not true plants.
Edited by Dark-Matter, Jan 9 2012, 12:57 AM.
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| Cephalian | Apr 13 2011, 01:09 AM Post #14 |
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Adolescent
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Glad I posted this thread, since it's given me so many ideas on how to trigger inspiration.
That's kind of what I do - only problem arises when you create new niches. But yeah, I think that gets some of the most plausible creatures, though I like throwing on a few "add-ons" here and there to go beyond the mishmash. For example, ventroaches didn't need a toxic element to their soldiers, but it fit the way insects work in general and made sense in the environment given...which makes them slightly less plausible than your way, but if I try that I end up with "It looks like [blank] with the head of a [blank] and does the same things as [blank one]" - you've got a talent for mashing I've not managed. |
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Check out my settings, either Urban Jungles or Terra Cephalapodia! Also, I apologize in advance to sometimes responding to quoted posts separately, my iPad makes it nearly impossible to multi-quote multiple posts. | |
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| Fungi-Aren't-Plants | Apr 13 2011, 06:06 AM Post #15 |
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Newborn
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I will choose the creature it evolves from, give it a random adaption, such as large feet, or a light sensitive patch, or a sharp tail, and then look at the adaptions and decide what niche it fills. For example, I could make a herbivorous crustacean with photosensitive bumps (simple eyes) on their tongue omnivorous because it gains sharper claws, which could also be used against predators as well as prey. I could make a three-eyed annelid into a harmless commensalistic organism (basically a hitchhiker who may or may not take something from you, but causes no harm and may even do some good) with a pointed and curved tail used to dig under their scales to hang on. However, I try not to make too much of a leap between niches--for example, the Blue Reaper Worm, the three-eyed annelid that hangs onto scales I mentioned, evolved from a worm that would occasionally clamber onto larger creatures for warmth that became so attached to a certain scaled creature that they began to live only on them. |
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