So Work is sucking up all my time right now as I am approaching a fairly large deadline. Gotta muscle through it before I can use my free time to keep up on Veal. But worry not! More Veal updates VERY soon!
On what is going to be a recurring theme in the Veal story – females have a strong element to play in the setup of the universe I am building. In fact – most of the alien species that you’ll see in Veal that HAVE a gender will be predominantly female. In fact – in all but a very few cases (like the Jenaki) – the homeworlds these aliens come from will be matriarchies. That’s right, females rule the universe. In addition – on many of these worlds, men are not as common – typically having a 100-1 or worse ratio between the two genders.
The fun part about this – is I get to make all these fun female aliens and primarily focus on what they would appear like – as a female. Versus showing a male then “girlifying” it. The first of these species is a very humanoid looking race called the Tiviet (that’s tiv-e-eht in case you’re curious). The idea behind them was fairly simple. Because I love comics, movies and pretty much all things in entertainment – I thought some homage would be in order. As a kid – I was always fascinated by the design of the mutant Nightcrawler from marvel comics. So when I started designing my first humanoid species – I thought it would be a kick to give them a tail and pointy ears like one of my favorite lil mutants. From there though – it just went kinda crazy.
The Tiviet is actually an all female species that lost their male race to a war long ago. Over the many centuries since then, the Tiviet have experimented with cloning, regenerating male DNA or crossbreeding with other suitable alien species. None of which has resulted in anything substantial. After realizing this was the case the Tiviet – a long lived species to begin with – began messing with the merging of machine. The result are hybrid cyborgs that look mostly human.
From the abdomen down their bodies have been – in some cases – completely removed and made into machine. Since most of their vital organs are here and they have no need for reproduction – it was considered the easiest way to incorporate all the tech needed to prolong their already lengthy lifespan. Many Tiviet keep their tails though as their culture had risen around the it.
When away from their homeworld, the Tiviet like to accentuate their humanoid bits since cybernetics, while available is typically frowned upon as machines are considered a slave race. As such they wear revealing tops and long skirts that cover their less fleshy parts. Keep in mind in this design – i made the skirt longer and gave her some exaggerated legs for effect.
So – since posting the preliminary image of the Hadlock – I’ve been wrestling with the idea that they look too “Macy’s Day Parade” and not near enough like an alien in a compression suit. I’ve since been pouring over the design, trying bigger bodies like the Jenaki, smaller bodies, and even going back to some older designs that look like walking Iron Maidens.
So far – none of it is hitting a chord. Perhaps if I share the various designs – I might get some feedback that can spurn me in a new direction. Thoughts – as always are appreciated. And if anyone pushes for what my personal favorite is. The last one with the two exaggerated body types seems to appeal to me.
So as you may or may not have guessed by now – there are aliens in my story. In fact the majority of the characters you’ll get to know as the webstrip begins will almost ALL be of an alien species. And as fun as that sounds – there are downsides for me.
#1 - make a multitude of alien species that I can use without risk of copyright infringement.
#2 – making a multitude of alien species I think are interesting and can draw week after week.
#3 – trying to do something other than the classic “bumpy forehead” aliens or something similar where everyone looks humanoid for no real reason (other than actors with latex appliances on their faces).
So I sat down and started to ponder quite a few of the races I wanted to use and sure enough - a lot of them look very humanoid. I started thinking outside of the box, wondering where I could go that might prove to be interesting. Then one night – I’m watching Hellboy 2 and I noticed the character of Kraus. A german chracter who is made up of some whispy looking smoke.
I thought to myself – wow – that’s a wild idea. An intelligent cloud of gas…it sounds funny but also just weird enough that it could work. I mean – really – who’s to say there aren’t self aware clouds out there right?
Set on my task – I started to come up with ideas for how they could look, and I came up with the idea that the species (known as the Hadlock) would come from a planet with an atmosphere that can widely vary depending on the location. One unified link would connect them all though – because the atmosphere is generally too dense – the Hadlock had to move between the gases and in fact had to BE gas in order to survive in these extreme conditions.
As they evolved and left their world – they needed suits that could allow them to survive in atmospheres far less dense than their own but could adjust as needed since they were so sensitive to the external pressures of various planets. The end result is a very baggy hyper redundant self locking suit that can inflate and deflate as to the Hadlock’s needs. In low atmospheres – the suit would expand – adding pressue to keep the Hadlock comfortable and in high pressure atmospheres it would be extremley baggy – almost to the point of silly.
While finishing this idea – I also though that it would be neat that when the Hadlock do wander around in their natural hard atmosphere gas states – that they would use what we percieve as arms as a second set of legs. While they can walk around and almost be completely solid to our standards, they find the use of an extra set of limbs for moving around very freeing. As such they typically have very long arms that can touch the ground. Take a look – and let me know what you think!
- Shaun
So – one of the new races that I’ve worked out to the end is a species called the Jenaki. I named them after a friend of mine from college who just had one of those names that made me go – what a nifty sounding name. So when it came time to name my first species – Jenaki came up.
I can’t say too much about them except that they work for the Grey’s, they have no hair obviously. And their brains aren’t as large as most developed cultures (no reflection on the actual Jenaki). Here’s a sketch.
A fairly decent idea of the Jenaki body type.
So for the next few days I’m going to finish putting up all of the alien and mechanical races in my story. At least one of each. Some don’t have names yet – but that’ll change. Thoughts are always welcome.
I’ve been struggling with some ideas as far as style. I think I’m getting close – but now I’m worried Veal’s face wont translate right. Can’t live in fear though. So I churned out some quick body sketches to get an idea about proportion and how a multitude of male bodies might look like. Enjoy!
Some Quick Body Studies Cleaned Up.
