Xeno thread

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Damn, that's pretty cool. Is there a source?

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Let's get some heroic fantasy in here.

Mysterious grey aliens who conduct weird experiments on cows are the best aliens. Prove me wrong.

Is it lazy design to just have bipedal aliens, or does our existence prove that standing on two legs gives you some sort of advantage?

It's theoretically possible to have a quadraped with a pair of manipulator arms up front. Or some kind of six-legged horse thing with a tentacle face it uses for tool manipulation.

Why is he wearing shades when his eyes are on stalks?

He didn't ask for this.

IIRC fewer limbs = more brain power for higher-order thought. So 4 limbs, with two for walking, is the ideal balance between locomotion and intelligence. Or something like that.

I did some sketches for aliens in a setting I'll probably never actually get to run.

Main reason humans are bipedal is because all tetrapod vertebrates have, well, four limbs (aside from the ones that have lost some of those limbs, but none have more than four), so to have two manipulator appendages you're left with two walking appendages. Tetrapod form is a pretty reasonable design to arise from convergent evolution (nature tends to favour symmetry, so having 3 or 5 limbs would seem unlikely, though not impossible), although you could just as easily end up with six or more limbs, or possibly the role of human arms being fulfilled by tentacles or modified feeding appendages or something.

I just made many my aliens humanoid because of the convenience (having multiple species with roughly similar bodyshape would let players use equipment from multiple species or play as different aliens with getting into big issues on how to accommodate for a lot of different anatomies). I prefer less humanoid designs, though.

Doing impractical things for the sake of looking cool is not an uniquely human impulse.

I made up a race of marsupials that lived on a world that was frozen over save for spots of green , thermal vent warmed valleys and plains, the backbone of their culture was based around migration, reverence for spirits of green and humility and balance.

Yet cephalopods have multiple limbs and are considerably brighter than gastropods and bivalves.

Love me some Abiogenisis.

Also, this one tends to get posted in filename threads as
>slavic demiurge contemplates the folly of creating a race that cannot squat as he does.jpg

abiogenisis.deviantart.com/art/Contact-523746143

Artists spend years learning human musculature and skeletal structure and little else.
Also customers (and producers) can't relate to sentient swarms of nano or feathered snakes.

There's actually an interesting reason for that. Part of a cephalopod's "brain" is actually in its arms/tentacles, especially octopi. A large number of the neurons in the animals are contained within those limbs, because they use all of them to interact with the environment, and they need near instantaneous feedback on determining if something is inanimate, alive, dangerous, delicious, etc. Of course that's not to downplay their intelligence, but their bodyplan is very functional for the environments they normally live in.

Also, writers are human. It's difficult to damn near impossible to write a truly alien being. What the fuck does a house sized sapient sea urchin have in common with humanity? So most writers just don't try.

It's only a theory, but I like the idea that humans are evolved for persistence hunting. Two legs lets you cover more ground than four for the same amount of energy, even though four legs is faster. Warm blood, sweat glands, and everything else that lets humans regulate their own temperature rather than relying on external factors lets humans run for hours.

Primitive humans could pick out a single animal in a herd (normally the big guy with the large horns, strong but inefficient) and just jog at it. It'd be able to run away faster, but whenever it stopped to rest, the human would catch up with it. It'd need shade or water to prevent overheating, but the human can just keep moving. Eventually the animal simply cannot run any further, and the human walks up to it and kills it, like a slasher villain.

Aliens don't have to be persistence hunters. But they do have to be something other than apex hunters. Intelligence is only an advantage to an animal on a social level. In animals, maximum size of social group directly correlates with intelligence. Evolution is a series of random changes with the beneficial ones sticking around, so you're never going to see hyper-intelligent sharks because intelligence isn't an advantage for a creature like that. Persistence hunters on the other hand, that's a creature that can be meaningfully enhanced by heightened intelligence and tool use.

Side note, sharks are basically perfectly evolved. They've been around for millions of years. Nature basically rolled a torpedo with a mouth, and generations later nothing has improved on that. Add thumbs to a shark and it's still only going to swim fast and bite things.

Anyway, you could probably invent a new kind of alien if you pick a different natural role that actually requires co-ordination between a large number of individuals in order to survive and get food, like say pack hunter. Find something on Earth that works on that role, and upscale that for intelligence and tool use.

The term I should have used was solitary hunter, not apex hunter. Lions are fine, every other big cat is not. Sharks are still wearing the "I'm number one so why try harder" t-shirt. They've come a long way, baby.

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Who needs intelligent sharks when you have killer whales?

It's mainly because it's easier. You don't have to work out the ergonomics and technocultural impact of being a 12-limbed mass of hydraulic sacs. Plus, it ensures relative compatibility as far as tech/habitats go.

These dudes are the sickest shit

Got any more?

I have a little bit more Geist/Lufae stuff, some more primoridal evo stuff in same style, and some of the same guys Gigerverse stuff.

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Man, I have a lot more of these bug dudes than I thought

A lot of cool shit came out of these threads, man

Last bit of primoridal evo stuff, then MUNDUS CARNIS

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Is there a google doc or something with information on these guys?

Love these dudes, but I'm just a sucker for chitin

Somewhere? I can search for it here in a bit, but failing that you can check the archive for the gigerverse threads

Okay here is a google doc of the setting. I don't think anyone ever updated it with the stuff from the later threads
docs.google.com/document/d/14Po6lNzbyr9KPRsDUedUtU5xKnYLqUUjdaK5IsjKdpM/mobilebasic?pli=1

Source?

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And this is the last geigeranon's stuff I have. Do have more aliens to post, though

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friendly Elder Thing?

But can you fuck it?

It looks gelatinous, so probably.

I don't have any "proper" aliens, so enjoy this from somewhere just as weird as space: the ocean.

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Best ayys comming through

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>4 boobs
>Long tail
>4 arms for maximum cuddle
>Legs for days
Hot

i really like castes

>Sensible sexual dimorphism
Amazing!

need more dino-birb people

Damn, I want to put my seed in her

The filename, friend.

Thank you, kind user.

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You know if I was part of a ascended race of people that literally seeded planets I would make a planet of white and gold and make them aware how aesthetic they are.

Just so that millions of years later they curse me for putting them on a mudball trying to scrub out literally all the shit that gets on them.

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but there's like 600 animes by that name.

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First batch is from the Primordial Evo game run here on Veeky Forums some years ago. You can find most of it on suptg. Same goes for most of the gigerverse threads, which is where the second part is from

I know at least some of those are Geigerverse, (source given above on that one) but I'd like to second the source request specifically for the artist who did them, and I'd like to know if he does requests and how much he charges for them.

his deviantart is screeble, and I'm not sure if he does commissions or anything.

screeble.deviantart.com

Thank you