bus doodles

[egypturnash]

More of that weird taur girl thing. kamenkyote keeps saying he feels like there's a world hiding behind her... so I went looking on the way out this morning. Looks like she's an explorer...

The basics of this one were laid out while listening to Björk's song "Hunter". I think it affected it.

Expedition log, day 437 —

    Summer again. Nearly a year and a half since we grounded on this place. And more than ever I don't want to leave. It's more like home than [homeworld] ever was, and honestly, this somehow scares me... Setting up my seventh camp, I want to go native more than ever. It's so hospitable, so beautiful. So safe-feeling. Pastoral and innocent.
    We still haven't found any major predators. But what happened to Gwyn? Mid-spring, just... gone. Did she go native? Become a meal?
    I don't want to leave here, and... and that scares me. Because I want to see Lyra again so badly.

*

So then I obviously had to find out what Lyra might look like.

I dunno if this works for me. Dark with pale back-stripes is kinda cute, but I didn't do it right here.

I have no idea if I'll do anything more with this stuff.

Possible explanations for the seeming match of gender between this unnamed xenotaur and Lyra:

• Non-sentient males are used for fertilization in this species; family bonds are between females.
  
• Like the Titanides in Varley's Titan/Wizard/Demon trilogy, these do have males and females (and more?), but the overall appearance is what we would call "female" until you look between the legs.
  
• They're both part of a poly grouping, and she and Lyra are especially affectionate towards each other.
  
• Or they could just be a perfectly ordinary lesbian couple in a species with "normal" male/female bimorphism. It doesn't always have to be biology or culture. Aliens can be queer too.

I wonder if there's any hidden visual influences from the "quaddies" in Lois McMaster Bujold's stuff?

Comments

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

PS. I cheated a little - on the first one, I nuked some confusing draw-through in the arms after scanning. I would've done it in the sketchbook itself but I don't carry white-out with me.

[adequatemagic.livejournal.com]

Nice piece of storytelling there, very parageographical in that little details are hinted at but not exposed...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

"Parageographical"? That's a new one.

Everything I create seems to be as much about what's not said as it's about what's said. I do sometimes have private notes that spell everything out... but the doodles you've seen of this girl, and that journal entry, are it.

I tried to organize sexuality, how Upwarpian of me

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

My Lynx-using ass is just now going back through your bus doodles, and I have to say I love these. That little gadget she's holding is neat, and you've actually made taurs attractive to me, which is hard. :)

Re: I tried to organize sexuality, how Upwarpian of me

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I've doodled taurs before, and they've never really done it for me, either. This one actually seems half-natural, instead of the cut-and-paste most of them come off as. (try tracking down a description of revar's alt, Foxen - she's pretty explicit about the cut-up nature of 'taurs in the one I recall!

Also, her belly is just so cute and curvy, instead of the mass of muscles that most taurs have. This helps a lot.

[spengler.livejournal.com]

Love the texture of the background on your new icon there. Who would've thought there was still use for that 'technique' beginners use to color large areas of space? 8) It looks great.

[spengler.livejournal.com]

Eh? You removed the 'Xenophile'?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Look again - it's animated. A moment off, a moment on. If you shut down animgifs, you might not see it, because the first frame's textless.

The icon's a scaling of the larger image; it's a little hard to read and I might fix it up some! And hey, don't knock loose hatching with watercolors splashed about it - Edward Sorel does that all the time, and he's a Master of the Pen.

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, blame ME! :"D But actually, I think you're just continuing to prove my point. Didn't take much, but look, now she's an interplanetary explorer, has a friend (mate?), interesting tech, hints of a planet she finds more homey than home and yet has its own dangers...and I LOVE the fact that the lower hands in the first drawing look as if they're operated by a totally different mindset than the upper half of the taur. I'm telling you, Peggy, she really wants to be part of one of those massive compositions you've done in AI lately, and she wants her own book, and a movie and a comic....

Still can't say what it is, but there's a completeness here that suggests more than what we've yet seen. That's the best I can put it.

-T'

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely a mate - the variations of text in my mind as I wrote that journal entry out in my sketchbook (it's on the back side of the page with her) indicated that. Plus, if that first doodle of Lyra is something this girl's carrying... I dunno, cultures may vary, but I can't see carrying around a photo of someone posed that way if you're not regularly making love to them.

And it's all too easy. It's just pulling fragments out of the jumble at the back of my head. Pseudo Kirbytech because I wanted her holding a rod of some kind but not a spear; something about the hair decoration in the first rough said 'communications clip' instead of just 'ornament'; she's got a sex life because what interesting character shouldn't, and maybe it's something half-swiped from one of the myriad books I've read... the explorer on a strangely seductive planet is from somewhere, too, I'm quite sure.

Starting things like this is easy. I've got five or six ideas a little further developed than this. Finishing them is what's hard!

[slinky-treecat.livejournal.com]

Woo.. having four hands would be very, very useful. I'm not sure how well they'd work in place of feet however. I'd guess that they can't sprint without damaging themselves... unless they're made of tougher stuff than us pink skinned bags of mostly water. ^_^

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah. That's a technical bit that bugs me a little, but it's also one I'm just going to ignore because the midlimbs look good that way. I mean, the very first drawing of one showed her running at high speed. It's bullshit from a biomechanical standpoint but looks great, and sometimes style wins.

But the thought flitted across my mind, soon after waking up, that the equivalant of big clunky punky boots might be fun to draw for them - for rear legs and lower arms. (I need to figure out what they call their front legs/lower arms, and what they call their upper arms for that matter - I'm sure there's some exactly right adjectives waiting there.)

[slinky-treecat.livejournal.com]

big clunky punky boots
You've been taking fashion tips from your room mate I see. ;) I'm still amazed at the pair that she mailed out to Ferris. Woah! Them's some ass kicking boots!!! *giggle*