Welcome to the inside of my head! It’s fun in here. I write, draw, and generally create. Expect to find everything from shapeshifters to robots, eccentric wizards to space dragons, with a healthy dose of Humans Are Weird. Let’s have fun with this.
[ID: Art of snails with various food items on their backs instead of shells, divided up by rarity. They are labelled with each food as follows. "Common:" bread loaf, macaron, muffin top, cupcake, chocolate dollop, donut. "Uncommon:" pie slice, cinnamon roll, woopie pie, swiss roll. "Slugs:" (these don't have shells and instead just resemble each food) croissant, sus twist, bagette, éclair, churro. "Rare:" reverse sundae (with an upside down ice cream cone), wedding cake. Cupcake has sprinkles on the body, sus twist has two heads, and wedding cake is wearing a bow on its head, and the cake topper is two snails kissing. End ID.]
the garden i tend at work is getting overrun with snails so i thought about a world where we acquired a domesticated a "working dog" breed of hammerhead worm (they eat snails and slugs and worms) that is also. a puppy. Bred to clear vegetation of common slimy garden pests. click under readmore if u wanna see the worm theyre based off of i think theyre really cute
Thank u guys for all the wormdog love T_T i did more
The top one is if the wormdog from the og post (that me and my irl coworker have nicknamed Mug) if he ate all the damn snails terrorizing the garden and grew big and strong. the second one shows how wormdogs come in all sorts of shapes and colors :) bc i wanted to draw more. which one would u adopt
Time for a seasonal Fantasy Biology, and this time my lovely Patreon supporters have chosen the Living Snowman. Not something I’d ever see down here in Australia… or would I, out of their disguise?
Living snowmen are a frequent occurrence in Xmas myths, from the friendly Frosty…
More art of my albatross griffins. I’m happier with their design. I CAN’T believe I gave them plain ol’ canine/seal looking teeth before, when spine covered penguin mouths are RIGHT THERE. It makes more sense to me design wise and looks better.
I decided to call them ✨Kymagryphs✨, giant scrounges of the skies over a new endless sea. Careful not to leave your catch out on deck when sailing.
Cecaelia
is the name often given to half-human, half-octopus creatures, though they may also be refereed to as octofolk.
Be very careful searching for images of this species because frankly a creature that is a beautiful human on the top half and gratuitous amounts of tentacles on the bottom half inspires a particular type of art from the internet.
Octopi, and cephalopods in general, have a number of abilities that make them interesting from a fiction or monster perspective.
Known to be highly intelligent
Willing to leave water
Associate with ocean floor, shallows, reefs and shorelines
Can change color
Masterful mimicry
Ink squirting
Carnivores
So you have a highly intelligent carnivore, master of disguise, that for some reason looks human on the top half.
Why on ‘Earth’ does this creature resemble a human?
Here is a simple octopus anatomy diagram for your consideration:
The octopus has no bones, but related species such as the squid and cuttlefish do have an internal shell, which serves a similar function. The Cecalia may have this sort of modified internal shell instead of a skeleton. This internal shell would allow the torso to be held upright, and additional internal shells may also allow the limb to move like a human.
However, this seems too simple to me. In the octopus and its tentacled friends, the mouth is located between the tentacles, and the eyes just above it. You are rearranging a lot of anatomy to move the eyes and mouth far away from their original position onto a humanoid torso, while presumably leaving the anus out of sight where it belongs.
What if the top half of the Cecalia is merely an imitation of a human torso?
I wouldn’t put it past a highly intelligent carnivore to mimic the upper half of an attractive human, especially if they have a culture that values shiny things you simply can’t mine under the ocean (gold and other loot)
It’s entirely plausible that the mouth of a Cecalia is still located between the tentacles like a regular octopus, with the real eyes just above the tentacles, but the ‘head’ of the octopus being reshaped to mimic a human. They may then attempt to lure humans into shallow waters to prey upon them.
The implications of such anatomy, where the humanoid torso is essentially an excellent mimicry, are:
The humanoid segment can resemble any humanoid, and can change
Different individual Cecalia could imitate the same humanoid at different times
A bold adventurer could ‘decapitate’ the humanoid torso and only seriously wound the octofolk.
Any voice the creature has is likely to emanate from its tentacle region.
They may leave the water for a short period of time but will always try to return there for a confrontation.
Octopi produce ink and have excellent vision. They are highly likely to be artistic.
But they have a completely different evolutionary pathway to humans and are unlikely to share the same goals, motivations to aesthetics.
If they have perfected the art of mimicking humans then they likely spend a significant portion of their time either preying on or scavenging from them.
Octopus eggs are cared for in batched of hundreds or thousands, and the newly hatched octopi are tiny when they emerge. Imagine all these tiny creatures innately trying to mimic humans but not quite getting it right. Nightmares, anyone?
So as far as an octopus mermaid goes, yes they probably would lure men onto the rocks, they probably would appear beautiful, they might not sing, but they are most definitely dangerous.
I found a piece of onion skin that looks like a mermaid tail, and that feels like half a story idea about a fairytale where someone tries to call up fantasy creatures in the river. What would a tiny onion mermaid look like?
Onions are healthy for fish! Onion mermaid, to me, is a very important part of the ecosystem. The scales they shed are eaten by other fishes, as it helps them grow faster than other foods do.
Maybe it works similarly to garlic for them as well- helping fight against parasites, promoting growth, decreasing mortality rates.
Maybe the little onion mermaids shed very regularly, and are protected similarly to those spiders that keep small frogs around- perhaps certain predator types protect them from danger, let them feed on scraps and extras they have- because it helps the growth of their main food supply: the fish in the area that feed on the shedding.
Are they? The search results I’m getting make it sound like food onions may be different from “water onions,” but I’ve never looked it up before. And in fantasyland, anything goes!
I wonder if the onion mermaids would have scales in wild warning colors, so the predators don’t bite into something they’ll regret.
A Centaur has a man-stomach and a horse-stomach. And of course both want breakfast. So first of all he has porridge and pavenders and kidneys and bacon and omelette and cold ham and toast and marmalade and coffee and beer. And after that he tends to the horse part of himself by grazing for an hour or so and finishing up with a hot mash, some oats, and a bag of sugar. That’s why it’s such a serious thing to ask a Centaur to stay for the weekend. A very serious thing indeed. - C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
My take on unicorns! I'd really love to make a mythical creature field guide someday, since the Spiderwick Field Guide is what inspired me to start drawing in the first place 🥰
I don't actually know if I'll go through with the project that involves Strid, but he was fun to design regardless. I love kelpies and I was trying to find a midpoint between aquatic predator and normal horse.