Take Some Time To Notice Your Vision. See How Easily You Detect Motion. Focus On Something In Your Peripheral

take some time to notice your vision. see how easily you detect motion. focus on something in your peripheral (without moving your eyes to it). see how it works. look at your hands. pick something up with your fingers. appreciate how ridiculously specialized they are in fine motor skills (even if your personal motor skills are lackluster). think about how you have a body built to be an apex predator through use of tools. think about how the brain of your kind has created a digital hivemind uniting the whole world. now look back at the screen.  look at the tab where you are in an argument about cartoons on tumblr. close the tab. open a new tab. google “tribute to anomalocaris”. watch the video that comes up. leave a like. subscribe even though the channel has been inactive for 8 years. you will need it in the coming times

World’s First Transformers Zine?

Fun fact: I’ve been doing this fandom thing for a while.

I mean quite a while. So long, in fact, that I published what might have been the world’s first Transformers ‘zine. Well, I certainly thought it was at the time. It was called Matrix. The first issue came out in 1987 or ‘88 (I can’t be sure now because I didn’t think to put dates on anything back then), and it ran for two issues. I didn’t own a computer at the time, but a friend of my mom’s let me use her Mac Plus. The ‘zine featured art, fiction and other goodies, and considering that I knew next to nothing about layout, it still looks pretty good today. Here is a little tour of the first issue…

The cover, proudly featuring my claim of being first in the world, as well as one of my OCs. The early fandom was really into OCs. Everyone had a Transformer alter-ego, and this was mine. Her name is Spitfire. I was really into WW2 planes at the time, so her altmode is, appropriately enough, a Spitfire.

The all-important disclaimer, hearkening back to the days when fans lived in constant fear of being sued. 

Table of Contents…

Editorial page. This is from the days before I was Grayseeker, as you can probably tell, and it features my first attempt at digital art, in the lower right corner. (Sorry about my crap photography, btw. I did my best.)

Mad Lib, Part One, with an illustration by Steven ‘Zigzag’ Acevedo.

Mad Lib, Part Two.

One of my illustrations, for a story called Pilot of the Rockwaves by Steven ‘Zigzag’ Acevedo. This shows his character, ZigZag, having a conversation with Spitfire. (I did mention we were really into OCs, yes?)

Not only were we really into creating OCs, but creating character profiles for them was a pretty big deal too! 

Spitfire’s Tech Specs, Part 2.

Every publication should have a Classifieds section, and Matrix 1 was no exception.

Classifieds Part 2. The car that appears in these hallowed pages is my own vehicle at the time, who also (naturally!) had a Transformers alter-ego named Electrofox, which I shortened to “Foxy.”

Last but certainly not least, my illustration of Starscream at the bar.  Hope you enjoyed this little glimpse of fannish history!

Today's random portfolio artwork is a life-size model of a small Arthropleura (40cm long – they grew to 250cm long), which I built for MUSE – the Science Museum of Trento, in 2014.

This was another fun week :) I've always seen it depicted blowing fire from it's behind (like the picture from the Aberdeen Bestiary, but sometimes a bit more scatalogical, but the description implies more that it the noxious gasses from its belly creeping along the ground and slowly setting things alight... (I very much appreciate that second bestiary picture - noone looks happy!)

Bestiaryposting Results: Bawigrat

This one is kind of odd in general, but also notable in that it's a mythical creature that has not, to my knowledge, made its way into modern pop culture, but is kind of on one of the upper levels of the metaphorical iceberg for people interested in Medieval Bestiary Trivia just because of its... rather memorable ability. So let's get into it.

If you don't know what this is about, you can check out https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting for an explanation and previous installments.

The art you are about to see is all based on this entry here:

And if you want to get in on this, the current entry up for interpretation is here:

(bit of a long one there)

And without further ado, art for this week is below the cut:

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) has given us a sort of bovine with recognizably skunk-like features. They note that they focused on giving it an appropriate pose (more details in the linked post), which I think they pulled off well -- I would absolutely believe that this creature is about to fire dung at the viewer.

@sweetlyfez (link to post here) has a shaggier bovid here, with a notably calm expression. The peace of mind that comes from knowing you have a terrifying defense mechanism? Also we see that the emphasis here is on the fiery nature of their dung-based defense, as shown by the flames at the back there. (And thank you for including alt text.)

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) has done a bit of malicious compliance here. Yes, it has the head and size of a bull, the maned neck of a horse, sure, but otherwise this is clearly a giant bombardier beetle. You know what, that's fair. I like it. I also appreciate that it is, to quote Coolest-Capybara, "seen here incinerating some Stylized Plants." (And thank you for including alt text.)

@pomrania (link to post here) has a bull/horse hybrid thing for us, but notes particularly the distended belly, saying that they figure that whatever kind of internal chemistry is going on here might have externally-visible effects. They also question the "acres" thing, as it seems to imply "a creature which can basically do sniper-range attacks with its poop".

I am thrilled to tell you that it's even worse than that. The phrasing of this entry aside, an acre is technically not a measure of distance, but of area. And this isn't a modern contrivance, it's always been area: the definition of "acre" that our medieval writers would be familiar with is "the amount of land that a man can expect to plow in a single day with the help of oxen". Three acres is, according to a quick conversion on Google, 130,680 square feet / 12,140.6 square meters). So it's not a sniper-like attack, it's blanketing an entire city block (or most of one, depending on your city) in burning fumes & poop.

Implications for the fertilizer industry are, I assume, still under investigation.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) apparently decided to roll with the "three acres" thing and has drawn their Bawigrat... um.. burninating the countryside. Which is very funny to me, as a person of a certain age who grew up on the Internet, but the rest of y'all will have to Google it. Reasons for domesticating the Bawigrat may expand from agricultural to military, though that does seem like a dangerous proposition. (And thank you for including alt text.)

@wendievergreen (link to post here) also decided to go with a bombardier beetle, as the animal with the most similar defense mechanism in real life. (This one is also giant; note the banana for scale.) They've made it more unambiguously insectoid, as the "horns" are clearly antennae and the "mane" is a sort of ridged plate. I really like the stylization here and the inclusion of the alchemical symbol. For more information, and a video that shows off the glittery ink used here, check the linked post. (Also thank you for including alt text.)

On to the Aberdeen Bestiary:

Yep, that beast is sure farting fire onto some knights. If you look for other medieval images of it, this is a pretty common way to show its defense mechanism. I think my favorite is this one:

(Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 3630, folio 78r)

Tell me that doesn't look exactly like the face a creature with weaponized flatulence would make.

Anyway, this is the bonnacon.

As mentioned previously, this is a mythical beast that for obvious reasons failed to really catch on in modern pop culture, but remains a favorite in Bestiary Trivia -- any Internet listicle about obscure mythical creatures is almost certain to mention the bonnacon.

Beyond that, I really don't have much to add other than reiterating that I think it would be pretty funny to include attempts to domesticate the bonnacon in your fantasy worldbuilding.

I have been reading about the history of landscape architecture and apparently there was this theory that humans have an inherent, innate preference for "savanna-like" open grassy environments with scattered trees due to our evolutionary past, with the reasoning that open grassy understories allow us to see predators coming. And for some reason everyone just accepted it as the truth for decades.

And then this lady Margaret Grose in a book called Constructed Ecologies is like "wait, why did we accept this as the truth for decades? How do we know this is innate and not a cultural preference ingrained by European style landscaping? Did the human species actually evolve in mostly savanna-type landscapes, or did we just randomly decide that because we associate Africa with savannas? Throughout millions of years of recent evolutionary history we've been in a shit ton of different environments because there were a bunch of ice ages. Also African savanna grasses get like 4 meters tall and predators can hide just fine in that."

and it's like wow when you put it that way it's kinda stupid that people decided this idea was true for no reason