These Are Really Fun!

These are really fun!

Can’t remember if I ever posted these? Last one is Kaprosuchus btw, it was actually the first one I drew… these were all from my short-lived attempt at doing Maysozoic, what do you guys think? :3

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Jumping spider mimic barklouse, Psocoptera. Photographed in Singapore.

Comments from the photographer: The spots on the wings resemble the eyes of salticids (jumping spiders), and even with highlights. To top it off, it moves on tree trunks like a salticid.

Photos by Nicky Bay // Website // Facebook

Photos shared with permission - do not remove credit or re-post!

Dinobot sweep! Slug (or Slag, as I will always think of him) has been my favourite for literal decades, and the original G1 toy (being at the time the coolest thing I had ever seen) is probably the reason I became interested in Transformers in the first place!

Am I voting for my grumpy, flame belching, hyper-violet idiot? Heck yes!

Best Fictional Dinosaur Tournament: Ornithischian Bracket; Round 1B, Poll 4/8

The Amphibious Dolthruk

My response to this week’s BestiaryPosting challenge, from @maniculum

Pencil sketch, then lines in Pentel brush pen.

Thought process under the cut…

"The Dolthruk is so called from the color of [redacted]. They live in the river, four-footed animals equally at home on land or in the water and more than twenty cubits long. The Dolthruk is armed with monstrous teeth and claws and has such a tough skin that however hard you throw a stone at it, you will not hurt the beast. It goes into the water at night and rests by day on the land. It lays its eggs on land, and both male and female take it in turns to hatch them. A certain kind of fish whose serrated spines tear open the soft part of their belly kills them. Alone among animals they can move their upper jaw and hold the lower one still. From their dung is made an ointment with which old women and faded whores [bestiary is judgmental today, damn] anoint their faces, and appear beautiful until their sweat washes it off."

I spent an awful lot of time mulling this one over. We actually get quite a bit of description for a change, which is nice to work with too!

We also know that it's a beast, rather than a serpent or any other manner of creature. This is where it gets a little complicated, as we also know it lays eggs! My first thought was making it a monotreme; the idea of a monstrous platypus really tickled me, but I couldn't quite work out how to manage 'monstrous teeth' in what is a rather toothless clade of critters (@silverhart-makes-art came up with a solution and a brilliant rendition of this concept!), so I went down a whole rabbit hole of early mammals and mammal ancestors. The most impressive teeth (and claws) definitely belong to the therapsids, and specifically, the gorgonopsids. So, we end up with an amphibious gorgonopsid!

Incidentally, gorgonopsids are far weirder than an initial look would indicate - did you know that a lot of early therapsids had a pineal eye or light sensing organ atop their head (similar to modern tuataras), as well as very weird joints!

We have webbed feet so it can get around in the water when it is not lounging on land and taking turns to care for its eggs and young. I also gave it a shorter neck, and lowered the eye socket in the skull so that, at a glance at least, it looks more like the upper jaw can be moved while the lower jaw remains still.

We also have the issue of the very tough skin. Now, as its is a beast rather than a serpent, I initially didn't want to give it armour plates. I also considered a pangolin's scales, but felt the overlapping scales would trap water and not be particularly hygienic. Now, the fearsome hippopotamus has famously thick skin, but I couldn't quite work out how to represent this. Rhinos are similar, but a little more obvious, until a solution struck me. Hence, we now have an amphibious gorgonopsid lounging near its nest with armour plates inspired by Albrecht Dürer's Rhinoceros…

Of course, we also have 'a certain kind of fish' in the water. Largely based on the weaver fish, a fishie native to British waters, with distinctive venomous spines! Best stay out of the water for now, Dolthruk!

Oh my goodness, Ulysses 31! Now there is a blast from the past!

Mostly what I recall about this show is the one episode that featured this...

...as well as these critters...

Thinking about it, DIC Audiovisuel French/Japan collaborations were a big deal on TV when I was growing up (so much so that I picked up the set of The Mysterious Cities of Gold/Les Mystérieuses Cités d'Or when it came out on DVD), not to mention the Spanish/Japan collaborations of BRB Internacional (Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds, for instance...!)

Other Odysseys: Ulysses 31

It seems so strange for me that many people do not know Ulysses 31, because back in France it is one of the most famous and defining productions of the 80s in terms of kid entertainment. It was one of the big nerdy things of the time, and a large influence on French sci-fi.

Ulysses 31 (French title, Ulysse 31 ; Japanese title, Uchu Densetsu Yurishizu Satiwan) is one of the most renowned results of this specific mediatic era in the 80s which saw recurring collaborations between France and Japan. This series is, as a result, both an European cartoon and a Japanese anime. It first aired during the 1981-1982 season, but it kept having regular re-airings all the way into the 2000s. It is a set of 26 episodes, each 26 minutes long (though the original airing was... very strange. If anyone is interested I'll share about it :p)

And what's the plot? Well if you couldn't guess by the title... It's THE ODYSSEY IN SPACE of course!

Science-fiction was the big obsession of both French and Japanese in the 80s, so of course they would settle to move the Odyssey n space. Remember: it was the post-Star Wars boom, the "after Kubrick's 2001" time, the era of "Captain Future", "Albator 78", "Cobra Space Adventure". We still have Odysseus trying to return home, encountering monsters and being persecuted by the gods... But we are in the 31st century, Odysseus' ship is a space-ship equiped with a helpful artificial-intelligence-computer, Troy is a space station, Odysseus tries to return to planet Earth rather than Ithaqua, and his journey takes him through space and different planets instead of islands of the sea.

Another quite major change: Telemachus is with Odysseus! Yep. Indeed, you see, Odysseus still has his entire crew... But they were placed into a suspended animation by the gods as part of Odysseus' curse. This was actually a way to limit the protagonists of the story, as there are only four people awake and sentient on the ship. Odysseus, his son Telemachus who accompanies him, Themis (who is an alien little girl Odysseus rescued from this version of the Cyclop, no relationship to the Titaness whatsoever), and Nonno. Nonno who is... he is supposed to be the sort of goofy, joking robot sidekick - you know the type of character, this typical chibified little mascot you find in every anime of the era, and that people either love or despise with all their guts.

Together, the four of them (who basically have a sort of family dynamic of a father, his two kids, and the pet) have to find back their way to Earth while escaping the many perils and dangers the gods throw before them... Because here's the fascinating thing in this take on the Odyssey: the gods are actual gods. They're not hyper-advanced aliens, they're not omniscient artificial intelligence, they are actual deities who just happen to rule over the entire universe instead of one planet. Or rather the entire "multiverse"...

Here is the starting plot of the series, the core of the first episode and what is recapped at the beginning of each ulterior story - and it gives you an insight at how this cartoon handles the original material.

The episode begins with Odysseus and Telemachus leaving the Troy space-station where they stayed for several years, to return home to Earth. However, during their travel, they get captured by the inhabitants of a strange and dangerous planet: a group of fanatical one-eyed monks. These people are actually a cult who worship a creation of the god Poseidon: a gigantic robot, the "Cyclop", which provides sight and energy to the fanatical monks... in exchange of child sacrifices. Odysseus rescues his son Telemachus, as well as two alien kids (one of them being Themis, the other her older brother Numaios), and destroys the Cyclop-robot before leaving the planet.

Unfortunately for him, the monks called upon Poseidon, who in turn called upon Zeus - and Zeus appears in front of Odysseus' ship. Zeus punishes Odysseus for destroying a sacred creation of the gods - and not only does he places Odysseus' entire crew (plus Themis' older brother) in a state of suspended animation, a sort of floating coma, but he also erases the road back to Earth from the space-ship's main computer... And then transports Odysseus' ship to Olympus.

Sounds cool? No. Olympus is here an alternate dimension filled with physical abnormalities and scientific horrors and other alien terrors. It is where the gods and their servants dwell, but it is also where they send all those they seek to punish or torment... And by Zeus' own words, Odysseus is now doomed to find his way back to Earth - which he can only do by reaching the outmost limits of the dimension of Olympus, the "realm of Hades", where a gate to his homeworld awaits him...

Quite a story, huh?

The anime actually takes a course typical of Odyssey cartoons: it adapts the key parts of the Odyssey (Circe, Charybdis and Scylla, Aeolus, the Cyclop, the Laestrygons, etc), but also throws in other elements from Greek mythology to pad things up (Odysseus encounters the sphinx, the minotaur, Nereus, and more), and also adds entirely new episodes which have absolutely nothing to do with Greek mythology whatsoever (and usually you can feel how different they are due to relying on anime tropes and random fantasy or sci-fi stories rather than, you know, Greek legend and Antique aesthetic - you even have a friggin' space adaptation of Count Zaroff!).

If you are familiar with the specific brand of science-fiction carried by things like Doctor Who, you'll find yourself upon a comfortable ground, a world where gods and witches coexist with alien plants, impossible planets, clones and hyper-advanced robots ; a world where Poseidon sends shark-humanoids in trident-shaped spaceships after Odysseus. However, the defining trait of this anime, and what a lot of people might enjoy with this loose adaptation: it is full on cosmic horror.

Already we are talking of Greek monsters transposed as aliens, robots and space abnormalities ; and of Odysseus' endless journey through hostile seas being turned into a desperate search for his home-planet throughout the empty darkness of an alternate dimension. Add to that how Olympus is a prison-dimension containing many people who are victim of the gods' unfairness or cruelty - even though they, themselves, turned towards evil measures or committed terrible deeds as a result of what the gods had them go through... The result is eepisodes that are either terrifying, or very much depressing (especially episodes like the Sisyphus or Circe ones, where these already ambiguous figures are even more morally ambiguous, pitiful in their fall and noble in their evil, antagonists Odysseus must battle but that he comes to admire and respect in their own ways). It's still kid-friendly though, so Odysseus always vanquishes the villain of the day, and his kids are never truly harmed, and the protagonists always escape by the end... But by gosh is everybody who is not a protagonist can have the worst and most miserable endings ever.

But then, you have to add the gods. They're the best part of the show - as in, the most horrifying. Remember when I said I don't mind pure villainization of the Greek gods as long as it is made in a way that makes sense and is aware of the original material? It's one of these cases.

In Ulysses 31's universe, there are no good gods. Athena is utterly absent, Hermes does appear but he doesn't give two shits about Odysseus as he was sent for another mission (dealing with Circe, which just happens to coincidentaly help Odysseus and even then in a way that deeply displeases Odysseus), and the closest thing we get to a benevolent entity is Hades - but that's just because he is a purely and entirely neutral force who is still massively terrifying. It tells you something that in this story, Zeus is turned into the main persecutor of Odysseus and teams up with Poseidon to cause the most terrible things to him (in fact, Zeus and Poseidon are so close they are basically almost one same entity). Even Aeolus is turned into an evil lord out of Dune who hosts for his guests deadly games using human beings as pawns.

But what is really frightening and cool in terms of design choices are how the big gods appear. The big three, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. The "minor" gods like Aeolus or others are depicted as just mutated and/or supernatural humanoids, as physical entities - but the "big" gods? They are... gigantic, empty-eyed Ancient Greek statues, half-translucid, floating into space, appearing and disappearing out of the shadows between the stars, with their voice booming through the silence of space and reaching people's ears against all physical laws. This, while being followed by some creepy synth music that traumatized an entire generation of kids. For those who were scared by the Southern Oracle scene from the Neverending Story, you'll get what I mean when I say enormous talking statues can be very disturbing.

In fact, in many ways "Ulysses 31" might be one of the darkest takes on the Odyssey and on Greek mythology I ever saw, which ultimately leaves you with a strange bittersweet taste in your mouth. Again, typical of a Doctor Who-like show: a cosmic horror story that ends happily, a space-travel tale where the heroes defeat the bad guys but with abominable implications for the kind of world they live in as a whole, and a story which despite being fun and goofy at time, is still a story where many people died or suffered dreadfully on the way. .

... You know, just your random kids classic that aired on children's channels on Sunday mornings X) Even some of the goofist, most ridiculous or childish episodes (like the one of the witch at the vacation camp for aliens - you'll know what I mean) always have at least one frightening scene or shot worth of a horror movie.