Blumaroo

I finally (got help) slapping Wordpress into shape and Runaway to the Stars is now releasing as a public webcomic! Thank you so much for your support over the years, and sticking with me while I'm slowly chewing my way through this book. I'm very excited to share this story! It'll be updating every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday thanks to the massive Patreon backlog. Patreon will continue to update as I finish pages, which happens on a sporadic non-schedule.

If you experience bugs with the site report them to me. Some things may occasionally break, as coding problems tend to be a very "whack-a-mole" affair; and I'm still getting used to the interface.

ACTUALLY I might as well make these their own post: Here's all of the species I've drawn previously/Haven't made their own posts for.

In order, from top to bottom (With some links to available neocities pages!):

Sulkan | Lutrophus

Teretosi | Phyoren

Optera | Nyluru

Ortio | Wyrir

Critters from the coasts of Backera! Wanted to explore pentapods of varying pod number. Info dump below!

The eco system these guys inhabit are the vast shallow sea beds between the sea and 'land'. Where the microbial mat swells up to take in sunshine whilst keeping somewhere between a few inches to a foot of water above. This habitat favors walking over swimming for larger beasts, doing a separate post for the 'fish' of Backera. Those are a whole other brand of beast. For now we'll stick to the larger animals on the scene. Going left to right because I'm biased. 1. A quad-pod, a fellow who specializes in using mouth parts modified into clubs to break into shells and rigid 'plants'. While they have two very LARGE jaws, the other three are teeny tiny so they mostly rely on suction once they open their food. They have decided to be boring and use only their front four legs for walking, whilst their hind leg is to scrape out divots to lay eggs in the sea bed. 2. A TRUE pentapod, these guys spend their day swishing their heads back and forth. The wide arc of their eyes allow them to always have a lot of vision above the waterline at all times. Their dainty mouthparts are a constant scuttle against the slime mat to kick up organic matter to scarf down. The long horn jutting up their back is actually hollow and used to trumpet at each other at a distance. Very noisy. 3. With the least amount of feet in the lineup is the flag foot! These fellas are built to prance through the water and chase down any poor fish spotted by those big ole peepers. But they really shine when it comes to display. Upon meeting, the smaller individual will lower their head and wave around their display legs, wooing their potential partner with flashes of color. Most of the time their audience ends up wandering away.

Want to work on more FLAVOR for Backera, this is only the START!

Another Space Crowd Saturday installment by Michael Whelan: There’s not much room in the elevator on the 1980 cover for “Aliens!,” edited by Gardner R. Dozois & Jack M. Dann.

Despite its name, the owlbear is in fact neither owl nor bear - it is a large species of rodent whose external incisors resemble a curved "beak." The enamel of these incisors is colored brown because of iron compounds. This hard substance wears down at a slower rate than the regular tooth, thus producing a sharp edge at the tooth tip.

It is thought that owlbears are evolved from smaller burrowing rodents who made use of their external teeth as digging implements. Their ancestors lacked external pinnae, but the modern owlbear's fur grows in an owl-like facial disk to direct sound -- a case of convergent evolution.

Or, what if dnd owlbears were just big mole rats.

Spec Rising rough test part 1!

(Featuring my beautifully ugly spiral, Charlie)

I knew as soon as I turned this au around in my head that I wanted to make Spirals into these like. sugar glider weasely things. Here's my blurb about them!

Spirals - Small dragons which fill a flying squirrel or glider-like niche. Their first pair of limbs are attached via patagia (skin flap) to their back legs, allowing for fairly sustained bursts of flight perfect for nighttime insect hunting. Being high energy and social, they accrued sapience via their rapid social development. Found in temperate forests.

eh i might as well just post em here. Sirenian humans for ya. ftr i never got round to doing this for selkies or the other guys

the individual drawings for these are.. not the best and the text formatting and typos are woeful but i have a lot of fondness for them (especially the hopper harpies, they're my favourites) and the reason i made this blog was originally to talk more about them in a more relaxed space

there's also... this attempt at describing the naming conventions of the most populated settlement

one thing i really wanted to avoid with these guys was the notion of culture being tied to what type of person you are (physically i mean). it's very rare that a settlement is limited to only one type of human. culture is instead related to settlements and geographical regions (can u tell I hate the common trope of Monolithic Fantasy Race Culture). because the humans who originally settled on siren spoke english, all of the languages spoken by modern sirenians are derived from english (and this is how scholars can back-translate ancient records about ishmael et al). some people with very specific adaptations (like hoppers) might be concentrated in the area that best fits their morphology but there are no exclusive groups based on body type.

the modern sirenians do not believe they are (or were, originally) aliens on siren, they do not know about earth, they know nothing at all aside from the fact that there were once Precursors who've left some technology behind.

the main story is about our guy Qedivar travelling from the spire to the old Precursor ruins to do some research, and on the way he hires Huarva as a tugboat and Terwy as an astronavigator. They have each lied to the other about some fundamental aspect of themselves of course so there's drama but eventually Qedivar gets home and publishes a preliminary report on what he found there (which is the record of Ishmael's life). Conservative factions immediately decry it as heresy and call for Qedivar to be killed, so he has to go into hiding and publish under a pseudonym.

new sophont. they will sleep with their upper body folded inside their lower body like a turtle, unless they trust you i suppose. what does the face look like head-on? uhh next question

psst. please commission me :)

🦎Speculative Biology animation for the Cardassians.🐊

dusk settling over the ocean, a long long time ago

Codon Amino Acid chart for pGZA, the building block of life on Jom'Gol

pGZA is the abbreviation for Propylene-Glycol Nucleic Acid, which all cellular life on Jom'Gol uses. pGZA uses the sugar Propylene Glycol and a standard phosphate base.

Instead of Adenine, Thymine/(Uracil), Guanine, and Cytosine, pGZA instead uses Diaminopurine, Xanthine, Isoguanine, Isocytosine, 2-6, Pyradinedicarboxylic acid, and Pyradine.

Rather than (DNA):

A-T (Hydrogen Bond)

C-G (Hydrogen Bond)

pGZA uses:

DAP-X (Hydrogen Bond)

iC-iG (Hydrogen Bond)

PN-DPA (Copper ii ion Bond)

Each Codon combination in pGRNA production results in the production of one of 23 amino acids when read by the xenoribosome in any Jomgolian creature's cell, with the addition of one start codon and several stop codons.

Some doodles about these alien species.

I hope she made lotsa (culturally relevant carbohydrate dish)

Somewhere out there on a planet very far away is a civilization that has included our sun in a beloved constellation of some animal we couldn't dream up if we tried

For my final ever knitting/crochet project I completed a little baby Talita from @jayrockin's comic Runaway to the Stars as a gift for my husband. I'm so pleased with how she worked out!

ahem. would you guys wanna see my absolutely noncanonical kirby specbio poster i made for a friend