The image on the header of this blog still shows an old oil painting depicting a bobbuck being chased by a centauroid carnivore, a prober. Back in 2012 I already mentioned that I was working on a new digital version, one finished at the time. I never replaced the image in the header, thinking that I ought to save all new paintings for The Book. I take that restriction less seriously know and am working on a new 'Prober and Bobbuck' version to account for all the anatomical conversions of the Great Hexapod Revolution. That new one will therefore make the previous one obsolete, even though it was never published. that is a sad fate for any painting, so here it is, at last.
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| Click to enlarge; copyight Gert van Dijk |
The original oil painting as well as the now defunct digital one, above, were meant to evoke the atmosphere of a scene from an African wildlife documentary. You will just have to image the voice of the inestimable David Attenborough, providing a running commentary.
But how how far should I take the 'Africa scene' association? Please help me decide.
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| Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk |
Here is version One. The painting is at an early stage, without any details, and there is also no leg blurring yet (I will first paint the animals and then cautiously apply blurring effects). The light will come from the top left with the sun low in the sky so there will be brightly lit bands while most of the visible parts of the animals show the shade side; those bright bands have already been indicated. The animals are further apart than in the original, not because that improves the lay-out, but to cater for the fold between pages (the 'gutter') when the image is printed as a book).
The colour of the plain indicates dry grass, at least to an Earth observer. Almost automatically, we assume that the scene represents a hot and dry environment. But for all we know, orange colour indicates freshly sprouted plants in this particular Furahan biotope...
I played with camouflage patterns taking inspiration from various Earth animals, so there are stripes tending to run at right angles to outlines and large blotches that make contour recognition more difficult (implying that the animals for whom these patterns are meant have visual circuitry relying on colour, contrast and contour extraction much like our visual system). There is also countershading, in which the underside of animals is lighter than their top, so any added shade on the underside will be counteracted. The animal's colour schemes match the surroundings. Nice, but very Earth-like. Too Earth-like?
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| Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk |
In this second version the colours of the animals do not match the surroundings well, which can be explained, if need be, in a variety of ways: perhaps the animals have strayed into a biotope where their camouflage does not work; perhaps the plants have changed with the seasons but the animals have not; or perhaps the animals cannot see this colour, or cannot discriminate between yellow-ochre and greenish blue. The animals are less Earth-like with these colours.
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| Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk |
This third version has blue-green vegetation, which is not strange on Furaha. After all, large plants on Furaha consist of three groups with differently coloured photosynthetic pigments. The result is that the animals and plants match one another, albeit in a way not found on Earth (not at present anyway; dinosaurs may have sported colours that mammals cannot produce). An interesting aspect is how strong our preconceptions about what colours mean are. Will people interpret the lighting with a low-set sun, or will they assume a nighttime scene because of the bluish colours? I could turn the brightly lit bands yellow in an attempt to counter that (unless that evokes moonlight!).
I must decide before I start finishing the painting; which one do you prefer? One, Two or Three? If possible, can you say why?
13 comments:
I prefer the third version (with the bluish background). It's a nice balance between alien and natural-looking.
The hunter in #2 and #3 (and the background of #3) makes me think that either it is dawn/dusk, or they are presently in the shade of the planetary rings.
I particularly like the second image, as both cameras and painters are well accomplished at blurring out the details of flora as the fauna go speeding past & above them, so that the animals standing out boldly from the background, is a feature, not a bug.
All three images are great work; i applaud you.
ps: though you could easily keep the colors of the Prober and 'Buck in #1, and use them as an example of how sometimes its the breaking-up of siloettes that takes priority, not always matching the flora. (that and lots of antelope and monkeys are red - no real pressing need for them to be green)
tinnyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy question: why is it called a Prober? Is the name's reason from a feature which was lost in the course of the Great Hexapod Revolution?
either way, keep up the great work!
Keenir: I decided to add the now obsolete first digital version of the 'prober and bobbuck' painting and also added some remarks here and there. Those should make it clear that all three scenes are meant to depict dusk or dawn, but that interpretation hinges on contrast between brighly lit and shaded areas, which contrast is not strong yet.
As for the name 'prober', I admit I no longer know. In an earlier vesion, many of these predators had clerical names ('parson', 'priest', etc.) because of their folded front limbs. The prober did not fit that pattern. It probably does poke around in its prey's innards, but all carnivores do that. Perhaps I should just change its name. That's easier done than revising a painting.
Perhaps the Probers probe at their prey, stalking towards & then backing away, before finally giving chase. This would select against prey who run off at the first approach (exhausting themselves and making them easy to bring down) as well as against prey who take too long to run.
Or the probing is from how they use their mouthparts to nip at the prey as they run, weakening it thusly, in addition to strikes from the forelimbs. I was going to ask why the necks of the Prober are almost as long as the forelimbs, but this seems a viable explanation, imho.
Or, it was named after a person or device named Prober. (or it was assumed to probe at something, and the name was never changed after it was found to do otherwise)
Sorry.
Big fan of painting 3
I think the blue coloration should go to the bobbuck to maintain its resemblance to the iconic blog header. As for the prober, maybe it's some kind of organ specialist, as has been suggested for the saber-toothed metatherian Thylacosmilus. While all carnivores probe inside corpses, this one might be singled out for doing so with a greater enthusiasm as it processes the intestine-equivalents and other viscera which most other predators wouldn't touch.
Keenir: I am a bit late with responding, but was either away or busy... A like your associations. The simplest solution is to make the animal probe around inside its prey's corpse; then again, perhaps i will change its name altogethe.r
Anonymous: it IS the most alien, isn't it? Although that might be a disadvantage from certain points of view (sales, perhaps?)
Idle: I liked that blue colour too, but couldn't come up with a suitable explanation. If the predators are colourblind, than just the darkness will matter, but that also makes it diufficult to provide predatiors themeselves with bright colours.
Weathered, burnt, and otherwise damaged organic compounds tend to be yellow or brown. Why would it be different on Furaha? If both fresh and dead growth can be orange, it is double reason for the grass depicted to also be orange. Even if prey and predator couldn't truly distinguish between orange and blue, evolution might still select for a shade that matches the vegetation as closely as possible. Light conditions change, and under the white light of day, yellow tint of dawn and dusk, fallow moonlight, and whatever wavelength the planetary rings promote, orange and blue will display different absorption and reflection. To a bobbuck with limited colour perception, a blue prober and orange vegetation might look the same in sunlight conditions, but different under moon- or ringlight.
That is a long-winded explanation for why I see the first colour proposal as the optimal choice if the living grass is orange. The third one works for grasslands that don't experience much drought, and the second one can convey that the vegetation is usually blue but has wilted under dry heat.
On a level detached from theoretical biology, I find that I just take green aliens less seriously than those in other colours. Green creature design is cheap shorthand for making something otherworldly or monstrous. Look how alien it is! It's a colour that no cute mammal has! For website header purposes, I favour the first colour proposal on that basis alone. Not all visitors are long-time readers who know this project as the hardest sci-fi speculative evolution around.
Cola: The first version, with yellow and orange colours, was the one I did first. As you can see the colours of the animals match the surroundings. That also is the case for the third variant, but not for the second one. As I wrote, that definitely requires an explanation, and the one about colour-blind predators wasn't a convincing one (as you can tell from the text, I didn't really believe that one myself...).
I had already made a choice, and that is that the first scheme will be the final one, but part of the light colour of the chest and the front appendages of the prober will be bluish, to add some contrast.
However, you made me think about the colours of decaying plants. You remarked that weathered organic compounds on earth tend towards yellow and brown colours, and indeed they do. But you added 'Why would it be different on Furaha?' That made me realise that I do not know why organic compounds turn brown, and if I do not know that, I cannot predict whether that should be a universal rule. I just spent some 20 minutes looking for an answer but haven't found a factual one yet. my hunch is that biological decay, through bacteria, fungi, etc., can result in many colours, but that drying out indeed causes browning. Interesting...
Double bonds between carbon atoms make a molecule orange, if you have enough of them. Carotene is essentially a long chain of double bonds. Double bonds are easy to generate, which is why uncontrolled, inorganic influences like thermal degradation generate them when decomposing organic molecules.
Cyclic arrangements of carbon (not incorporating metal ions) refract light in other wavelengths, like bright red (cyanidin), blue (delphinidin), and green (biliverdin). These are very finicky in their molecular structure. Bright red cyanidin and bright blue delphinidin are medium-sized molecules that only differ on one extra -OH group on one of the outlying rings in the triple ring system. It is unlikely that something this precise would happen without an organism specifically producing it through enzymatic activity. In my opinion, it is possible that colourful compounds are generated as an intermediary decomposition product from a larger, more complex, yet colourless substance. But these polycyclic molecules, being fairly large and complex themselves also contain energy. That incentivises further digestion.
I don't know how helpful this is for you. I've been dealing with organic and inorganic chemistry for a few years, but actually vibrant compounds rarely come up in my field of work.
I might show my earthbound bias here, but I'm gravitating towards the first option too.
I see nothing wrong with alien animals converging on the coloration of earth fauna if they occupy an environment that's similar or equivalent to a biome that can be found on Earth.
Cola: That is very interesting. I know nothing about how the shape of molecules produces colours, but what I think I understood from your comments is that specific bright colours require a quite specifically targeted biochemistry. The corollary is that breakdown products are unlikely to produce specific colours. Is that right? If so, it reminds me of children mixing coloured paints for the first time. If you do not know what you are doing, you always end up with this muddy olive brown grey colour.
Petr: well, you will get what you wished for ;-)
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