The Diary of Inhuman Species III

Over a year ago I last paid attention to The Diary Of Inhuman Species. I thought that the sheer good natured fun of the creatures there might offset the somewhat depressing tone of the previous post. That tone was due to the inept designs shown by the Discovery Cahannel in their series "Into the universe".

Stan, the author of The Diary, has been very active in the meantime. He has followed his book by publishing stickers of a few of his creatures, and then asked people to send him photographs of any scene whatsoever, but one of his stickers had to be present in the scene. Together with some friends he has produced a very nice film showing giant spider creatures. Their movements are particularly fluid and quite convincing, except of course for the fact that no creatures of such size can walk with such relatively feeble legs. But in Stan's case I do not mind such obvious errors, whereas I do when the Discovery Channel makes mistakes. The reason is that the Discovery Channel pretends to be serious and therefore deserves a critical response. The Diary has no such pretensions at all. Having said that, what response does the Diary deserve? Have a look at a few of his recent creatures and form your own opinion. Here they are:

Click to enlarge; copyright Stan / Grograou

Click to enlarge; copyright Stan / Grograou

Click to enlarge; copyright Stan / Grograou

For me, they show that the artist had great fun in making them, and I find their exuberance contagious. I also like the changes in style.

Click to enlarge; copyright Stan / Grograou

Recently he posted a 'paper toy', which is a model of one of his creatures that can be downloaded, printed, cut out and glued together. The original is to be found here. I immediately started thinking whether I should do one too...

Mr. Fungi's Creature Journal

What I like to find during an internet search is a whole world of speculative biology, filled with interesting beings with nicely thought out backgrounds, sound biomechanical and ecological concepts, and oh yes, excellent artwork. In other words, a few years' work...

But there are quite a few creative people who design life forms for fun without all the rest of it. While a scientific background adds intellectual spice, not having one does not detract from the more primary, emotional type of fun of looking at a well-drawn animal. One example of this type of fun is the 'Diary of Inhuman Species' by Stan, who draws one species a day, as I wrote here earlier. Stan is still going strong, so do not forget to visit his site from time to time.

I came across another site with a constant stream of new odd animals, and like Stan's these animals should not be taken overly seriously. This is the 'Creature Journal' with the explanatory subtitle 'It's a journal with creatures in it'. It is written by 'Fungi' or 'misterfungi', also known as Mark A. Facey.

Click to enlarge ; copyright Mark A. Facey

Here is one of his creatures to start with: the 'mensblodder'. You can see it shouldn't be taken too seriously, can you? I asked Mark about any systematic biological background; there doesn't seem to be an intricately worked-out one, but he was curious to hear what I made of it. I'm ready to make a remark here and there, but do not want to spoil the fun by being too intellectual about it. At first I thought this might be an animal with radial symmetry, based on the legs. Then again, the upper torso and head are clearly bilaterally symmetric, so that probably holds for the entire animal. It seems to have an internal skeleton, so it certainly is no Earth insect. Not that anyone would have thought that anyway. Seeing it's legs bent this way and that, it is either not very large or must live on a low-gravity world. Mark, is that anywhere close to what you had in mind?

Click to enlarge ; copyright Mark A. Facey

It's a bird! It's a 'Cluckadon Tuft Puncher'. If you have seen films of birds of paradise, with their bizarre mating rituals and plumage, you can not think that this animal is wholly unearthly. Its posture reminded me of such birds, but I might be wrong: perhaps this is its normal standing posture. Then again, its name suggests a more pugilistic attitude: a threat posture? I would guess it is flightless, judging from the shape of its wings and its tail.
Click to enlarge ; copyright Mark A. Facey

The 'emerald nitpicker' is a tetrapod animal with an exoskeleton (look at the first joints of the hind legs); and why not? There is no rule stating that any animal with more than four legs in its body plan must be an arthropod and therefore have an exoskeleton. If  larger animals can get away with walking on four legs, why shouldn't small ones be able to do the same? I can't help but wonder why its legs are in the position they're in. Are the front legs designed to catch prey? Is it a jumping predator? Regardless, it is very eye-catching.

Click to enlarge ; copyright Mark A. Facey

The 'knuckleheaded guppy goblin', or, as I would label it, a fish. This certainly is a predator. I like the way its salmon-like head bump adds a sense of power to the animal. It's also nicely fleshy. It's not found in local waters, I think, as there anatomical clues why this is no mere Earth fish.

I hope you like Mark's animals as much as I do: they are fun and make me want to sit down and start painting immediately. In my case that usually involves oil paints, as I still have to make the -for me- difficult transfer to digital art. If any readers are in a similar stage, or wish to take up painting with Photoshop, Mark has posted a few videos showing how he paints a 'hulking shipwreck creeper'.  

This is probably this year's last post. Then again, I might decide to post some more attempts at videos showing Furahan landscapes. Have a nice 2010!

The Diary of Inhuman Species II

How to discover an astonishing monster a day? Easy; just visit Stan's website, where he publishes one each day. You can also order his book, which I did. It is small (16x16 cm), but is quite heavy for its size. That is not surprising, as its 416 pages are printed on good quality paper, and except for the introduction almost every one has one of his monsters on it. So you can probably just visit his site, but the advantage of a book is that you leaf through it at any moment you please, and you cannot do that with a website, can you? What is the story behind all this? Well, it turns out that poor Stan is a victim of aliens; he is one of those abductees who were carried aloft and away. In his case, memories came back afterwards. The foreword of his book tells the story in a much more interesting way than I could, so I will simply quote it. By the way, the text in the book is provided in French as in English, so take your pick. I'll quote the English version: "Although it has never been proven that Stan had a 'close encounter of the fourth kind', there is no doubt that he suffered an intense psychological shock that day, some sort of psychological trauma that locked him into a daily ritual, a compulsive need to give form on paper to these supposed visitors. At precisely the same time each day, he lapses into a near-hypnotic state as though his hand were acting as the cosmic mouthpiece of some invisible force." The message is clear; poor Stan, compelled to retrieve near-hidden images of these aliens from memory, has to make one drawing each and every day. The book contains the ones from March 5, 2007 to March 4, 2008.

Click to enlarge

Here is an example of a double page; the gray bit in the centre is where the two pages come together (I will not break a book's back to get a better scan). The little rectangle at the bottom of each page contains some data on the species. The Labeet on the right is 'U A T'; that means its sex is Unidentified, its mood is Aggressive, and it is Terrestrial. Half of the book is in colour, and I have chosen a few of those. Here are two more; I am not certain why, but they are among my favourites.

Click to enlarge

Except from the abduction background story told in the beginning of the book, there is no story connecting the various aliens. But there are some sketches in the back, and I did find an intriguing page that does seem to tell a story. Here it is:

Click to enlarge

We see some heavy-duty worker types with four arms. Great!; they must come from hexapod stock, and clearly exhibit the principle of centaurism, freeing not just two but four limbs from locomotion. They seem to carry a brain on their back, but the bottom row shows that this is a creature in its own right, looking like a grumpy brain on cute little feet. Stan, what is the story here? As I wrote before, Stan's remembered aliens are not the kind that call out for detailed criticism of their biological likelihood. It may be Darwin Year, but let's not judge these animals against the demands posed on them by nature red in tooth and claw. It would not be fair to attempt to determine the survival of Stan's aliens in terms of whose genes will get past along by being fit in the conventional evolutionary sense, and whose will sadly get stuck in the evolutionary doldrums. They should perhaps be measured with a different yardstick; I say that we should apply the degree to which they tickle a sense of humour to measure their fitness. Then they will not just survive, but live long and prosper.

The Diary of Inhuman Species

The 'what?', you may well ask. Do inhuman species keep diaries? Who knows? Should they? Anyway, this particular diary concerns a website with the appealing subtitle 'Discover one astonishing monster a day'. To give you an idea, here is a sample illustration:

Click to enlarge

Nice, isn't it? There are lots more monsters / aliens / animals to discover on the site. I think they have a French flavour to them I cannot put my finger on; it probably has something to do with the combination of very fine workmanship and a sense of humour, or at least not taking oneself too seriously. The beings shown here are rather funny. I tend to look at such creations with an eye on biomechanical plausibility. I won't be doing that here, as that would kill the joy of looking at the beasties. If there is one thing exuding from this site, it is that the author (Stan) has fun. I'll be buying the 416-page book (and hope that it contains at least 400 animals). Enjoy!