Intelligent Design

[henk brouwer]

I think it's very unlikely to expect all aliens to be humanoids, there are plenty of viable alternatives, and a few billion years of evolution on earth has produced a few nice examples.

Take the crab or the octopus for example, they have body structures that are very different from humans, and they don't even have a head that's seperate from the rest of their main body, they also have a number of very usefull manipulator limbs.

What if evolution had gone differently, it is a game of chance after all. What if crabs had evolved into warm-blooded creatures millions of years ago, and mammals had not? Would those crabs have evolved into having four limbs, and would they have started walking on their hind legs? unlikely. If you look at evolution it seems like that when a certain design is succesfull, it becomes hard to change. All insects have 6 limbs, and all mammals have 4, even though some insects and mammals may have started using those limbs in very different ways. If you would rerun evolution on earth the outcome would likely be very different, and whatever creature would have evolved intelligence, it would be unlikely to look like us.

Back on topic, great drawing Jarena, I'm really looking forward to the non-humanoids you can come up with .

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, you are going underwater there, so that changes things, much like the gas giant.

Having a neck isn't the issue tho.
It dosn't matter how the head is attached, just that there is a gathering of the main sensors and the processing core for large creatures with slow chemical signaling.

[henk brouwer]

The crab design, or some simillar design (spiders with crab claws) would work on land too.

The gathering of the main sensors and processing core is a valid point though, some variation might be possible since aliens are unlikely to have evolved the same nervous system that we have.

[Captain Kwok]

Although I thought there is a size limitation on how big an exoskeleton can be before it couldn't support it's weight (at least in Earth's gravity. )?

[Phoenix-D]

There is. Its the same reason you don't find 6-foot wide cells.

[Jarena]

Thanks for the compliments, everyone. Hopefully I'll get better as I go along.

Fixed some stuff with the original picture, still a wip though. I was inspired by the Japanese style dragons. I imagine my creature evolved from something akin to an Earth Alligator or Kimodo Dragon. Eventually the spine bent upwards and tool-using hands formed (were refined?) to get at hard to reach prey. Brain size increased, and they went from there. Not sure if I like the musculature or the 5-fingered hands, but I think I might just finish the background and stick a fork in this one.
...maybe he should wear clothes? Jewelry? Tattoos? I'll have to think about his society a bit more, I think.

Henk: I've got some stuff in the sketchbook that I think you'll enjoy. I'll try to get my old scanner out later tonight and post it up.

As far as gas giants go, I want to create a race that is purely organic and hyper-evolutionary (kind of like the WH40k Tryanids) that grow their starships instead of building them (I never liked building Mineral Miners on Gas Giants). Maybe everything's orchestrated by city sized wandering hive-queens, who feed off the dense carbon-based gasses and photosynthesis from their trinary star system.

That, and I have an idea for a purely psychic race (that isn't a Protoss clone) that I want you guys to rip apart.
Expect an update soon!