Aera anatomy flaws

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abysswolf
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Aera anatomy flaws

Post by abysswolf »

i have been reading the aera sheet on the wiki and i found this

Image

i don't want to sound smartass but ... there is a reason a biological reason, a GOOD reason why eyes are allays UPSIDE the mouth and that is eating or drinking water

1.- without putting your eyes inside the food

2.- while looking your surroundings <--- this one is the most important

i can do a better render of them tough im not good drawing anything non-anthropomorphical
travists
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by travists »

Don't forget that the higher up they are the farther you can see. But eye stalks increase the distance to the brain and so the lag time.
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by abysswolf »

we have pretty much fast sighted animals with that configuration however i see highly improvable for a race to survive with eyes below their mouth in fact i see highly improvable they piloting a craft without eyes pointing forward just imagine how a horse would target something right ahead of he that's why predators don't have that kind of config we need to target and follow and Aera is a predator race for the most... so..

EDIT: unless they use a special headgear with screens and a central monoscopic camera
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by klauss »

abysswolf wrote:we have pretty much fast sighted animals with that configuration however i see highly improvable for a race to survive with eyes below their mouth in fact i see highly improvable they piloting a craft without eyes pointing forward just imagine how a horse would target something right ahead of he that's why predators don't have that kind of config we need to target and follow and Aera is a predator race for the most... so..
That could be lack of imagination.

Just saying.

The phrase "Our planet has no animals with eyes below so it's quite improbable aliens would have them below" screams falacy to me.
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abysswolf
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by abysswolf »

klauss wrote:
The phrase "Our planet has no animals with eyes below so it's quite improbable aliens would have them below" screams falacy to me.

shame is that... biology doesn't work with basis on imagination but in common sence predators predate lets take an example of species that inhabited earth before it was like it is right now... Dinosaurs existed on a practically different planet and the same logic aply

se the eye location for predator dinosaurs... and for other kind of them

Image

allosaurus or Allosaurus fragilis sported fairly ahead placed and centered eyes for his kind allowing him to be one of the most proficient of the super predators

Image

his primordial foe the mighty Seismossaurus Diplodocus Hallorum or diplodocus sported a eye configuration more simillar to actual hervibore animals because they needed to see their surroundings in search of predators like the allosaurus

so this is not mere lack of imagination Klauss is the biological way aerans would be an easy prey while eating or sleeping or drinking water also locating such a fragile structure as eyeballs in the corner of a junction or articulation is something unpractical and dangerous we rarely fall with our bellys up normally we fall OVER our belly and thats again something that has to do with a very basic law imagine falling over a dangerous floor like it is in jungle with roots and whatnot over your FREAKING EYES.... recovery time, possible injury and whatnot will be affected...
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by klauss »

abysswolf wrote:so this is not mere lack of imagination Klauss is the biological way aerans would be an easy prey while eating or sleeping or drinking water also locating such a fragile structure as eyeballs in the corner of a junction or articulation is something unpractical and dangerous we rarely fall with our bellys up normally we fall OVER our belly and thats again something that has to do with a very basic law imagine falling over a dangerous floor like it is in jungle with roots and whatnot over your FREAKING EYES.... recovery time, possible injury and whatnot will be affected...
Yes it is lack of imagination. You're basing all of your deductions on examples of one planet alone, one environment, and assume it applies to all the others.

Reminds me of this.
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abysswolf
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by abysswolf »

Image
in fact a gorilla (gorilla gorilla) can hunt to death a aera in his own ground only need to come from above and crush his skull to the ground the aera will not be able to see him and being a reptilia means that it is a soft boned creature the gorilla being a primal has developed to be good trowing himself from trees and manheuvering in deep jungles aera being a hexapodous reptilia need more space and it is good climbing but not manheuvering plus having 6 limbs gives it a lower responce than a gorilla due to brain function overload
Image
my 2nd example is a tiger (phantera tigris), this is a more even fight in fact a Aera COULD fight agaist a tigris but the aera being a reptilia is very under armored and notably underarmed reptilians usually have claws spines aera is a vastly plain creature for surviving in such enviroment again Tigers usually attack when their prey has lowered his head (the weakest position for a aera) and usually attacks to the neck the only possibility the Aerii has is listening the tiger before it attacks and repeling it with his strong arms or tail and then climbing out on a tree and attack from there where the tiger will take more to responce

this is in wild state however not putting any tech into this

i repeat biology uses practicity and common sence not imagination Aera coudnt had survived a pre sentient era agaist other predators... is vastly under armored and armed with the main sence for survival (sight) hidden below the bulk of his head, no use of the reptilian advantage of being able to spit venom, have developed claws, armored skin and spikes, superior sight underwater, superior swiming skills nervous responce and stronger muscles if cold blooded study a little bit more about Biology before putting in the game this species... it needs a serious overhaul since i have been some really good work with other less dominant species
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by klauss »

Still completely irrelevant. No tigers or gorillas on the Aeran homeworld.
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by loki1950 »

klauss wrote:Still completely irrelevant. No tigers or gorillas on the Aeran homeworld.
Maybe not but their are analogs that fill the appropriate ecological niches BTW IIRC Oblivion the artist may have been a little influenced by the old Bug-eyed Monster cliche ;) So changes would be welcome if some artist type wishes to update the concept art go ahead.

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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by klauss »

loki1950 wrote:
klauss wrote:Still completely irrelevant. No tigers or gorillas on the Aeran homeworld.
Maybe not but their are analogs that fill the appropriate ecological niches
Maybe the Aeran homewolrd has no analogs. Maybe that's why bottom-side eyes evolved.
loki1950 wrote:BTW IIRC Oblivion the artist may have been a little influenced by the old Bug-eyed Monster cliche ;) So changes would be welcome if some artist type wishes to update the concept art go ahead.
Sure, but falling on the opposite cliché of making everything similar to familiar races is also bad. Think star-trek where alien means having ridged noses.
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IansterGuy
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by IansterGuy »

I have a solution. :lol: Five eyes but not what you think. Two more on the front, one the back. :mrgreen: This way it would be like on their planet they where both the predator and the prey, which would also explain why they are still so violent and why they still have a tail. They trust no one.
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by abysswolf »

klauss wrote:Still completely irrelevant. No tigers or gorillas on the Aeran homeworld.

yeah i know but the wiki praises that they evolved on a very violent world with a harsh selvatic enviroment if they cannot withstand attacks from creatures from this friendly planet imagine what kind of quasi demonic shit they faced on theirs... i will try to do a rethink of the Aerii i just have to learn how to make convincent dragonskin


EDIT:

im going to make it a 3 eyed creature, one central eye and 2 peripheral eyes giving them a greater sight pan also by closing the peripheral ones they can focus on what they see ahead making them very good fighter pilots im going to keep the exapodous config but im going to add an extra cerebellum im going to add a stronger muscle configuration and im going to add spikes on their back also im going to put some nasty bacteria on their mouth like the komodo dragons and also give them an internal methane bag and a internal nitrogen bag that they could use to spit fire like a freaking dragon... im going to make them on a deep green colour that camouflage better in the shade of the jungle and rear palmed feet for superior swiming what dya think?
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by loki1950 »

Doesn't have to be fire that mouth bacteria would be effective on it's own as split in your eye ;) lets keep things simple where we can but moving the location of the eyes is necessary as you stated like the 3 eye solution 8) BTW.

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DarkVixen
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by DarkVixen »

I kind of wanted to pull out this old thread because I'm considering drawing some pics of Aera creatures for the game.

I'd like to know if there has been any "evolution" on the topic of the Aera's eye and mouth placement? Or other changes from what is currently in the VsWiki page?
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by ezee »

Hi !

I think that you could try to do what you like to do , and perhaps the community will follow you .
Try different approachs ,let your imagination rule .

I made a quick search , and found something that is good for me :
Image from this blog :ufonaut

The more exemples and choice we have , the closest to our needs will be the selection .
Having a wiki to refer to is good , but the guys that wrote some parts are gone .
And we are here now, to write the history too and realize dreams .

Code: Select all

 if (!track.HasWeapons())
            {
                // So what are you going to threaten me with? Exhaustion gas?
                return ThreatLevel::None;
            }
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jackS
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by jackS »

So, (while I have a few minutes to wax nostalgic during unattended office hours/dead time before I give an evening exam) a few bits of (possibly) relevant information:

1) The picture at the beginning of this thread never had a canonical head. (Where that image appears in the lore document, it is explicitly noted that the head has... issues)

The picture from the wiki is the result of the following sequence of events
a) Artist draws picture of Aera that is (except for head) relatively in-line with what we were looking for (certainly better than most previous attempts).
b) Artist is referred to description of Aeran jaw hinging being reversed (top is mobile, bottom is fixed)
c) Artist flips existing head upside down (in photoshop? redrawn? It's been too long) and reattaches it.
d) Canonical head is never re-drawn in time between this image and artist moving on.
e) With notation that head is non-canonical, image remains best rendering of Aeran body plan (in off-line lore document).
f) Notation that head is not canonical doesn't make it into the wiki.
<some years pass>
g) this thread correctly notes that the head has some (probable) biological plausibility issues, but information is not available that this is, let's say, a known bug due to non-spec implementation

2) To help clarify, to the degree possible via quickly written text, the original intentions:

a) The eyes are, among (several) other things, closer to the brain case than depicted - i.e. much further back in the head, not at all near the end of the elongated mouthparts.
b) The elongated mouth section is noticeably narrower than the head (for inspiration, consider the Gharial, but not nearly as extreme, especially in elongation), and the jaw hinge is somewhat further forward with respect to the skull than on a human skull (or that of the aforementioned Gharial). The mouth section is also not as thick as the skull vertically.
c) (Just the completely clear) The eyes are not on either part of the jaw. The eye(turret)s are on the non-mobile portion of the skull, above, behind, and to the sides of the jaw
d) Aeran eyes are i) widely set ii) turretted. (Consider chameleons for inspiration for the latter). Like terrestrial vertebrate visual hunters, there is a keenly defined stereoscopic visual field when the turrets are at their forwardmost facing. At the same time, independent tracking to their sidemost positions allows a large total visual field reflecting the fact that the line that eventually produced the Aera spent much of its development in positions other than the top of the food chain on their homeworld.
e) Aera have lips, but the lips have progressively less flexibility and greater durability the further toward the end of the mouth they go. The converse is also true - the back corners of the mouth are quite flexible and expressive
f) Aera do not have nasal openings distinct from the oral opening. Chemosense (i.e. smell) is primarily achieved via smell-sensitive regions at the protruding and flexible back corners of the mouth, and assisted by less sensitive chemosensory receptors on the nearby throat regions. These openings are the primary means of respiration during sessile periods. When more active, the mouth as a whole may open to some degree to increase airflow. As one commenter long ago once intoned "so they can't breathe and drink water at the same time?" - Yup. Just like a person with a clogged up nose (except they still can smell just fine).

3) Misc
a) The Aeran chlorophyll analogue is closer to yellow than green, affecting associated Aeran coloration considerations
b) The jungle floor/near floor, where the Aeran line developed, is relatively dark if the canopy is thick (it was). This influences the pervasive muting of Aeran (non-display) colors. Or, to put it differently, to the degree that their body patterns were camoflauge resembling the surrounding environment (which they were, but not completely), they looked more like mulch, tree trunks, exposed/travelling roots, old-growth branches, and sparse undergrowth than like leafy vegetation in the upper canopy.
c) Aerans are not scale-covered (more toward the "leathery hide") end of things.

4)Cross thread questioning
How do the Aera age?

Are there subspecies/races/ethnicities and other mophic variations?

What about different sexes? pathogenic (one sex, born pregnant)?

Do they lay eggs like Terran reptiles? or live birth?
a) Quickly, and, later, in old age (late 20s onward), painfully :/ More seriously, they go through no profoundly metamorphic phase, if that's what you were asking.
b) Subspecies, no. Races/ethnicities yes, but not that we, as humans, would necessarily key in on visually (recall the biological definition of race -> "shared trait" -> all people with attached earlobes are a "race"). Feel free to do something subtle to indicate greater diversity than "single-biome planet of hats" (the Aera's ancestors started in a single biome on a single continent, the planet, not so much.... even after they burned down the forests, it's just bio-simple, not bio uniform -- but I digress ) but I'd avoid making it "purple Aera vs. grey Aera".
c) Nominally two genders.
d) Can't honestly remember if I ever decided this. Compared to humans, they do have a reproduction strategy involving larger numbers of offspring per mating, but I can't recall if it was eggs. I think it wasn't, but I could be misremembering.

Hope that was useful to someone (if a couple years late for the original thread poster)
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Re: Aera anatomy flaws

Post by DarkVixen »

Thanks JackS, that really helps, I have sketched a few examples that I will post soon.

I want to have the head down correctly, hopefully I want to add an image that could be colored and usable along with the "Bar Scene Characters".

I made up 2 Aera subspecies:

One for the north/south poles of the their homeworld, which I call "Polar Aeras" (like Eskimos humans).

Another for the central/equatorial subspecies, which I call "Equatorial Aeras" (like African/Indian humans).

The Polar ones have longer torsos and are more round in shape, to conserve heat.

PS: I do not want to "take over" as the "Aera authority", basically I want to use whatever you want them to look like to perfect my skills as a digital artist. All works CC/GPL of course. :)
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