The Exodrake Corner

I wanna start up with some art pertaining to my original species which also serves as my namesake, the Exodrakes. These aliens are definitely unconventional design-wise, and I wish I could explain them in better detail but I'm really not sure what would cross the line with this forum's policies on things pertaining to reproductive bits. So for now I'm just going to post artwork of a few characters, a greatly butchered description, and a skeletal model I made in Sculptris of a female Exodrake to start:

http://orig15.deviantart.net/9f52/f/2015/157/7/7/sculptris___female_exodrake_skeleton_by_exodrake-d8was3s.png

I'm so sorry about the links, but the spoiler tags refuse to work and these images are huge.

Exodrakes have dramatic sexual dimorphism but it's completely different than humans. Here is a male Exodrake character:

http://orig11.deviantart.net/24ce/f/2015/072/e/1/jade_dragon_general__bahamut__by_exodrake-d8ll3j1.png

And this is his mother:

http://orig06.deviantart.net/79ec/f/2015/072/4/7/jade_dragon_general__tiamat__by_exodrake-d8ll31z.png

The female Exodrake is dramatically larger, ranging from 8-10 feet typically, and built for strength while the males are built for agility. Females possess horns (hardcoded to the W chromosome so it's impossible for males to have them), tail blades, and more jaw feelers that form a "beard" while the male has a "goatee". They also have large scales on the nose absent in males. Males fall within a typical height range of 4-6 feet, have superior eyesight, less bone fusion thanks to their lighter body which means they are more flexible as well, and are really fast. This dramatic sexual dimorphism was indeed important for their survival in the world they come from. Also, both male and female Exodrakes can have babies (they are viviparous as all of the higher animals from their world are). I'd like to explain this better but I really can't, sorry. Just know my explanation is very scientifically sound and they have the necessary physiology for this to be possible.

Biologically Exodrakes have no real Earth analogue; the best brief description I can make for them is "highly advanced insects with endoskeletons", but even that draws too many analogues to Earth creatures. Descended from distant insect-like ancestors, their "tail" is anatomically an abdomen; the body cavity extends into it which is why it is a "crotch tail". They belong to a clade of alien animals called Draco, or dragons, named because these animals all have a characteristic fire breathing adaptation which uses a hydrogen+platinum+oxygen reaction to create fire, and some of them actually do closely resemble dragons of lore.

For fire breathing, dragons expel the hydrogen gas from glands in the mouth and platinum powder from the nostrils after grinding and snorting it, which meet at a distance away from the face and they shoot it in quick bursts so they avoid injuring themselves. Still, with the rarity/value of platinum and the amount of personal/property damage fire breathing can cause, doing so is highly taboo and illegal in their society. Platinum is never sold as jewelry or the like; it is permitted only in lab settings on their world, and holds tremendous value on the black market.

Their homeworld, Hrr'gthr, is an Earth-like planet with much of its geography ideal for a planet loaded with forestation, especially rainforests. The semi-arboreal race bases much of their culture on the forest as it is so important to them. Carnivorous, they actually respect plants more than animals, so Exodrakes typically don't get along with human vegans lol.

In the modern day (on Earth it is the year 2054 in their world), Exodrakes openly coexist and trade with humans, so the races are allies who no longer find each other strange after coexisting for millenia. For the most part. Xenophobia is an inevitability between races who cross each other's ideals so much. But for the most part they get along, and interspecies friend circles are the norm; even interspecies romantic relationships are pretty common. Exodrakes think very similarly to humans and are intellectual equals, the main reason for the compatibility of the species.

Mini-infodump aside, here's some more Exodrake character art:
http://orig00.deviantart.net/94a5/f/2015/160/0/a/kryrrys_ref_2015_by_exodrake-d8vs15z.png
(the bit about femboys strictly refers to male exodrakes hating being called that because it genders them like humans, it doesn't mean they hate femboys lol. Also there is one swear on this sheet if that bothers you)

http://orig06.deviantart.net/6a8e/f/2015/105/b/4/reunion_by_exodrake-d8ptzzq.png
Kryrrys with his wife

http://orig05.deviantart.net/202a/f/2015/127/a/5/krytryk_robinson_revisited_by_exodrake-d8sggcc.png
Their daughter

This is a HUGE height scale sketch (6500 pixels wide, 1600 pixels tall) which accurately scales the characters in my universe (or most of the characters, some are absent)
http://orig11.deviantart.net/31d9/f/2015/136/f/1/height_scale_sketch_by_exodrake-d8rmxtc.png

 

Thank you!

And actually yes - I am developing an RPG Maker 2003 game off of this universe but it's all in progress right now.

The gist of the plot is that everything is digital in this world, and some enigmatic virus programmer makes a virus which wreaks havoc on the all digital stock market which makes everyone think a second great depression has occurred, causing them to freak out. This was a ruse to promote organized crime though, something much more problematic in this world. To deal with the influx of criminals being arrested they made the Detainment District which is like a prison-city, and serves as a major setting in the game. So the game in general is a sci-fi/crime themed RPG which aims to eb more realistic than the typical RPG - characters who use chemical weapons can't replenish the energy to use it by sleeping at an inn, they need to purchase chemistry sets and use them, also the Fire Breath skill the playable Exodrake character has can't be used outside if the wind direction is blowing towards him. So it goes for more realism than most RPGs, but still takes SOME artistic licenses, but those which are within reason/not proven to be implausible, like warp drive technology on the spaceships.

 

The skeleton I made in Sculptris, which is like a free lightweight ZBrush, only buggy because it's alpha software(The Draw function likes to cause crashes and it bites the dust with a Runtime Error at around 1.8 million triangles, this skeleton pushing it at close to 1.7 million). it's just a sculpting tool though and I know nothing of 3D animation sadly. Sculptris is very easy to use - but the skeleton model was no walk in the park. Veeeery time consuming and tedious once my computer with subpar harware started lagging hard any time I manipulated something. Also because of my comp lagging badly with hi-poly models like this, painting the huge ones is completely out of the question (with the texture map at full resolution and tight-mapped, the only thing which gives good quality on the paint job, I get 2 FPS if lucky on anything over 1 million triangles so it's not happening, the paint strokes are ruined by the severe lag). But a skeleton doesn't really need painted

 

Back again with another 3D sculpture - this one of my Exodrake sona. Working out a female Exodrake's features in 3D is pretty fun but weaving the eye patch through those feelers was a pain. The eye patch is used to mask a lazy eye fyi.





Also for once my images aren't humongous, yay!

 

Much appreciated!

We're going to take a small break from aliens for a bit because I have a fakemon to share - Mega Scolpendum!

Here's the full res artwork:


And here's an enlarged sprite sheet for detail:













https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVWdyTwu1h4