Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter > Arts, Crafts, Music & Drama - The Artisans' Guilds

Aviarium: fantasy art of dragons, time-travellers and winged people

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Ierne:
Done as part of the planning/worldbuilding for my (very much not complete) fantasy novel Aviarium, and because I like drawing.

Atana is a world inhabited by winged beings and dragons- and entirely cut off from other universes for years. In a more familiar world, Winter is a time-traveller, perpetual wanderer, and good friends with Shakespeare. And has no idea parallel universes are even real- untill a pathway across the void opens - just slightly unexpectedly - in her best friend's back garden.

The pic is of a small fireheart dragon called Mishka, and Aliya, an Adhar* fire mage.
(*Adhar can generate wings made of magical energy.)

Tusky:
Wow Wonderful artwork

It's a fascinating sounding world. Is the pathway you mention to the "real" world as we know it, or does Winter live and know Shakespeare in our world and visits other universes? Or will that all explained in the novel...

Look forward to seeing more :)

Jubal:
Lovely, and likewise looking forward to seeing more :)

A couple of thoughts on the dragon - I like the design, especially the little back-wing things on the tail which are very cool (and I guess in flight would remind one of the tail-wing things on very early aircraft). I think my only quibble is that I'd like to see a bit more muscle buildup at the base of the main wings, and maybe have them connect to the body a little lower - I think you want the wings to look a bit more powerful, if that makes sense, and having the base of them look stronger I think would help with that.

I also really like the idea of someone who is used to time travel already finding that sort of normal but then being baffled by the idea of parallel universes, given I think we sit both things in the same sort of category of "total sci-fi". :)

Ierne:
I am so glad people are interested in this! and like the art! yay!

The world Winter comes from is physically nearly identical to ours, but has a different timeline and certain different properties, such as time travel being possible :) So she is frieds the Shakespeare that exists in *that* universe, not our Shakespeare.
(I'll admit that in my head, she comes from Arda, Tolkien's universe. and knows Makalaure)


--- Quote from: Jubal on January 09, 2019, 11:23:46 PM ---I also really like the idea of someone who is used to time travel already finding that sort of normal but then being baffled by the idea of parallel universes, given I think we sit both things in the same sort of category of "total sci-fi". :)

--- End quote ---
I LOVE THIS TOO- the reason its a thing is because it kinda happened to me: I was writing time-travel fiction from the actual literal begining, but did not discover Narnia untill I was a bit older, and was absolutely captivated/blown away by the whole idea of a lost magical world.

I can take no credit for the dragon's tail-wings - that comes from the how to train your dragon movies. I love all the art used there, but especially the dragon designs.
I know the wings aren't muscular enough and it anoys me too, but I really wanted Mishka to look delicate, probably unusually so for a dragon, and accurate wing muscles just weren't working :P
There are a *lot* of dragon skeleton designs on the internet, and they all do place the wings lower on the body- but they also have the legs and wings attaching from a single set of shoulder blades. But (whilst not being brilliant at zoology), I feel you'd need two sets of shoulder blades, so the forelegs and wings could move fully independntly, and because the horse-type or dinosaur-type shoulder blades used for the forelegs are so different in shape and position to bird or bat shoulder blades that are used in flight.
But I love speculating about what dragons might actually look like, so I welcome disagreement :)

Jubal:
I now want to read the works of Ardan Shakespeare :)

I actually agree with you about the double-shoulder thing, I think that's completely fine, I just think the forelimb shoulders might want to come before the wing shoulders unless you're happy with Mishka having a very odd flying posture - as it is, the weight of her (his? their? unsure) body is almost all behind the wings with no additional support, so even assuming the wings are stronger than they look then the body would dangle vertically downwards after the shoulders (which does happen with some animals, like longhorn beetles IIRC) rather than allowing for a more conventional horizontal flight posture like we're used to birds or bats having. You could also solve the problem by having bigger gliding membranes or something lower down, which would allow the front wings to provide propulsion, and the fairly large legs could also then have a function in providing additional springy lift. The final option (other than the "well it works because I say so") is a flight bladder that somehow collects helium/hydrogen or something, which requires no external changes to the animal, I guess. A natural hydrogen collecting system would also work well alongside fire breath I guess, though it might also lead to the risk that if you ever hit this sort of dragon hard with a sword it would literally blow up in your face.

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