The Gang of Five
The forum will have some maintenance done in the next couple of months. We have also made a decision concerning AI art in the art section.


Please see this post for more details.

Mr E Creativity

The Mr E

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Wow, this site is more expansive than I initially thought!  Well, since there's a nook for it, I thought I'd share some of my digital art.

LITTLE FRUIT BAT



One of my favourite designs yet! I created this fella in response to the Character Design Challenge of November 2021, 'Veggie Animals' (fruit animals were allowed too). It was nice to break out of my more cartoony comfort zone with detailed, lineart-less work ... even if it took more ludicrous trial and error than usual to get here 😂.  Now, I sort of default to lineless art for designs like this.

At first, I thought a 'fruit bat' is such a typical choice. Many other competitors were bound to think of it, so I developed him as a primate that glides with its peel body, inspired by a flying lemur. The drawback? Flying lemurs aren't that cute.  At all.  So, I added sugar glider traits to fix that. However, his arms looked much better with flaps of peel (inspired by microraptors), which made him resemble a bat with stubby wings. I eventually made him a fruit bat anyway, but his peel wings were too small. Just giving him more wing peel lacked a creative punch. That's where the juice wings came in! This is a creature with a seemingly telekinetic control over its juice. Sprouting liquid wings is just one of its juice manipulation abilities. How it flies with that massive tail is a mystery, but it comes in handy for mind-boggling, aerodynamic tricks. I've put a lot of thought into his story and biology, but I'll save some for later 😉.

Almost forgot the kiwi fruit fly to his right! The little thing can't resist the siren call saccharine scent of its natural predator ... or do they share a symbiotic relationship? Time may tell.

If I had could pick any theme for Fruit Bat, it would probably be this:
https://youtu.be/z-08_5sGptA?t=63


Sneak

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Whoa, it is so neat and colorful!!! :O (and cute ^^)

Do you have more? I would like to see them too!


RainbowFaceProtege

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This looks amazing! You clearly put a lot of thought into this idea, came up with a really cute creature, and WOW do I envy your lineless art skills! :wow

Definitely would be interested in hearing more about the concept for this little guy!




"I don't see anything!"--Cera

"Maybe your eyes are getting in the way."--Rainbow Face


The jewelstone queen

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Wow! I love your creativity for this lil guy! The textures are amazing! It's got like a nice sparkly feel that I don't know how to describe in words. The over all pose and style of your work is magnificent!

I also find it cute that this little critter would have a theme song, hehe! Nice job!
I'm currently writing an lbt fanfic about Littlefoot and Ruby, it's a little cringy at first. Go check it out if you're interested! FANFICTION.NET- https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14063661/1/The-Land-Before-time-Unbearable
OR RIGHT HERE ON THE WEBSITE- https://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=17556.0


The Mr E

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@Sneak

Thanks!  I'd like to make some more fruit bats in the future.  Got started with them too.  In the meantime, you can find some more creature/character designs in my ArtStation gallery.  I'll be posting stuff from there to here, along with some new things I don't have on the gallery yet.


The Mr E

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@RainbowFaceProtege

I'm glad you like it!  I considered making fruit bats an SCP.  Since you're interested in more of the concept, I'll elaborate for anyone curious (you don't have to read the whole thing.  It's only for the sake of interest).

Fruit bats are known for their effervescent friendliness, intelligence and innocence ... but that does not mean they are harmless.  Friendship with a fruit bat can be tricky. You just have to be mindful of their abilities. They slowly drain nutrients, primarily sugar and water, from any object they touch (sans other fruit bats), even if they'd rather not.  That includes the human body.  It takes hours of constant contact for you to notice the effects.  After that, you may find yourself tired and craving sweet food, especially fruit.  It can be very good for a diabetic, or someone trying to watch their weight, but bad for someone with low blood sugar.  Sometimes, fruit bats learn about this the hard way, as they can get carried away with cuddling.  It's dangerous to fall asleep while cradling a fruit bat.  You might have a hard time waking up, assuming you wake up at all.  This can be mitigated by often giving the fruit bat something sweet and hydrated to hold onto, as they will drain the sweetest thing they are touching before you have to worry about blood sugar.  It's possible to accessorise them in this manner, as they can temporarily graft parts of other plants to their bodies.  For instance, you can attach a pair of cherries to a fruit bat's head, adding visual appeal while giving it a slow burn snack.

Though personalities vary, they are naturally empathetic and peaceful.  It takes a lot to make a fruit bat angry, but if they or someone they care about is threatened and there is no other option, they will reveal their more horrifying abilities.  They can drain blood sugar and water much more rapidly on command, leaving an opponent faint if not unconscious, while adding to their telekinetic juice.  Perhaps their scariest power is the 'Citric Screech'.  Any orange juice (or citric juice) in range of the screech will drastically increase acidity for as long as the screech lasts ... even if it's in your stomach.  The louder the screech, the greater the acid's effect.  Imagine an enraged fruit bat splashing juice everywhere with an explosive flap, then screaming, louder and louder, slowly ramping up the burning effect until its enemies flee or stick around too long and suffer the consequences.

Fruit bats' voices are key to their juice control, thanks to specialised, secondary vocal organs channeled through their flaps.  They shape their wings with 'The Song of Flight', involving mechanical resonance phenomena such as acoustic tractor beams far more advanced than anything modern science can accomplish.  Wings are just one of the shapes they can form.  The Rainbowfaces from War Before Time also use mechanical resonance and other obscure, acoustic sciences, but in a less specific way.
Edit: I'm considering the possibility that they use acoustic levitation to stay in the air, and their wings aren't the main source of lift, but rather for direction and balance.  If you watch a fruit bat hover on the spot, you might notice they don't really flap as much as they should, as though hanging on the wind like a soaring eagle ... except there is no wind.  The flaps they make are more to maintain position than fight gravity.  Their flight seems to resemble energetic swimming more than flight, as they don't need to fight gravity.  The heavy tail hangs to add more balance when they hover around.  Otherwise, they could more easily spiral as though in zero gravity.  When moving at high speeds, their tails unwind and flatten to help them pump through the air in a motion similar to a swimming wale.  It is unknown how they manipulate the behaviour of juice for sturdy structures and increased acidity.  As Nikola Tesla put it, “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”  The fruit bats are way ahead of us in that regard, and they don't even know how they're doing it.  It just comes naturally.

If their juice powers are a headache to modern science, their semi-immortality is an aneurism.  When damaged beyond their threshold, they will respawn from the closest orange within a multi-mile radius.  That orange will become their body, uncurling into the fruit bat.  Seedless oranges do not apply, and the range of this ability is unknown.  Of course, randomly respawning from an orange can be inconvenient or even awkward.  There's no telling where they'll end up, or how easily they'll find their way home.  Some fruit bats can choose their target orange, and respawn at will if not taken off guard.  This skill is used similarly to teleportation.  It can be difficult to tell which orange they have respawned from unless they reveal themselves.  When seamlessly curled in their tails (which is how they like to sleep or hide), they resemble normal oranges.

The Blight is one of the only things that can threaten fruit blats.  This intelligent fungus has ravaged their world, infecting plant creatures and turning them into super spreader monsters, or unwitting carriers.  Of all the fruit bat breeds, it hates oranges the most, as their juice and Citric Screech are its kryptonite.  Throughout various points in time, floranimals like fruit bats have entered the human world through portals such as Animal Flower Cave (a real-life location in Barbados, even if not a portal).  Now, The Blight has followed them, but a partnership with the humans just might be what it takes to save both worlds.
« Last Edit: October 12, 2022, 02:44:56 AM by The Mr E »


The Mr E

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Wow! I love your creativity for this lil guy! The textures are amazing! It's got like a nice sparkly feel that I don't know how to describe in words. The over all pose and style of your work is magnificent!

I also find it cute that this little critter would have a theme song, hehe! Nice job!

Thanks, @The jewelstone queen !  The sparky look was mostly to imply pollen or dust particles catching sunlight.  The bokeh effects in the background give that out of focus, jungle ambience without me having to actually draw the jungle, heh heh.

He'll need a decent song if he's gonna join the club of exotic, jungle creatures like Marsupilami, Kimba / Leo, Gon and Hugo ... who are mostly orange, for some reason ...  Speaking of Kimba, the 2009 movie was surprisingly good.  It's style somewhat reminds me of yours.

I'd love to do an art trade with you sometime!  You're EXTREMELY good, especially with expressions and adorableness.  By the way, how do you add your fanfics to the footnote of your messages?


The jewelstone queen

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\



Thanks, @The jewelstone queen !  The sparky look was mostly to imply pollen or dust particles catching sunlight.  The bokeh effects in the background give that out of focus, jungle ambience without me having to actually draw the jungle, heh heh.

He'll need a decent song if he's gonna join the club of exotic, jungle creatures like Marsupilami, Kimba / Leo, Gon and Hugo ... who are mostly orange, for some reason ...  Speaking of Kimba, the 2009 movie was surprisingly good.  It's style somewhat reminds me of yours.

I'd love to do an art trade with you sometime!  You're EXTREMELY good, especially with expressions and adorableness.  By the way, how do you add your fanfics to the footnote of your messages?

Ah, leo the lion! I'm familiar... And thank you! The style is really nice, kind of a mix of dysney and anime! And I'd be really interested in an art trade! If you wanna, you can pm me and we shall discuss more!

And to link a fanfic on your "signature" which is just the bottom segment that appears everytime you post, you just need to go to account settings, hover over modify profile and click forum profile, and then scroll down and fill in whatever you want in the box that says signature. And you can pretty much put a link to anything you want. Hope I explained this right, hehe!
I'm currently writing an lbt fanfic about Littlefoot and Ruby, it's a little cringy at first. Go check it out if you're interested! FANFICTION.NET- https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14063661/1/The-Land-Before-time-Unbearable
OR RIGHT HERE ON THE WEBSITE- https://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=17556.0


The Mr E

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Great!  I'll pm you @The jewelstone queen .  I might not be ready at this moment, but I'm definitely interested.  Thanks for the how-to on the signature!


The Mr E

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In the spirit of GoF, meet the world's smallest dinosaur ... type ... thing, the covid-eating 'Microraptor'!  He's my entry for the September 2022 Character Design Challenge: 'Hybrids'.



Not to be confused with the prehistoric microraptors, these organisms will take on traits of prey and hosts, such as the flagella of bacteria (tentacles) and the green, plant-like cells of phytoplankton (tail). From covid and tetanus to cancer and parasites, they eat anything that threatens their territory ... namely your body. Microraptors would be diseases themselves, but they are smart enough to know not to destroy their home. However, without prey, they may turn on a host's gut bacteria, mistaking it for a low-priority invader good for a backup food supply. Once they've eaten all of that, they will start tearing bacteria-like mitochondria from your cells to devour it. Yes, that's ... pretty much as dangerous as it sounds. If you have a microraptor infection, eat plenty of probiotics in the early stages, keeping up the gut bacteria. It is not advised that you live unhygienically just to feed microraptors, although ... that could work, if they are good enough to handle whatever you throw at them. Eventually, microraptors will settle into your body enough to realise gut bacteria is off limits. Domesticated raptors will even develop fondness for their hosts, refusing to eat mitochondria whether they're hungry or not.

Microraptors can survive on the nutrients in a host's bloodstream, but they cannot reproduce without prey. How, you never asked? Their claws are actually embryo-like organelles that grow into new raptors, and yes - the claws have eyes before developing. Once a claw infects a microbe, it grows and bursts out as a young raptor, which is totally not a callback to a certain sci-fi horror movie. Microraptors can either produce brand new packmates, or grow an empty body and transfer their own nuclei to it to live longer. That last part is important for them, since a microraptor's body has a one-to-two-day lifespan. Only the long-lived nucleus survives after that, if it's transferred to a new body in time.

Humans have never noticed microraptors until recently, due to the sheer vastness of the microscopic world. Though they are relatively rare, there are countless packs with different ways of life. Some will tweak your body to peak performance for better chances of survival, though you'll need to eat more. Others will grow fat cells in your body as a backup food source in case they run out of prey, making you gain a little more weight than you'd like and have a hard time losing it. Others live like freeloaders, only hunting when necessary and surviving on the stuff that you eat, forcing you to eat more but without the benefit of extreme fitness. Some will make special efforts to build a relationship with you, using a neuron-based raptors that talk to you through your nervous system. At least one pack has managed to give their human microraptor avatars, allowing them to run with the pack and coordinate defenses. Microraptors almost always have a health benefit, from moderate/mixed to extreme. Some packs will take care of you so diligently that you could live forever. However, if two microraptor packs end up in the same body, they just might go to war and catch you in the crossfire, causing sickness. Of course, there's always the chance they'll get along. However, there are whispers of a hostile pack dubbed 'Flesh Masters', bent on infecting all humanity. Slowly, they make their hosts as monstrously dangerous as a human can be, manipulating them to spread the infection without necessarily knowing.  On the flipside, if you form a strong connection with your microraptors, you can ask them to make slow changes to your body. The microraptors can never turn you into Superman, but they can make you an Olympic class athlete, an Einstein level genius or a Tom Cruise-rivalling looker. However, any key change is best made before teenagehood ends, as a fully grown body takes longer to optimise.

Like humans, microraptors are a mixed bag, but do not fear. Most would rather be your friend.  After all, a happiness does the body good. Who knows? One day, they may call you 'alpha'!



RainbowFaceProtege

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E, your sci-fi worldbuilding skills are epic as usual! :chompysmile I love how many different biological aspects you take into account with your creatures, from disposition to physicality. The creative twists on the real-life animals you used as inspiration are fun, too.

Wait, your Rainbow Faces have acoustic abilities?? That’s a callback to that scene where they’re in the caves with the Gang and there’s that unearthly screeching sound that I was super curious about as a kid isn’t it??
 :facepalm Um, back on topic…Anyway, funny story: I was originally typing up this response before work today, but I was interrupted and ended up not coming back to this until I got home in the evening. Then I saw the Microraptor! The bat was already cool, but I’m even more in love with that raptor design!
I generally fear germs, but…infect me, I want one. :wub

EDIT: Almost forgot to ask, what’s an SCP?
« Last Edit: October 10, 2022, 08:26:09 PM by RainbowFaceProtege »




"I don't see anything!"--Cera

"Maybe your eyes are getting in the way."--Rainbow Face


The jewelstone queen

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This is so creative! Dang, I hope I don't have one of those microraptors running around in my body! And by the way, when you look at a bacteria up close, you see these little smudges and splotches, and you did an excellant job at replicating it! 

I'd like to agree with Rainbowfaceprotege, I kinda want one.
I'm currently writing an lbt fanfic about Littlefoot and Ruby, it's a little cringy at first. Go check it out if you're interested! FANFICTION.NET- https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14063661/1/The-Land-Before-time-Unbearable
OR RIGHT HERE ON THE WEBSITE- https://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=17556.0



The Mr E

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Thanks, Rainbow!  I'm glad it's not just plain ol' boring.

To be honest, that wasn't a call-back to the screech in the cave  :rhett_smile, but now that you mention it, I might find a way to work it in.  My Rainbowfaces use a lot of obscure sciences, though taken to a fantastical extreme.  This helps them feel more alien in my opinion.  Two recurring themes are low temperature and, of course, acoustic tech.  For instance, cold fire is really nanotech that drains energy (including heat energy) until molecules just don't have the strength to hold themselves together - forced entropy.  Then, it puts them back together differently ... or just leaves them in pieces.  That gives cold fire the power to create and destroy pretty much anything.  'Healing the sick' as the female Rainbowface said is just the tip of the iceberg.  Low temperature is also great for their superconductive tech, such as quantum computers.  As for acoustics, sound and vibration in general can do incredible things that we don't really hear much about.  They are dark horses of science.  Magnetism can only levitate and move around metals, but acoustics can grab almost anything.  That's why it comes in handy for abduction tractor beams, propulsion and perhaps even telekinesis.  Dinosaurs affected by it may hear an otherworldly sound called 'The Hum'.  My Rainbowfaces also have acoustic weapons which affect specific targets by hitting their resonant frequencies, the same way glass shatters when blasted with the sound it resonates at.  Rainbowfaces might call the use of acoustic tech as 'singing', with specific effects being different 'songs' (much like fruit bats).  They also have more familiar sciences, but often applied in alien-looking ways.  Even their machines and architecture made steel or plastic have organic-looking shapes based on generative design, since these shapes seem superior to the angular, geometric shapes we mostly use in modern times.  I'm still developing these ideas.  They've evolved a lot since I started coming up with them, so I wouldn't be surprised if some things change later.  I'm not sure if I'm using the right scientific terminology in some areas ...

Anyway, SCPs are engrossingly bizarre creatures, objects, phenomena and such.  The acronym stands for 'Secure, Contain, Protect'.  They're part of a writing community that focuses on The SCP Foundation.  They're like the Men in Black, except they deal with any anomaly ... or try, anyway.  A while back, Sneak's profile pic was SCP-173, 'The Statue' - an entity that can only move when no one's looking, but it's EXTREMELY fast.  All a victim needs to do is blink and they might be a goner (like weeping angels from Doctor Who).  Most SCPs are monstrous, but some are harmless, or would be harmless if handled with care.  A handful are friendly or even cute.

Fruit Bat and Microraptor would fit right in with the SCP world, but I hesitate to propose them as SCPs because I'd sort of give up ownership of them to the community (or at least that version of them - it's complicated).  The SCP world can also be very unsettling ... it's at the edge of my threshold.  I suppose that depends on the writer, as there are many takes on the SCP universe.  It's like fanfiction, but without canon, though some elements recur enough to almost be canon.  There are a lot of YouTube channels dedicated to sharing SCP-related content.


The Mr E

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This is so creative! Dang, I hope I don't have one of those microraptors running around in my body! And by the way, when you look at a bacteria up close, you see these little smudges and splotches, and you did an excellant job at replicating it! 

I'd like to agree with Rainbowfaceprotege, I kinda want one.

Thank you, @The jewelstone queen !  On the bright side, chances are you wouldn't have one.  If there are any, you'd have hundreds to thousands.  The more the merrier  :feelsgoodman!


The Mr E

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My entry to the October 2022 Character Design Challenge, 'Fighting Clowns'.  Meet ...

PARTY POPPER THE BALLOON ANIMAL



ArtStation Link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Ze8W41

Harkening back to classic platformers like Cly Clopper and Ratty and Spank - definitely not parody rip-offs - Balloon Animal: Party Popper is 1UPStation 5's totally real, next big game, available April 1st!

Story: Kidnapped from his home world by an interstellar mega circus called 'The Ring', the balloon-like Party Popper is forced to become the ultimate clown.  Like a living cartoon character, he squashes, he stretches, he shape-shifts and blows himself up to massive proportions.  Unfortunately, there's more than one way to 'blow up' in this circus.  When he learns that his final act involves 'The Big Pop', he sets out to escape The Ring and all its miniature worlds, but there's a catch.  We fall down, he floats up.  Even with the power to fire and swing on ribbons Spiderman-style, there's always a risk that he'll fall into the sky.  Luckily, he's not alone.  Joining him is Yumi the Cottontail Candy, a rabbit-like creature who speaks the language of flavour that can only be heard by those who eat her sweet fur, sadly overharvested as a snack.  Hunting him is Fyre'wrrk the animal cracker, who grows from a cub to a lion-like beast with firecracker mane when he is set on fire.  Standing in his way are dangerous performers such as the electric Joy Buzzer, the unicyclist Unipsycho, champion fighter Jack in the Boxing Gloves and The Ringmaster behind it all.  Even the mysterious voice narrating his adventures isn't exactly on his side.  With a handful of friends and a whole lot of enemies, Party Popper becomes the hero of The Ring as he frees its captives, tries to find a way home and discovers daunting secrets about his origin and purpose.

Rant: Shortly after I finished the sketch, my Wacom Intuous decided to malfunction for some reason, losing pressure sensitivity and refusing to draw without freezing at the start of every stroke before jerking into a straight line.  Was that meant to break me?  BAH!  I used MS Paint with nothing but the mouse and trackpad for several years, including multiple college projects with simple animation!  Do you know what kind of savage, ignorant tenacity I unleashed upon this Earth!?!  (Seriously, a whole lot of ignorance - I had no idea there were better, free programs like Krita *ahem*).  Anyway, finishing this was a little painful (IT TICKLED!) but I somehow managed to do it within record time and acceptable quality.  With more time, I would have fleshed out the concept and quality some more, but no one's gonna notice the difference, right? ... Right ...?   :rhett_smile


Sneak

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Cool character design, and backstory. :D

(Can't wait for game release date!  :rhett_smile  :rhett_smile)



The jewelstone queen

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This looks amazing, and would make for a great game! :P I also admire the background, it's so beautiful
I'm currently writing an lbt fanfic about Littlefoot and Ruby, it's a little cringy at first. Go check it out if you're interested! FANFICTION.NET- https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14063661/1/The-Land-Before-time-Unbearable
OR RIGHT HERE ON THE WEBSITE- https://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=17556.0