#raven beak

[molagboop]

Examining Chozo Anatomy: Arms

Welcome to my deep-dive into Chozo anatomy. Today, I'll be discussing features present on the arms and hands of our feathery fellows.

This post exists simultaneously as a reference for artists and as a fascinating look into the world of Chozo anatomy for all audiences. Whether you're here for references showing how Chozo arms are built or you enjoy taking a peek at Metroid Dread's character models out of game, I've got you covered!

You'll find plenty of images and a full breakdown of the anatomical structure of Chozo arms beneath the cut.

First, a quick overview: from a musculoskeletal standpoint, Chozo arms are built exactly like human arms, diverging at the hands. Chozo hands look like bird feet that evolved in much the same way our hands did.

Part 1: Elbows

Dread Chozo have feathers protruding from their scaly elbows.

Underneath every fountain of large plumage is a soft bed of down. This manifests in patches of plush, miniscule feathers that are grouped together somewhat densely.

Our subjects appear to have primarily smooth skin occasionally interrupted by spots of down from which plumage arises, but I think Chozo that are feathery all over are neat. The concept art and 100% gallery rewards seem to paint a picture of softer Chozo with more feathers all over their bodies (save for their plated arms and hard beaks), but the in-game models appear smooth. We're all familiar with Raven Beak's bald head (which many of us have expressed a desire to slap), but perhaps that head is covered in a fine layer of velvety feathers?

I managed to remove Quiet Robe's left pauldron and embroidered sleeve, so I have a fuller view of his whole arm, including the base of his feathery neck.

Quiet Robe's shoulders are quite smooth. If you want to give peepaw Robe fuzzy shoulders, I certainly wouldn't complain: you don't need to remain 100% on-model, especially considering there's a gaping hole in his back underneath that miter, and the front of his robe hides the abyss instead of an old man's breast. Corners were cut to prevent obtrusive clipping in cutscenes, whose animation plays out in-engine through scripting while the game is running (this is how the game manages to transition seamlessly from a cutscene into a boss fight).

If you'll direct your attention back up towards our Zero Mission concept art, you'll see that the Chozo of yore had spiked forearms/elbows. Those structures may indeed be feathers (upon closer inspection, they do seem feather-shaped: all three characters appear to display different variations in feathering, particularly in the shape of the feathers and how densely clustered they are), but the older designs also appear to possess a carapace of sorts?

The segments between their limbs are more pronounced, sort of like a beetle's exoskeleton. I'm not sure whether to think older Chozo designs had harder skin with feathers situated in specific locations (notably around the face and shoulders), or if our good chums are just skin and bones. Maybe the discs defining their wrists, ankles and elbows are just particularly bony, and I'm misreading their forearm feathers as spined protrusions.

Whatever the case may be, the older designs are charming. I find myself drawn to them despite the focus on submersing my own Chozo in fleshy, feathery pseudo-realism.

Part 2: Forearms and Hands

Like the feet of real birds, the tops of Chozo forearms are lined with rows of hardened scutes. Quiet Robe has cracked, chunky, pronounced plating that seems to show a bit of wear: a hallmark of aging.

Chozo hands consist of three fingers and a thumb. Their digit count is consistent with the amount of toes that most real birds possess. Interestingly, Quiet Robe's knuckles are particularly pointed and pronounced, where Raven Beak X's aren't*. They remind me of jagged little spurs: useful in hand-to-hand combat.

RB-X may not have raised knuckles, but the real Raven Beak's power suit has white knuckle guards that indicate his own might not be so different from our gentle friend. They could also exist to give his armored fist some punching power despite a lack of biological spurs, but this is all speculation.

The palms of both Quiet Robe and RB-X's hands appear to match their inner elbow patches: Quiet Robe's palms are bathed in a violet hue, while Raven Beak X has pink flesh. This is more apparent on RB-X than on our Thoha chum, but that coloration appears to extend some ways down the underside of the forearm.

Part 3: Those Weird Patches of Skin on the Inner Elbow

One thing you'll notice is that Chozo have patches of flesh on their inner elbows, under their arms, and between their fingers.

This flesh tends to differ in color from the rest of the skin. Quiet Robe's are darker, with more saturated red-violet hues.

The patches under the arms run in tandem with the serratus, the muscle on the sides of the torso that reaches inward towards the abdominals.

I tried to take a less weird shot, but couldn't figure out how to position the bones in a way that would provide a decently lit angle without warping the model horribly.

RB-X's patches are stretched, perhaps a quirk relating to its size or an abridging of the feature via the X tampering with the related genes to suit its fancy. I've likened their appearance to the gliding membranes of animals like flying squirrels... not that these are likely to assist the creature in any gliding with how little surface area they inhabit, but their dimension and the way they resemble some sort of connective tissue spanning between the segments of each limb is certainly evocative. It's like having webbed feet, but instead of the webbing being between one's toes, it's situated between the bicep and the forearm.

I'm unsure of whether to write their appearance off as something only RB-X has, or to take them into consideration for Chozo morphology. I've entertained the thought that some Chozo's inner and under-arm patches do manifest more like this (flattening against the body when the arm is extended and stretching as above when the elbow is bent), and how one's flesh appears is a matter of genetics, or perhaps a feature of aging.

As humans get older, some sections of skin begin to loosen and sag. I don't imagine this is much different for Chozo: Old Bird and Grey Voice certainly have their fair share of wrinkles in the manga. At first, I thought the way RB-X's flesh stretched between its limbs looked somewhat taut and uncomfortable, but the more I think about this from the lens of aging, the more likely it seems that these sections could be spots of loose skin. Perhaps this isn't an X-borne bug, but a feature? Who knows.

It's a lot harder to see the patches between the fingers on Quiet Robe's model, but they're present with a great deal of clarity on Raven Beak X.

I think I mentioned this in my post about Quiet Robe's model, but these patches remind me of an anatomical feature seen in older official works (like the concept art for Metroid: Zero Mission). Older depictions of the Chozo had defined, segmented structures on the biceps and the underside of the forearms.

Also of note is the fact that these structures appear on the legs of older Chozo.

Now that we've covered in-game examples, I'd like to give more examples of this feature in concept. First off, you can see these patches in the gallery reward for 100%'ing Burenia in Dread. Upon closer observation, the prisoner on the left appears to display these patches.

The underarm patches are obscured, as their arms are resting pretty close to their torso, but you can barely see the pink patch of flesh running along the serratus and disappearing beneath the arm. The elbow patches are a little clearer.

It's very difficult to see, but I think the coloration around the prisoners' knees may also show some stray sections of pink, matching the leftmost prisoner's inner elbow. Dread's interpretation of the Chozo could possibly have similar patches behind their knees, but I don't see it. It's all up in the air: I say do as you please in that department.

Now for our last example of shirtless individuals in Dread's key art: this hunter** from Ghavoran's 100% completion reward. The inner elbow is a bit obscured, but the modified serratus is clear as day.

The odd patches on Chozo arms were an anatomical subject I wanted to present in-depth because they've changed over the course of two decades: they moved from the sides of the biceps and forearms to the inner elbows and under the arms. Dread does a few things differently from Prime and Zero Mission, which is not a bad thing!

When illustrating characters of a fictional species from existing media, I like to take different depictions across generations into account. Morrowind's Argonians are unlike those we see in Skyrim, and the differences are even more staggering between Arena and Daggerfall! The Chozo have also undergone a few design changes between installments, though admittedly, there's far less whiplash between the Chozo of Dread and Zero Mission than there is between the Argonians of Daggerfall and Arena.

In both cases, the older depictions of the species in question aren't rendered "obsolete" or "not canon" by the newer designs. I'm of the opinion that these discrepancies merely open up more opportunities for interesting and diverse characters. I love seeing Argonian characters with digitigrade legs as Morrowind NPCs had, but the plantigrade layout on characters from the rest of the series is just as fine.

You could give your Chozo the arm structure of older designs, adhere to the more recent arm flesh patch conventions, or toy with a mix of the two: the world is your oyster! You could opt to omit them entirely! Don't let the most recent iteration of the canon hold you back: it's always worth taking a hint from earlier designs when you're playing in a sandbox with decades-old franchises.

I'm not here to say "this is how Dread does Chozo: adhere to the most recent canon or perish": I'm here to show you what Dread does so you can take these design choices into consideration when drawing your own interpretation of this species. Take liberties, and take them often! If you want to remain on-model, that's also fine.

That wraps up our investigation of Chozo arms, but if you notice something I neglected to mention, feel free to point it out!

**Possibly Raven Beak? Who knows: he's old and grey, this one's grey. Maybe these soldiers are out on a hunting trip with the boss, or perhaps he's proving his worth as a warrior by slaying Corpius' uncle solo and cuirass-less. There's no way to say for certain who this is or what's going on: Mawkin culture isn't elaborated upon much in writing during Metroid Dread. I make up my own lore as I go.

*If RB-X's form is an accurate depiction of Raven Beak's pre-death arms. Who knows, maybe his physical form has crusty armored old man scutes like Quiet Robe when Samus piledrives him into the surface of the planet, and the arms we see in-game are the product of the X parasite choosing the more glamorous, younger Raven Beak's smooth baby arms from the pool of genetic material it extracted from his still-writhing form. We'll never know.

#Chozo #Metroid Dread #blender shenanigans #chozo anatomy #Quiet Robe #Raven Beak #RB-X #Raven Beak X #post created February 23 2023 #Metroid

[hoshizoralone]

samus and her funny bird family comix

#redrew all of these… samus’s appearance at 16 is based on the metroid manga obvs #i think they colored her clothes pink in one panel of that so i just rolled with it #metroid #samus aran #raven beak #i dont think old bird and gray voice have tags . #loneart #hall of fame

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

Nintendo, giving Link and Zelda a family:

#incorrect super smash bros #super smash bros #incorrect quotes #smash bros #Nintendo #Mario #Luigi #Samus #Raven Beak #Link #Zelda #Metroid #Super Mario #Legend of Zelda

[the-cosmic-arcade]

𝗠𝗘𝗧𝗥𝗢𝗜𝗗 𝗗𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗

#Metroid #Metroid Dread #Samus Aran #Nintendo #Samus #Metroid Prime #Varia Suit #Chozo #Metroid: Dread #Raven Beak #Gaming #gamer #gaming blog #nintendo switch #video game #vgedit #gamingladies #mine #my edit #my gifs #sick #science fiction #sci fi #metroidvania #vg edit #gaming edit

[omorales81]

Samus Saturday - art by the kracklin’ Kazumasa Yasukuni! 😻🤯😵 #Nintendo #Metroid #SamusAran #RavenBeak #SamusSaturday #GameArt #FanArt #MetroidDread

#metroid dread #samus aran #Samus saturday #raven beak #fan art #metroid

[metalvania]

Metroid Dread is the first time we see living Chozo (besides Samus) and that was really cool and I noticed something

All of the Chozo soldiers don't have arm cannons. They all have spears and shields, Except for Raven Beak the final boss and leader of this tribe of Chozo

This implies that arm cannons are considered high status weapons or reserved for leaders of the tribe maybe since only Raven Beak even has one.

#idk i find it interesting i love this game and i like it lots #samus :) #metroid dread #raven beak #chozo #Metroid

[spotart-station-animation]

Some of my favorite spreads I did for the retro dread manual! These were made to help recap the story of Metroid fusion.

Coming up with the new designs for each character was so much fun, especially the X parasite and retro fusion Samus .

#art #artists on tumblr #original content #artist on twitter #my artwork #i made dis #character animator #nes games #x parasite #raven beak #metroid fusion #metroid dread #metroid #metroid 5 #nintendo switch #nintendo #art book #fusion suit #retroart #vintage retro #small artist #cute #chibistyle #samusmetroid #samus aran #samus fanart #samus returns #buff samus

[nobody-1881]

Metroid from Ridley’s Perspective

Samus from Ridley’s point of view, is the culmination of Ridley’s sins. Samus is the victim of Ridley’s atrocities, yet is the thing that constantly sends Ridley’s machinations to the trash heap. Ridley kills the Chozo and destroys K-2L, Samus destroys the Space Pirates. Whatever plan Ridley comes up with, Samus is always lurking, waiting, and hunting. And Samus does not stop. Samus isn’t haunted by Ridley, she haunts Ridley. I’m fact, Samus does this to every villain, Mother Brain’s betrayal of the Chozo leads to Samus hunting her down, and because she stole the baby, Samus is able to find her once more. Raven Beak ultimately is brought down by the same threat he released, (Parasite X) and is destroyed because he made Samus more and more Metroid-like. Even Phazon is taken down by Samus, who by the end of Prime 3 is almost like an avenging ghost, gaining power from the other bounty hunters. Samus from the villain’s perspective, is all of their collective bad karma appearing in the form of an Orange demon that will not stop at anything.

#metroid #samus aran #raven beak #metroid dread

[coldgoldlazarus]

That plane post reminded me of a funny thought I had earlier. Raven Beak has a powersuit and arm cannon a lot like Samus's, and even shares a few abilities, but also utilizes a bunch that she has never historically had.

We also know from the manga that the powersuit she has for most of Zero Mission is a newer model custom-designed by the Chozo and Mother Brain. (before the latter's betrayal, anyway.) This one was unable to recognize and fully make use of certain upgrades, but presumably with the trade-off being a slimmer build (lacking the giant 'clunky' (iconic) shoulders and keeping a flatter chestplate, even with the Varia suit equipped) and access to newer upgrade designs that older suits might in turn have trouble interfacing with, such as Raven Beak's fancier abilities. Even the Chozo were not immune to the onward march of backwards compatibility limitations, it seems.

But then she passes the mural test and gets the fully-powered suit, an older design able to use the extra ancient upgrades the prior one could not, and despite design shifts across most of the games, I think it's safe to assume that that's the same base suit she's operating with from there onward. We know it has a certain level of regenerative capability, thus why it still looks pretty untouched after all the punishment it takes, but even then it still gets halfway-disassembled in Fusion, stripping away all the outer armor completely, and taking however long between then and Dread to recover a bit of its original form, while still being distinctly less armored than it used to be, a lot of the same organic bits from Fusion still exposed to open air.

So with all this in mind, there's a certain hilarity in the end of Dread. Raven Beak's sitting here in his hyperadvanced, up-to-date and top-of-the-line powersuit, the equivalent of an F-22 Raptor, thinking he's hot shit. And then Samus rocks up in her old suit, the equivalent of not just a dinky WWII prop plane, but a dinky WWII prop plane that's missing half the fuselage like it was left unattended too long in Detroit, and flies absolute circles around him. Sure, he nearly saves it towards the end of the fight until RAGE, but the fact that it is as much of a proper fight as it is becomes kinda funny (and also very badass on her part) from this perspective.

#not a reblog #metroid #samus aran #raven beak #featuring a very tortured plane metaphor

[limitiz-nk]

@molagboop

Gift also inspiration from molag's post on reddit

complaining about the old bald man with the officials

#metroid #metroid dread #samus aran #chozo #art #raven beak #gift #funny

[metroid-prime-ribs]

Have a one of these!

#metroid #memetroid #chozo #raven beak #old bird #grey voice #rodney aran #adam malkovich

[molagboop]

Thought Experiment.

#raven beak #samus aran #samus #winging it #metroid #comic #metroid comic #metroid dread

[luna-the-bard]

Was playing Dread this morning, and had a thought:

There aren’t any cctv cameras shown around (at least not in Artaria as far as I’ve seen), which has me assume that Ravenbeak isn’t constantly surveilling Samus go through the area. Which leads me to a question: what is he doing while Samus is traveling from Networking Station to Networking Station? Is he just. Sitting there?? On his ship?? Waiting for her to get in contact w him??

Which in turn, ladies and gentlemen, prompted me to create this masterpiece:

Enjoy.

#metroid #metroid samus #metroid headcanon #sketch #drawing #art #digital art #metroid dread #raven beak #metroid raven beak #luna draws

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

Advanced conversation.

#incorrect super smash bros #super smash bros #Samus #Little Mac #Raven Beak #Metroid #Punch Out #meme #joke #funny

[mhexart]

Metroid sketches

#traditional art #sketch #metroid #samus #samus aran #Metroid fusion #Metroid dread #Raven beak #chozo #fountain pen #pen used: TWSBI Eco medium #ink used: Robert Oster 10 Dollar Teal #mhexoc

[atwas-meme-ing]

You know, at first I thought the "Dread" in Metroid Dread was because of things like the EMMI's, and Raven Beak, and Samus having to "accept her helplessness" and run, and not knowing whether she would be able to take on this new opponent of hers.

But no. That wasn't it. She didn't dread facing new enemies. She's a practiced bounty hunter, and she's been on numerous missions involving both the Metroids and the X. She knows she will be able to find a way to fight them. And she must have already accepted the fact that she could die on any mission at any time. That's just the reality of the kind of work she does.

What she would dread is the awakening of her Metroid DNA. Of becoming something she's been taught to hate and hunt. Of becoming a threat to the universe.

But in the end, that's what saved her life. Becoming everything that she is, whether she wants it or not.

#metroid dread #samus aran #metroid suit #my opinion #emmi #raven beak #metroids #x parasite