#birdbugs

[iguanodont]

Meant to make this my final post of the year, but I guess it’ll have to be my first instead! A look at part of a birg end-of-year tradition.

The Wis’Sachoi are a culture far to the west of the Twowi, where they exist fairly peacefully on the coast of a large inland sea. Come autumn the gifters (bachelors) herald the mating season by arriving to clans towns in bulky costumes made of sticks and reeds. They chase kids and animals, knock things over, and sing playfully that life away from the village has made them course and wild; won’t somebody please trim their shaggy hair and crooked claws? Young receivers (the ladies) don spiny cowls of woven branches in a cheeky imitation of the spiked armor worn by beast hunters of legend, to engage the “monsters” in games of song and wordplay. Should the beast court the wrong individual, or insult his quarry, or make too much mischief around the village, the elders are ready to chase him off with sticks. When a “beast” and “hunter” have successfully matched wits, the hunter will approach with beak scissors, so that she may snip away at the reeds covering her partner’s face in a tender gesture of allogrooming. Then her sisters and elders help tear away the rest of the costume, making the suitor fit to live among the clan again. The night ends with the burning of the reeds and a communal meal.

Courtship games such as this are just the first in a series of events held for around nine days, which include bachelors presenting gifts for the children and elders of the village, a fishing contest, and lots of feasting. Many of these gifts arrive in the form of exotic spices and other ingredients collected over the past year of trading abroad. Though it is tradition for courting pairs to consummate on the final night, it is not uncommon for a gifter to offer his spermatophore to several partners before the end of the festival period. After the final night concludes, Wis’Sachoi bachelors are granted the privilege of hibernating with their temporary in-laws.

As birgs generally sleep through the winter, fall and early-winter events such as these are the closest most cultures come to the sort of midwinter holidays observed on earth.

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For more worldbuilding (mostly creature) posts or to see what im up to on discord, I do have a patreon, where I post weekly!

I also have new stickers up on my kofi, or you can get prints of my art here, for those interested!

#birgworld #worldbuilding #birdbugs #speculative biology #xenofiction #first post of 2024 let’s gooo

[charseraph]

Trunkhorse from sketch by @iguanodont

#my art #Trunkhorses #Thank you for being so patient and for the sketch! Truly a delight to render one. #birdbugs

[nicelyspicey]

@iguanodont some birg stuff that I did

I think that putting a birg in bell-bottom jeans wasn’t the BEST idea what whatevs they’re slaying 💅

Also Roller skates :D

#digital art #birdbugs #birgworld #doodles #drawings #art on tumblr

[digi-056]

I made a Birg in Spore! @iguanodont

Here it is next to the Birrin I did a while ago!

Sick moves bro.

#birg #birdbugs #birrin #speculative evolution #spore #spore creatures

[realsparrowboy]

Swooce!!! Wasn’t feeling very inspired w my aliens so I made a quick doodle of someone else’s instead!!!

(Ignore the fact she’s naked i am NOT going to attempt to draw birg clothes)

Swooce belongs to the talented @iguanodont btw!!!! Go check them out :)

#speculative aliens #birgworld #birgs #birdbugs #swooce #if only I could draw my own aliens for once

[troythecatfish]

Art Credit: @iguanodont

#memes #tumblr memes #meme #dank memes #dank humor #relatable memes #shitpost #live reaction #birdbugs #based af #iguanodont #alien #alien meme #best memes #humour #humor #funny pics #funny stuff #funny post #funny #dankest memes #dank #meme humor #memesdaily #art memes #art humor #art shitpost

[alchemisoul]

The Incredible World of Birdbugs | Speculative Biology

Check out more of the artist's work via @iguanodont

#speculative biology #artists #art #artworks #speculative anatomy #speculative art #creatives #biology #birdbugs #fiction #worldbuilding

[wordy-little-witch]

Unhinged hit take but imagine for a moment all the Doflamingo/Crocodile ideas being a thing, and Doffy finds out IN JAIL about Cross Guild. Mans is losing his SHIT okay, his ex left him for a CLOWN.

CROCODILE turned him and his business proposals down but partnered with THE CLOWN?!

Oh his brain cells are Gucci and Prada, bedazzled and flexed, he knows math and THIS? This math ain't mathing, buster.

So he escapes.

The hows are unimportant and also I don't care enough to flesh it out. It just Happens, okay?

So Doffy is free, no sock needed, and he beelines STRAIGHT to Karai Bari.

Well. He swings by a high end boutique first because he's bougie like that, but then he is THERE, okay?

So Doffy shows up and causes a Ruckus. Cross Guild Poly has, by this point, NOT been established, but Croc and Mihawk both have FEELINGS. Buggy is oblivious.

Doffy sees Croc having A Feeling and Assumes. After all, Crocodile rarely expresses any kind of emotion unless it's on purpose to this is completely mathing now. The clown must have SOMETHING going for him.

So Doffy Seduces The Clown. It's to prove a point, prove he's BETTER than Buggy, he's COOLER and more FASHIONABLE and he wears HEELS so obviously he is the best choice. He needs to understand his enemy.

Only... Buggy's actually pretty damn cute.

And also makes... really good noises. He's so responsive. And sensitive. And he's a masochist to boot, right up Doffy's ally. AND this clown has some SERIOUS stamina, holy stars.

The night ends with Doffy, exhausted, staring into space with Buggy curled up, head on his chest and covered in bite marks. He is still processing.

The next day, he wakes up and he finds Buggy in the little kitchenette, in an oversized shirt and thigh highs, making pancakes and bacon. The clown turns to him, smiles, greets him, offers coffee. Doffy gets breakfast and is left still kinda reeling even as Buggy babbles happily, shirt slipping off his shoulder slightly and revealing a bite mark there. The former warlord looks away, indignant at the tingling warmth if a blush, of all things, on his face.

He hates to admit that he can maybe see the appeal now.

But he still thinks the clown is using some kind of weird fucking clown magic. He's NEVER gotten so worked up after a transactional lay before.

Crocodile and Mihawk meanwhile are FROTHING because they each had a 37 step plan to woo the clown and the flamingo bastard jut swooped in out of prison and bedded him. That isn't fair. That's the opposite of fair.

Seeing Buggy limping the next day and Doffy still kinda out if it simply makes the two dark haired men want to claw out someone's eyes.

Buggy is a special brand of oblivious because he thought Doffy just wanted good time once, no biggie, he gets it. So when the feathered man sticks around, he's cool with it. He doesn't really get why the others are all weird about it though.

He also doesn't get why their ominous threats and off putting vibes have intensified either, but he's good at rolling with the punches.

He tells Shanks a much during their monthly i-don't-miss-you-i-hate-you-how-have-you-been talks.

Shanks tells him they like him.

He hangs up on the redhead. Then he calls Shaks again just to hang up once more, this time with passion.

Everyone's suffering.

#crocobug #hawkbug #birdbug? #DofBug? #doflamingo x buggy #crack ships #cross guild polycule #gay ass pirates #nobody is mentally stable here #the rest of the guild is watching this like a telenovella

[cmaidaartworkblog]

Some months ago, I created a series of maps and diagrams for @iguanodont​​‘s Birdbug worldbuilding project, representing the planet inhabited by their original species and its planetological data. This isn’t the first time I mapped out this planet, as I was also commissioned by Ripley back in 2020 back when I didn’t have nearly as much experience and knowledge as I do now. Two years later, I’ve been commissioned once again to revisit this world and its peculiarities.

This first map (in Equirectangular projection and poles-centered perspective) depicts the elevation for this planet, with a color gradient applied to the data.

Here is the same elevation data, presented without the color gradient.

This time, the elevation is presented with bodies of liquid water included, such as rivers, oceans, and lakes.

and in this one, the water is isolated from the other data, against a white background

Next, there are the surface temperatures that occur on this planet, the key to which is shown above. The four maps below show the seasonal temperatures for land and sea, in order of Northern Spring Equinox, Northern Summer Solstice, Northern Autumn Equinox, and Northern Winter Solstice.

Correlating closely to the above data is the snow and ice cover, which is fairly extensive on this planet owing to its high obliquity and distance from its star. Land ice only occurs where the snow falls and is compacted year-round, but snow and sea ice can be much more seasonal.

Seasonal precipitation levels were another important phase of this project, and the below diagram shows those levels for a given latitude (y-axis) on a given date (x-axis), with a key attached.

My reference for creating the above graphic is the figure below, which comes from a 2019 paper by A.H. Lobo and S. Bordoni titled “Atmospheric Dynamics of High Obliquity Planets”, and shows Earth’s precipitation levels compared to those of a planet with an 85° obliquity.

The following maps can now be better understood in light of these diagrams and keys.

-Northern Spring Equinox

-Northern Summer Solstice

-Northern Autumn Equinox

-Northern Winter Solstice

I was also tasked with mapping out the extent and density of this planet’s vegetation (or at least its alien equivalent), and from this you can see how wildly it varies by season, with very few year-round holdings. Precipitation is a major factor in where it is possible for plants to flourish, but snow cover and the extreme temperature swings limit it too. Near either pole, for example, within the space of a year temperatures soar far above Earth’s upper limits and also plummet below freezing; if either extreme were to be the annual norm for a region, some plants might adapt to those conditions, but because of the wild fluctuation any adaptations to one extreme would leave plants especially vulnerable to the other. These regions, then, remain barren regardless of rainfall or brief windows of mild temperatures, while areas with less wide temperature ranges allow for at least brief periods of flourishing.

Determining the surface temperatures for this planet required a lot of background work. The first piece of the puzzle for this was knowing the number of daily hours of sunlight for a given latitude and date, which is exemplified first in this diagram for Earth:

and then for the Birdbug planet, below. Since this planet rotates on an axis of 60 degrees, there are many more latitudes within range of either pole that experience periods of sunlight and darkness lasting longer than a day. The higher the latitude, the longer this period lasts, with the poles themselves experiencing either condition for half a year at a time.

Another important factor is the height to which the sun is seen to rise (more scientifically, the angle at which the sun’s light hits parts of the planet’s surface), seen here first for Earth and then for the Birdbug planet. In these diagrams, white represents the sun reaching the zenith of the sky (meeting the surface at a 90° angle), and black represents the sun failing to appear above the horizon (meeting at an angle of 0° or below), while shades of green and purple stand in for angles between those extremes. For Earth and the Birdbug planet alike, the sun reaches the zenith within the bounds of either planet’s Tropic circles of latitude, and fails to rise at all only within the Polar circles of latitude; the difference in obliquity means that the Birdbug planet’s key circles of latitude are flipped compared to Earth’s.

The duration of sunlight and the angle at which that sunlight is reaches the planet’s surface determine a planet’s Insolation, that is, the amount of solar energy it receives. The first image below is a preexisting diagram of Earth’s Insolation, where it is measured in watts per square meter. The next two images are my own attempts at replicating this data for Earth, and then for the Birdbug planet.

As seen in the diagrams above, Insolation on the Birdbug planet differs from Earth not only in its latitudinal distribution, but also in its sheer intensity at the higher latitudes. Compared to Earth there are twice as many latitudes for which the sun is shining longer than one rotational period, and many of those latitudes see the sun shine at a direct or nearly direct angle, whereas the Polar circles of latitude on Earth see the sun shine much more obliquely. Below, we can see the data that all the above figures were instrumental in finding: that is, surface temperatures. The first image is a preexisting figure that measures Earth’s mean surface temperatures by date and latitude, and below that is my attempt at replicating the data by my own process.

This is done not by just copying the seasonal Insolation data, but by also factoring in the yearly average for each latitude.

Above, we see the temperatures of the land by date and latitude, and below, we see the temperatures at the surface of the sea, which lag behind the land temperatures and remain comparatively mild.

Lastly, here’s an image I created to combine the snow and ice cover as well as the vegetation extent and density, as of the Northern Spring Equinox.  This, along with the elevation map also seen here, is what I uploaded to maptoglobe.com in order to produce the screenshot at the top of this post.

These maps and figures (except for the preexisting ones) were all created in Photopea.  Higher resolution versions of many of these images can be seen in my dedicated Reddit posts, linked below: reddit post one, reddit post two

2022

#mapmaking #imaginary maps #worldbuilding #major project #imaginary planetology #elevation #waterways #river systems #surface temperatures #ice and snow cover #sea ice #precipitation #vegetation #Insolation #high obliquity planets #explanatory diagrams #digital rendering #Photopea #Birdbug worldbuilding project #Birgs #Birgworld #2022 #digital painting #extremely long post #Christopher Maida Artwork

[scorchrend]

i think i have a problem

#weird fucking birdbug #spark the electric jester spoilers #spark the electric jester #spark stej #fark stej #kirby #marx kirby #art #the knight's testaments #STOP PUTTING THIS STUPID BLUE RED WHITE JESTER HAT ON CHARACTERS PLEASE IM GONNA GO CRAZY

[catella-ars]

Made a mothman to smooch Cryptid Hunter Seth and I keep redesigning them and they need a name.

#happily taking name suggestions #! #art #fanart #fan characters #yuurivoice #yuurivoice seth #cryptid hunter seth #mothman #mothman oc #Name! That! Birdbug! #kinda wanna turn the sketch into a full illustration but when am i gonna do that

[iguanodont]

Introducing a new birg culture, and the reason the Twowi go to such lengths to cross the icy equator with their cargoes of rare metal and pungent gall-spice. The Ss’wassoum are a wealthy empire based on the far southern coast, where the sea-ice melts more quickly in the spring and its people first built their wealth on the sea-harvest. Their language is heavy on harmonized syllables, which lends their speech a distinctive musical quality. Family units are smaller than the fiercely clannish Twowi, and the gender divide is less rigid, though still distinctly matriarchal. Some of their most lucrative raw exports are refined tree-plastics and sea-silk, which is valued for fine textiles.

While the Twowi run on highly specialized industrial clan-towns, the Ss’wassoum exist in more diverse cities, though the class divide is impossible to ignore. The nobility are loud of dress and voice, with their ornate refined plastic head-dresses, vividly patterned veils, and resonators worn over the rear spiracles to enhance their voices. But despite all the attention they draw to themselves, their faces are always covered; to be perceived as gray-furred mortals akin to any commoner is inconceivable. They walk the streets as living demigods. Just below the nobility are the merchant class, which may approach their influence in wealth and education but are legally barred from the elaborate headwear and home exteriors of their superiors. Instead they adorn the insides of their homes with the latest in art and technology, particularly elaborate electric light fixtures crafted from imported Twowi metal. Commoners wear little at all in the sunny months, save for the occasional beaded sash and brass mandible-cuffs. Sailors and other hard laborers frequently adorn their bodies with scarified and dyed patterns to mark themselves for the goodwill of protective gods.

The Ss’wassoum government does implement a standardized education system of sorts, though only those of the upper class can test or pay their way into the finest schools, where they can master the high dialect and the art of Opinion. Historically, etiquette laws forbade the discussion of controversial topics in public spaces; these were reserved for halls of judgement. The rule is more of a social taboo these days, but an ancient loophole ruled that written forms of debate could be presented anywhere, and with the subsequent invention of movable type, a colorful written debate culture flourished. Wherever there is a public bulletin, a cafe wall, a blank space where people gather, you fill find posted essays on anything from the hypocrisy of the noble class to a long winded treatise on the merits of toe-biter clams. It is not uncommon for a debate topic to outlive the original essayists, as hills are chosen to literally die on are then proudly upheld by the writer’s descendants. So ingrained into Ss’wassoum society is this debate culture, that committed debate rivals may be legally recognized as a marriage-like partnership. Though the Ss’wassoum carry no expectations of monogamy to a reproductive partner, the correlation between rivalry and mating season partners does not go unnoticed. As a general rule, a worldly and strongly opinionated individual is more attractive.

Big thanks to @primalmuckygoop for pitching so many great ideas for these guys, including most of the lore on their debate culture, and the very name of this civilization!

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If you’d like to see more stuff in the works for birgworld, check out my Patreon!

Or you can support me through Kofi and Inprnt

#birgworld #birdbugs #worldbuilding #speculative biology

[charseraph]

@iguanodont Dustbunny the birg!

#my art #speculative biology #dustbunny #birdbugs

[violet-amphithere]

and a treat

#noodledoodle #funny birdbugs yay #these were early passes on an AU project #hmmm someone should ask me about it perhaps

[minakomatsuoka]

Birdbug horror

Sometimes it useful to turn around, you never know if you are alone in the dark…

•

Creatures created by @iguanodont

#alien creature #art #speculative evolution #creature #illustration #spec bio #birgworld #horror

[theoneandonlyblob]

Hehe Birgworld oc

I finally attempted to draw a birg. I introduce Chik’Whi. They’re a weird, polite birdbug from a Puyok tribe. Their only friends are random bugs they find in the brush. They like to chat, but…as I said their only friends are bugs. 😔

The birdbugs and their world belong to @iguanodont

#Birg oc #Birgworld #Alien #speculative biology