Comments | naamah_darling: Smilodon atrociter

naamah_darling

Smilodon atrociter

Sep 23, 2009 04:28

I occasionally -- very occasionally -- do line art, and thought I would share one of my favorite recent pieces. It's just a quick RPG visual aid/character sketch that turned out good enough to polish up, but I like it.

I wanted to design the saber-toothed cat to end all saber-toothed cats, the ne plus ultra of raging paleofeline death, but I didn ( Read more... )

art, jesus christ it's a lion, bones, pics, cats

Comments 45

(The comment has been removed)

naamah_darling September 23 2009, 19:42:12 UTC

You'd have to start with a wolverine as a base. They're the only mustelid with cheekbones I'd feel confident putting into any sort of regular combat. As a whole, the weasel family's cheekbones are very delicate. Then you'd start looking at male fishers, for the crest on the back of the head. Wolverines are bad enough at their natural size. If you quadrupled them in weight, you would have something really terrifying on your hands.

(I played him in a one-on-one game with Sargon, modified Call of Cthulhu rules.)

eldriwolf September 23 2009, 21:05:20 UTC

heh, That's cool.
What I wanted to do was: "Weasels conquer the air" some sort of gliding fisher or pine Martin..
I mean, we have water-weasels, below ground weasels, ground weasels, and tree weasels----the only thing left is....

sargon999 September 23 2009, 22:06:15 UTC

SPACE WEASELS!

regalpewter September 23 2009, 15:06:13 UTC

Absolutely marvelious!
You are truly gifted.

YIS,
WRI

phyrbyrd September 23 2009, 15:28:10 UTC

I can't work out if that's a big brain case for the genus - how bright is this creature? Because if it's relatively intelligent, THEN you're REALLY fucked.

naamah_darling September 23 2009, 19:46:31 UTC

It's really big, actually. You hit a point with predators/big cats where the body may be getting bigger, but the brain volume stays in the same ballpark because that's all the bigger it needs to be. So while if this animal were scaled down it would be a little above average brainwise, it's a much bigger animal, and I didn't reduce the brain size any to reflect that. It has more material to work from. It could well have been smarter than a lion or tiger (I intended it to be, just a little), though there's no reason it would have to be, to be completely terrifying. We underestimate their intelligence anyway.

gryvnos September 23 2009, 16:11:59 UTC

any chance of getting prints of this? I would jump on that like a wounded buffalo...

gothicbeauty21 September 23 2009, 16:40:12 UTC

This. Absolutely this.

siliconshaman September 23 2009, 18:48:45 UTC

Likewise!! [or a big enough hi-res gif so I can print it out myself].

goth_hobbit September 23 2009, 19:46:57 UTC

Hey, count me in as well!

paleo-whatsis devifemme September 23 2009, 17:21:54 UTC

OK, Naamah, where's this leading? (Morphing your big cat into a sexy man is presumably NOT it. Maybe into an avenging lesbian?)

Great skills, lady! What's your professional connection to such work, if any?

Hugs, Justine

Re: paleo-whatsis naamah_darling September 23 2009, 20:00:58 UTC

Morphing your big cat into a sexy man is presumably NOT it.

It's not? *looks innocent* He was certainly very hot. Although he would have been just as happy to be an avenging lesbian. He was pretty cool that way.

And none. This is just something I love like Halloween candy and can't stop playing with. I mean, seriously, prehistoric cats AND skulls. There is no way this would not win with me.

I am waiting for Christmas to request a replica smilodon skull so I can have a reference from which to draw stuff like palate views and so on.