extrahorribledynne asked:

i was rewatching the rite of spring segment from fantasia and i've got to wonder. Why Did We Draw Archaeopteryx Like That. i remember toys having that same, boomerang arm shaped pose too. it's like a monkey lizard more than a bird.

a-book-of-creatures:

i-draws-dinosaurs:

Ooh okay this is a fun one cause while it technically is an Archaeopteryx and is listed as such in the production draft, I don’t think the design is based on Archaeopteryx at all!

ALT

To me, this “Archaeopteryx” almost exactly resembles something else, the fascinating historical phenomenon called Proavis.

ALT

Proavis, or Tetrapteryx as some four-winged interpretations were called, was a hypothetical prehistoric creature that was proposed in the early 20th century as a best guess at what the unknown ancestor of birds could have looked like. The illustration above was drawn in 1926 by Gerhard Heilmann, a Danish artist and amateur scientist who argued that birds evolved from non-dinosaurian archosaurs like Euparkeria. In his 1916 book Vor Nuvaerende Viden om Fuglenes Afstamning and the 1926 English translation The Origin of Birds, he presented Proavis as the imagined midpoint between a scaly ground-running archosaur and Archaeopteryx, which at the time held the title of The First Bird.

ALT

Other versions of the same hypothesis, like William Beebe’s Tetrapteryx above, were published and discussed around the same time, but it was Heilmann’s Proavis that gained immense popularity to the point that bird evolution was considered essentially “solved” for decades. It was also painted by Zdeněk Burian, one of the Old Greats of palaeoart, which kept the concept alive in dinosaur books for decades as well.

ALT

Of course further study has shown this hypothesis to be incorrect and that birds are instead members of Dinosauria (and honestly Heilmann either missed or ignored a lot of evidence for a dinosaurian origin of birds even in the 1910s), but the Proavis to me remains a beautiful and fascinating concept that represents scientists and artists striving to understand the prehistoric world and the passage of evolution, much like we still do today!

And of course, its popularity in the early 20th century put it at the perfect time for Fantasia’s artists to take… let’s say heavy inspiration from Heilmann’s imaginary Proavis when depicting a creature that was intended to be Archaeopteryx the whole time! The pattern of feathers matches up almost exactly, although the larger leg wings might have been inspired by Beebe’s Tetrapteryx as well:

ALT

So to get back to your original question that led to this whole deep dive, artists didn’t actually Draw Archaeopteryx Like That except when they were mistakenly drawing something that wasn’t Archaeopteryx at all! If you want to read more about the Proavis and Tetrapteryx I recommend this Tetrapod Zoology blog post by Darren Naish, he does into more depth about the history of the concept and some of the unusual evolutionary ideas that Heilmann used to arrive at this weird and cool imaginary creature!

The draft is definitely worth a read. That’s not Ornitholestes trying to grab Archaeopteryx, as I had long assumed, but Troodon!

calvinandhobbescomic:

(via a-book-of-creatures)

not gonna say it again

khadij-al-kubra:

mtndewbajablast:

this was ghost written by a disgruntled vampire

(via furbearingbrick)

amethystsoda:

The Collected Paintings Mini Book of Trigun Maximum by Yasuhiro Nightow

(Source: ia600104.us.archive.org, via furbearingbrick)

politijohn:

Forgiveness for me but not for thee

(via furbearingbrick)

bogleech:

demilypyro:

demilypyro:

wait what? the fuck? this is the first time I’m hearing about this. christians have a Make New Minecraft World event?

man what the fuck?

Like I’ve said before they believe the Antichrist will take over the world specifically by creating world peace and paradise so that everyone will trust him as a global dictator. This is why they called Obama the antichrist, because he said he wanted to end war. They believe the world is meant to fall into ruin and anyone planning to end violence or poverty is working for the devil.

enddaysengine:

Yithians (Paths Beyond)

My feelings around Lovecraft are complicated and probably deserve their own essay one day. Today, I’ll say I despise his worldview but enjoy building on the shared Mythos he was a part of, so I’m happy to talk about Yithians. They are one of my favourite aliens of all time (the others are Elder Things), which probably comes as no surprise for long-time readers.

I’ve mentioned before that I love how Pathfinder folded Yithians into its setting by identifying the Xiomorns as the bug creatures they are destined to inhabit. With resistance to acid, cold, fire, and physical damage, Yithians have greater freedom to explore many environments hostile to humanoids. Most of the time, this means they are encountered in the void of space, but it is entirely valid to meet them exploring the planes, especially its strange places.

However, you are unlikely to encounter the average Yithian on the Outer Planes. With training in Arcana, Nature, and Occult, most Yithians know much about the planes, but faith, religion, and the afterlife are relative blind spots. Of course, that doesn’t mean they know nothing; an average Yithian is still a genius compared to the average elf or dwarf.

There is also the question of whether players will know when they’ve encountered a Yithian, given their propensity for mind-swapping their way through time and space. Yithian can literally show up anywhere, including in the body of your closest friend or worst enemy. If GMs want to lay the seeds for a Mythos-inspired game without tipping their hand too early, introducing characters possessed by a Yithian consciousness is an excellent route. Try not to let the paranoia get to you.

• In recent months, an alarming number of Chelexian histories and contracts have been uncovered as forgeries. While this is not unprecedented given Thrune’s redactors, even they were unaware these documents were false. Worse, they all seem to be commuted by the same person, stretching back to Cheliax’s initial conquest by Taldor. As adventurers investigate the mystery, they uncover that the forger is the Yithian /Yssm, although what end the alien is working towards remains unclear.
• Not every member of the Great Race eschews studying the divine. Pnassic is obsessed with recovering Yithian souls (and their minds) from the afterlife. Their research into the outer planes and River of Souls eventually drove them to become a witch and seek out the Dowager of Illusions as their patron. Backed by the Infernal Queen, Pnassic works to undermine the psychopomps and return lost Yithians to their vessels before they even reach the Boneyard.
• Mindscapes rarely form naturally, so something is definitely afoot when the Dark Archive discovers an entire town with fully fleshed-out mindscapes. The mindscapes are the handiwork of Tsaooul, a Yithian with prodigious psychic powers. Rather than swap minds with humanoids, Tsaooul uses their mental abilities to explore them through the mindscapes they construct in the Astral Plane. While there is no evidence of malicious intent, Tsaooul cares little about violating the privacy of others, while other occultists and arcanists aware of their experiments are more than willing to take advantage of the leftover mindscapes after the Yithian moves on.

(via enddaysengine)