For the animation my first idea was to show the perspective of the aliens since we don’t want this story to be too human focused
It’s hard to show the perspective of a creature that doesn’t see. so i wanted to communicate the way they may feel their world, but through visual medium which is what humans understand best. and after all, this is pitched to humans.
For the representation of ‘feeling’ through visual language, i took inspiration from ratatouille, the scene where the rat mixes flavours in particular.
The idea was that it would show what the aliens feel and the animation would show how they feel the presence of humans mining.
it would then cut to a 3rd person view so the audience can see the alien’s anatomy.
The scene where the aliens dig upward is based of the escape scene in the decent.
I liked how, in the film, you spend so long underground in darkness with the characters and then suddenly it’s so bright outside.
the point was to show the contrast between earth’s crust and the surface.
In the end i wasn’t able to add sound, which might have helped the scene read as underground and above ground better.
I was taken by the sound in this clip from Mad Max Fury road:
The sound in this clip is more to communicate a sense of unknown, urgency, confusion and panic an then juxtapose that with a sense of relief.
The animation is also unfinished…
in my storyboard i had planned to have the shot pan up at the end to reveal an industrial scene. but i ran out of time and needed the time to make the scene not look terrible, which is what it would’ve been if i tried to squeeze it in before the due date.
if I had more time i think that’s the two things i’d add: a concluding scene and sound.
While drawing tools, we asked ourselves “Where would the tools be kept when they aren’t holding them?”.
so I came up with a simple bag design. One that faces away from the front of the creature so it doesn’t fill with dirt when they dig, like a wombat pouch.
Then, as I was drawing it digitally and colouring it in, i wondered what this back might actually be made of. i imagined it to be leather, but the aliens wouldn’t have cows underground.
Which is why i came to the conclusion that they could use mushrooms.
The mushrooms would be farmed near the surface. they could also use this material for other things such as bedding or on the handle of their tools.
Hive minds seem to be, in my opinion, a writers way of easily coming up with a solution to that pesky task of designing varied alien characters… just make them a hive mind! that explains why they’re all dressed the same, speak the same and act the same.
hive minds in actuality, like bees and ants, have multiple different hives and subtle differences in hive mentality, despite being from the same species.
There’d be a handful of ‘individuals’ on the alien planet, but individual would not be per body, but per group. They could function similar to subcultures or even subspecies.
this is an opportunity to have variety in our designs, each hive mind group could frequent certain biomes, causing their physiology to differ from a group living in a different biome.
each body, as in each member of a hive mind could interact with other bodies from different hive minds, but only be able to empathize as a connected mind with bodies in its own hive group.
They don’t need to necessarily live in close clusters, the hive minds could bleed into each other.
The biome thought expands on Rebekah’s idea of texture based on the environment humans like the most.
humans all tend to like warm and soft, dry, but not too dry, which is like our own skin. but if the alien creatures spend time in the earth, then maybe different earth textures would be preferable. depending on biome, the prefered texture of one hive mind will be different from one that predominantly lives in another biome, or originated from another biome.
so biomes could seperate hive minds, make them have subtle evolutionary differences in their physical mass and also give them differing material cultures and perhaps even different ideologies…
“primitive” is usually used to describe something old, but is better used to describe traits that are close to the origin or ancestor.
A species cannot be primitive, but is rather a mix of primitive and advanced traits.
An example being human hands, which have changed subtly to be better, but still have a lot in common with the hands of what we would consider “primitive” species. whereas a horse has evolved to have far advanced ‘hooves’, which are a single digit (the equivalent to humans only having our middle fingers/toes), the single pad makes galloping easier, but horses do not have the precision grip that humans do. So “primitive” does not equal “bad”
while human hands may be relatively primitive, the structure of our legs, our bipedal stature is advanced, so we are a collection of advanced and primitive traits. these traits developed for different reasons, mostly environmental reasons.
natural selection will eventually decide which traits are best suited for the climate at the time, this video gives a good example…
It suggests that humans gained their intelligence from rapid changes to the environment, changes that required judgement and problem solving skills.
How did our alien get to where it is?
Looking at other subterranean species like the mole, burrowing underground was to do with food and also a way of hiding from predators.
if our alien feeds on kinetic energy, how would that shape them?
above is a quick sketch out of a possible evolution chain.
it doesn’t have to be legs though, perhaps nubs with powerful propelling muscles to move them around.
I thought of the possibility that the reason why the alien species when underground, would be to escape a greater threat in prehistoric times. and then, there in the earth they’d develop cultures and habitats, the adaption to a subterranean environment could enlarge their brain (or equivalent to a brain). In fact, what if they didn’t have a brain or cognitive thought wasn’t linked to environment but a sort of self-betterment.
Since they don’t need to eat other living things to gain energy, what if the surface of their planet became sterile, like if the planet’s magnetic field disappeared and the rays from the planet’s sun killed everything on the surface with radiation. The kinetic feeding creatures could still survive in conditions where plants and other lives are not sustained, but they would have to evolve to be able to either resist radiation, or dig deeper to escape it.
digging into the mantle might not just be a way of escaping sun radiation, but also for getting heat as the atmosphere of the planet would be stripped away from the lack of a magnetic field.
the moon is an example of a mass that has been sterilized by the sun. it doesn’t spin like earth, because earth’s gravity has overpowered it’s motion, ‘snapping’ it to one position relative to earth, and because of this, it doesn’t have a magnetic field.
The moon still has a core will molten in it, but after a while (and I mean a long long long long long long while), it’ll lessen and lessen.
perhaps a planet that suddenly stands still will have its core slowly deplete and in this time the alien species that we are focusing on will evolve alongside other surviving species to the changes that occur when the core shrinks.
What happens when a main predator is suddenly taken away? perhaps other species of creature join the alien protagonist in the ground to escape this predator, and perhaps what separates our advanced alien from the other creatures is it’s ability to create technologies that let it into the molten core or even, eventually, back out onto the baron surface.
there is chemical potential energy in food, which goes into our body which then gets converted into stored electrical energy in all living cells that will be used for kinetic energy to make our muscles move; heart beat, lungs breath etc etc. But also will get converted into heat and even a little bit of sound energy.
every energy gets lost to heat eventually since the increased movement of particles is what creates heat, which is why shivering is a natural reflex to cold. (x)
My question is, what if you didn’t need to source energy from food/chemical potential?
The idea is that the aliens can source energy from outside kinetic forces, convert the kinetic energy into stored electrical energy and then use that electrical energy to move their muscles (which creates more kinetic energy) but will also create heat and a little bit of sound.
I imagine that they’d collect this energy through their skin, maybe with many tiny muscles that absorb vibrations and turn that kinetic energy into electrical potential energy in their cells.
That means, to gain energy, they have to be in constant motion through dirt or through the air, being in the wind could be a rich source of energy and being touched by others could be too.
it means that being petted could be as indulgent to them as it is for us to eat a big meal.
Skin
Materials that absorb heat without becoming hot
sensible heat materials –
according to Adam Paxson, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Mechanical Engineering department, there are phase change materials (PCMs), latent heat storage materials that absorb and release heat without rising in temperature themselves.
My current vision for our ‘Alien’ is based off a worm or snake simply as a starting point to generate more questions and ideas about the physiology of the creature.
if our creature has no eyes or sense of sight, has touch as a primary sense and digs underground, then what might it look like?
Also why is it subterranean? – My understanding was that the aliens are that way in order to be as non-human as I could think
Something that is ‘alien’ is something that is foreign, unknown and unlike what we know we know best… which is ourselves.
Every living thing on earth shares a similar biological structure because we all come from common ancestors. The similarities can easily be seen when comparing bone structures.
It’s very hard to simply imagine entirely new physical structures since all things designs have some kind of basis in reality. And I can’t help but look to existing life forms when drawing inspiration for a new life form…
When imagining something subterranean, I imagine worms and moles, and I theorise that our alien would have evolved to the point where it doesn’t have sight and instead relies on touch, sound, presence, vibrations and temperature.
Although they aren’t blind, snakes have some crazy senses, like being able to hear through vibrations on their skin, and smell with their tongue and jacobson’s organ
Some snakes can also sense temperature with organs called heat pits, which are openings on their face located around their mouth….
They’re similar to the pores in shark skin mentioned in Claire’s previous post. I do have to question the size of the holes though, if our alien naturally digs then perhaps the organs can open and close to prevent dirt getting trapped there, or have a cleaning system like how eyes have tears.
If touch is the primary sense, it makes me imagine some kind of feelers like a moth or something.
If they dig around in tunnels they could have huge antennae that run the length of it’s body so it can be constantly feeling the interior walls.
and if it pops out to the surface it could use the feelers to check the area for any other lifeforms or elemental effects.
The long feelers very much remind me of the king of saxony bird of paradise, which is a bird that has evolved through sexual selection to have these big impractical plastic-like feathers by its eye. They’re used to attract mates but are easily tangled in branches and if they’re broken it will ruin the bird’s mating season. the feathers do regrow every year however.
Our alien, if they don’t have a visual sense, will not care about the look of their feelers, but may care about their texture.
another creature with feelers is the moth. Moths can “smell” pheromones through hair like fibers on their feelers.
lastly is an influence that isn’t exactly a real world influence, the idea came to mind when Claire was brainstorming ways that the creatures would dig.
Her suggestion reminded me of skyfish/rods (Which are just basically bugs in flight cause on a slightly long camera exposure)
People have interpreted them in different ways. eg: an illustration by Hirohiko Araki in Jojo’s bizarre adventure…
but I thought the wavy ‘fins’ could be a bodily mechanism to carry dirt away and behind the body…
The lack of eyes is kind of a problem because part of me wants to draw cute aliens, but eyes contribute a lot to cuteness… the heat pits end up replacing the eyes and at first glance make it look like it has a some what typical ‘face’, but it’s a trick.
not that the vision-less aliens will care about whether their heat pits make them look cute, but if they ever did interact with humans, we might be able to relate to them a little bit, just because they have things that look like eyes.
Rabbit burrows house many individual families. The pathways are interconnected and have multiple entrances/exits so that if a predator enters through one tunnel, the rabbits can leave through a different tunnel.
The tunnels lead to little pockets where each family lives and it seems that these pockets have multiple entrances and exits as well.
Pictured above: A metal cast of ant tunnels. The spaces bellow are store rooms. There are also waste rooms.
Different species of ants have very different tunnels.
The tunnels are designs to properly ventilate the complex and to provide the fastest transport.
moles are a classic digging animal. They too nest underground and also find food underground. The video explains that they dig with a lot of energy and because of this they need to eat a lot to sustain that.
What would a species of diggers be like if they didn’t have to constantly forage like moles?
Also, what if the species was not at risk of being prey like most digging animals are? What are the other species that live above ground?
Our alien should be somewhat safe from predators, maybe they have to avoid a few like how humans still have to be careful around bears and big cats and snakes etc. And I think the alien should have the ability to indulge in leisure. If they survive off kinetic energy, then perhaps they’ve developed a way to create a lot of kinetic energy or a way to store energy for longer so that they can go for longer without needed to replenish energy, and have more time to build stuff and create stuff and develop a culture in general.
Alien-ic Project 