Flight Rising Discussion

I don't personally feel like any of the art is lacking uniqueness or anything.. like the heads drawn in the first post to be more unique just look cartoonish and unrealistic to me. Most creatures in real life have similarly shaped heads and differ more in smaller details, which I think the art captures quite nicely. There are breeds with longer and shorter snouts and such.. and with body type I feel like the outlines drawn are misleading and picking poses to show a trend that isn't there, like sandsurges/aberrations do not have the same body shape as auraboas. And it shouldn't be that surprising that most of the dragons are more serpentine just because that tends to be a common trend for dragon designs, and of course having tails emphasizes that quite a bit.. if nothing else the designs definitely don't all look the same, they have their own body shapes depending on the inspiration used for them, and head shape typically makes sense for them. I feel like the argument of lacking uniqueness comes more from people expecting something specific and just having a lack of that.. dragons aren't the same design just because they have one or two similar features. I think arguments for specific shapes or features people do want to see would be more productive too, like examples of head/body shapes people think are lacking and then if those gain support maybe they would do something like that. It just feels kind of rude to call the art not unique just because it isn't something specific you're hoping to see... I don't want the heads to all be cartoonish and overexaggerated just for the sake of being 'unique'.

[quote name="Fehn" date="2024-04-19 12:50:18" ] I think the "same face issue" partially comes from the desire to make the eyes visible. It's such a bummer to get a faceted/goat eyed/etc veilspun or skydancer, for example, because as soon as they're grown up you can't tell. I really appreciate that they've been making the eyes bigger. (Okay maybe aether male is a bit much but... ya know..) [/quote] I do think that's likely a big factor! I should point out that you can put big, expressive eyes on nearly any dragon design if that's the goal. Some examples: [img]https://64.media.tumblr.com/7bd998532eb187d819ef6562d9a23e7b/ce711630fa20ad37-3b/s2048x3072/350400c8acf0a21c0bb99a290a4a46a62554edc7.png[/img]

[quote name="voidsnake" date="2024-04-19 13:16:30" ] I don't personally feel like any of the art is lacking uniqueness or anything.. like the heads drawn in the first post to be more unique just look cartoonish and unrealistic to me. Most creatures in real life have similarly shaped heads and differ more in smaller details, which I think the art captures quite nicely. There are breeds with longer and shorter snouts and such.. and with body type I feel like the outlines drawn are misleading and picking poses to show a trend that isn't there, like sandsurges/aberrations do not have the same body shape as auraboas. And it shouldn't be that surprising that most of the dragons are more serpentine just because that tends to be a common trend for dragon designs, and of course having tails emphasizes that quite a bit.. if nothing else the designs definitely don't all look the same, they have their own body shapes depending on the inspiration used for them, and head shape typically makes sense for them. I feel like the argument of lacking uniqueness comes more from people expecting something specific and just having a lack of that.. dragons aren't the same design just because they have one or two similar features. I think arguments for specific shapes or features people do want to see would be more productive too, like examples of head/body shapes people think are lacking and then if those gain support maybe they would do something like that. It just feels kind of rude to call the art not unique just because it isn't something specific you're hoping to see... I don't want the heads to all be cartoonish and overexaggerated just for the sake of being 'unique'. [/quote] I apologize if my art style doesn't get across what i'm talking about - It's fine that you dislike it, but I was trying to communicate a character design principle/a point about shape language with clear diagrams, not say that the website should adhere to that personal style. Realistic styles still have shape language. I strongly disagree that most animals in the real world have similar head shapes though. There's so many thousands of distinct face and body shapes in nature - even within the same groups you'll see massive variation (do bottlenose dolphins, sperm whales, orcas, belugas, and narwhals all share a face shape? beaded lizards, alligator lizards, horny toads?) The designs in my post were loosely based on the turkey vulture, the hammerhead bat, the sandfish skink, and the pacman frog specifically.

Probably the least of everyone's concern, but.. all the tails are long.. where's the short tails at, the little stubs..

I wish there were more bulky dragons, and so far only the only ancient that comes close to that are gaolers.

I honestly think it's just the order of the releases that's making it seem like the art isn't unique.

The Undertide was based on eels. So, long face.

Aethers were based on moths, so, snubby face!

Now the Dusthide, based on animals that dig, also has a snubby face - but it's because digging creatures just be that way.

I don't think the artists aren't trying hard anymore. I think they're basing ancients off of real animals more than they did with the moderns. And real animals, if you break them down to basic shapes, can look nearly identical even across different species.

I like them, to be honest. Reduce anything to a basic shape and it won't seem unique; but the execution of the recent ancients has been great, imo, and I think they're doing a good job. Aethers are probably my favorite of the newer ones. They may have similar structures but they're all still so different, so I'm just gonna give props to the creators on the ancients and also say it would be very cool to see ancients based on VERY WEIRD animals eventually. Like the Gharial, or the Saiga - oooooooo, a Mandril dragon, with big ol' teeth.

Yeah, I'm also really really sick of the flat/round faces. Honestly I think I would've been a much bigger fan of dusthides if they didn't have Flat Round Face 5 and look almost exactly like sandsurges. I'd also love to see some wackier stuff with the bodies and general Shapes too. I do enjoy the lithe snake-y build a lot, but sometimes you just want like... A vulture dragon with a hunched back. A massive shoehorn bill. A Frog. I love those drawn mockups, I'd buy so many of the top right in the varied shapes example!

I'm sorry but I really need to counter some of these points here: [quote name="GrimoireBlack" date="2024-04-20 08:31:35" ] I honestly think it's just the order of the releases that's making it seem like the art isn't unique. The Undertide was based on eels. So, long face. Aethers were based on moths, so, snubby face! [/quote] Well, yeah, the release order is the main issue. I would still think they were overrepresented by the site if they were spaced out, but the fact that they're released back to back and encompass the majority of releases in the past 5 years is what speaks to a trend the website is shifting towards. [quote] Now the Dusthide, based on animals that dig, also has a snubby face - but it's because digging creatures just be that way. [/quote] Digging animals have a wide variety of faces, but the most specialized burrowing animals tend to have long "shovel" faces with upturned noses. Short, blunt faces are the least common faces among them because, frankly, they're terrible for digging on that level. [img]https://www.hummingbirdsplus.org/nature-blog-network/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/30-examples-of-ground-burrowing-animals-4.jpg[/img] [img]https://www.uticazoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Hog-Nose-Fact-Sheet.png[/img] [img]https://featuredcreature.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Screen+shot+2010-10-15+at+9.59.17+PM2.png[/img] Short or rounded faces are major outliers - it's because they have some other major adaptation that allows them to burrow in spite of the shape. [quote] I don't think the artists aren't trying hard anymore. [/quote] I promise I'm not saying that whatsoever. I understand the amount of work this takes. I'm just pointing out a design trend and hoping I see variation going forward. [quote] I think they're basing ancients off of real animals more than they did with the moderns. And real animals, if you break them down to basic shapes, can look nearly identical even across different species. [/quote] A few people have made this point and I just flatly don't agree. There's thousands of different bodies and faces across animals. Surely these silhouettes aren't identical: [img]https://64.media.tumblr.com/9a011183c0fd7652d6fe8d0428fdc7e4/e551cd9a84dfbf63-93/s640x960/d57f89012e82e61cde8ecc10fc64894c6b619c57.png[/img] but even if it was true that many animals shared the same shape, that's not the main point of this post. This isn't speculative biology, these are character designs on a dress up game, and I'm pointing out that they could do with variation in the /art direction/ for the purposes of allowing people to create a wider variety of characters. [quote] Reduce anything to a basic shape and it won't seem unique. [/quote] Being able to reduce things to simple shapes and still identify them next to each other is like the most basic principle of character design and - as I've shown - Many of the site's original breeds /do/ look distinct when you do this.

i definitely hadn't thought about this in detail before, besides the fact that i came back from a long hiatus to a bunch of new ancients (left after banescale release i believe) and thought that, although they look good, the Undertide and Auraboa look very similar to me. i would definitely love to see some variety in the body shapes themselves going forward, instead of thin and looping as the base, but don't think the current dragons are necessarily lacking (not implying anyone has said this).

my favourite species are the Gaoler, Wildclaw, Skydancer, and Fae, which all fall under very different categories of shapes. i think exploring more "out-there" shape-age and really digging into the fantasy proportions for future dragon art would be a great way to go! while not every release is going to be a staggering hit, i think it's better to end up with a polarized "i hate how this dragon looks" and "i LOVE how this dragon looks" instead of a unanimous "yeah this dragon is okay".