Category Archives: sentient 39

Burrabb Argument

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It’s unlikely that any aliens we encounter will be as homogeneous as the ones that populate most science fiction films and television shows. Just as planets have diverse ecosystems so will intelligent species have a variety of political, religious and economic systems. They’re unlikely to all be warriors, all worship one set of gods and all be communists. If they all had the same beliefs they’d likely never build a civilization and never leave their home world. Intellectual and technical progress is much more likely to happen when multiple cultures are competing and trading and fighting with each other. When everyone gets along, when one lives in a Golden Age and everyone agrees that it’s a Golden Age, then life is likely to be kind of static. It might be an awesome, wonderful, even enriching status but a status it will be. Because if everyone is happy no one is likely to make an effort to change that status.

That doesn’t address what’s going on in this sketch (from 2003) other than to suggest that if there are Burrabb utopias this sketch doesn’t depict one. Or if it does the Burrabb idea of utopia involves a lot of snarling and waving of claws.

Domesticated Animals

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Back to the sketchbooks –

This one was probably done in 2003. Part of the fun of world building is creating the details of a planet, a species, a culture. What do they eat? What do they wear? What kind of manners and religions do they have. What are the differences between the various cultures. Of the species in the Sentient 39 universe the Burrabb are the ones I’ve spent the most time thinking about and there’s still so much room in the picture for me to find color and nuance.

This sketch is the result of considering what sort of beasts of burden the Burrabb might have. A civilization is likely to need domestic animals in order to become a civilization. Species probably don’t go from hunter gatherers to space farers without a lot of steps in between.

The World is an Environment Suit

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An unfinished Sentient 39 universe illustration from 2002. It depicts a denizen of world that once had a thriving human colony that, for whatever reason, mostly collapsed. The world’s environment is toxic, the air unbreathable to naked human lungs. The humans now live as nomads in hacked together transports and ancient many-times repaired environment suits. As humans have done for thousands of years the nomads have personalized their homes, covered them with paint and talismans and friendly (or threatening) touches.

At Home in the Abyss

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I’ve been doing a lot of data entry for my Day Job over the last week. By the time I’ve spent a few hours at it my brain is fried and my ability to sit and do art is pretty minimal. My back is just not happy with me. The one thing I’ve been able to do is scan art. So I’ll be able to start posting sketches and drawings again.

I’ve been pulling art out of boxes rather than sketchbooks. That means some of it will be more finished than what I’d find in the sketchbooks. Some, but, like today’s post, not all. This image is from 2002. It’s an illustration of one of the intelligent species in my Sentient 39 universe – a Trader.

The Traders live in an immense and ancient colony ship. Launched from a world in another galaxy, over thousands of years breakdowns in the radiation containment fields of the ship, resulted in the poisoning and death of the original builders of the ship. With no one to contain them the gardens and animal life brought by original builders grew and adapted and mutated and evolved. And eventually one of the species evolved enough intelligence to figure out that it was living on a ship and, eventually, learned to control and pilot that ship.

Now they travel from world to world, trading goods and services and information. Because they evolved without gravity they can’t ever land on the worlds they visit.

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I’m not posting any new progress reports today. Aside from a general lack of progress I’d like to get the info into some sort of spreadsheet so that it’s easier to read and update.

I’m also trying to get chores taken care of before I go see family up in Alaska on Tuesday. I’m not sure whether I’ll be updating this blog while I’m up there or not.

Sentient 39 – Lili

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A version of Lili Veracruz drawn in 2001 while I was drawing a variety of the alien species for the Sentient 39 universe. I was drawing the aliens so I could practice coloring them in Photoshop using my Wacom tablet. Once I was done with the aliens I planned to start coloring some Misspent Youths characters.

Sentient 39 – Burrabb Cub

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Burrabb cubs leave the pouch when their muscles have developed. Unlike human babies who spend a couple of years being pretty helpless and needing to be taken care of constantly Burrabb cubs are physically capable and active. They’re also not very bright. Burrabb brains take about 5 years to develop to a point where a Burrabb can begin to learn language and “civilized” behavior. Until that point they are also primarily quadrupeds.

Sentient 39 – Burrabb Maha

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A Burrabb family consists of a maha and “his” herra. While the maha are, for the most part in charge of the family, the herra actually run it. They have to. Mahas have a very hard time getting along with other mahas. The same pheromones that keep their herra bonded to them make other mahas aggressive and hostile. Burrabb society works when the herra negotiate and the maha give advice from the sidelines.

Sentient 39 – Burrabb Herra

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The Burrabb are the non-terran originating species that I’ve spent the most time designing. They’ve been in my imagination in some form for decades. This version, from my 2001 Sentient 39 universe building exercise, is close to how I currently imagine them. Given that they’ve spread themselves across hundreds of systems and adapted themselves to a multitude of environments this could just be an example of one of the sub-races. The Burrabb have two sexes but a slightly more complex breeding cycle than human beings. Fertilization occurs in the mahas. At a certain point the (fetus? larva?) developing cubs leave the maha and finish their development in pouches in the herras. Imagine a social structure of a pride of marsupial lions in which the (not)male gives birth and the (not)females finish the gestation. Only not quite that. The mahas are about twice the size of the herras. A burrabb family has a single maha and two to ten herras.

Sentient 39 – MiGo

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Back in 2001, when I was working out the major species in the Sentient 39 universe I ran into a major stumbling block – the limits of my own imagination. And my desire to have the different alien species actually be different. I didn’t want to just toss up intelligent lizard and cats and just-like-humans except for the shapes of their ears and eyebrows. The more I’ve read about life on this planet the more I’m convinced that life on other worlds is going to diverse and strange and not simply terran life with different colors and slightly mixed up parts.

So, faced with the limits of my imagination I did what authors and artists have done since man started telling stories – I stole from another author. In this case I swiped the Mi-Go and the Elder Things from HP Lovecraft. In Lovecraft’s stories these creatures were supposed have existed for millions of years and spread their empires across the galaxy. They seemed like a good fit and they are in the public domain. I didn’t get the Elder Thing illustration past a very rough sketch. This is a Mi-Go, one of the so-called Fungi from Yuggoth.