Saturday, August 13, 2016

Marine Animals

The Ocean Guard
Medium: digital painting
"Look out, here comes the Ocean Guard!"

I've done the Lion Guard as North American animals, so here they are as marine animals! Okay, the ocean isn't a continent, but it makes up most of the earth's surface, so I just rolled with it. It's Fuli the sailfish (the fastest), Beshte the blue whale (the strongest), Ono the mantis shrimp (the keenest of sight), Bunga the dolphin (the bravest), and Kion the orca (the fiercest). They're not drawn to scale, as you can probably tell.

Obviously there are lots of other animals that could have worked for these roles, but I liked these guys. I thought about making Kion a shark, but most sharks are actually pretty shy, so I settled on a killer whale because they are fierce hunters. Sailfish are so fast that they have special tissues in their eyes to keep their optic nerves warm when they swim at race car speeds! I think that's a good fit for Fuli. Dolphins have a reputation of being brave and heroic, so even if "bravery" is subjective in the animal kingdom, I figured a dolphin would be the best fit for Bunga. I think he would be a spinner dolphin because they're so playful. You could totally imaging one shouting "zuka zama!" as it jumps and twists out of the water. Beshte is a blue whale because, well, it's a blue whale. Blue whales are the largest (and therefore the strongest) known animals ever to have existed on earth. And mantis shrimp are one of those animals that no one seems to know about, but they have crazy good eyesight. Humans have three color rods (red, blue, and green), but mantis shrimp have 16! They can also move their claws so fast that it causes the water around it to boil, and they have the attitude to match. The mantis shrimp could be pretty much the entire Ocean Guard, haha!






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Not Deer

  Spookable Medium: digital painting "...and then it stood on its hind legs."