Fur, scales, fins, or feathers, everyone has a story!
Q&A: Species
Transcript
Question, "Who inhabits the world of 'Aww, Feathers'?" Answer, "There are no humans. The dominant species are called 'anthros.'" We see a drawing on parchment containing a basic sketch a bipedal dog, lizard, and eagle, each standing in the same pose with its head turned to the side and left arm outstretched. "Though very diverse, they all technically belong to the same species, anthro sapiens. The different variations of anthros are like subspecies, or races if you prefer." A female tiger holding a cell phone and a male fox smile and wave to each other. "Even so, it is common to refer to these as different 'species' (though a few consider it to be politically incorrect)." A phone screenshot displays several responses to an online conversation. An avatar that looks like a pair of antlers asks, "Hay! Wat is ur species?" A pair of paw prints says, "Hi! I'm a Siamese cat. (cat smile emoticon)" A couple of feathers says, "Falcon mix." A sillhouette of a wolf says, "Excuse me?! (angry emoticon) We're all anthros you guys! You're encouraging discrimination by categorizing everyone just because they look different!! We're all the same species, and--." The last response is cut off by the edge of the screen.
Lark says…
Behind the Scenes
To be brutally honest with myself, the term “anthro sapiens” isn’t my favorite piece of world-building. 😅 Fortunately, I don’t plan on using it very often, if at all in the future. More important is the idea that everyone is the same species deep down, even though they have very different physical characteristics.
This was the first page where I first experimented with using CLIP Studio’s 3D pose mannequins. I still do use them occasionally. They’re useful for getting the details right on some tricky poses or angles. As you can see, I also used the Vitruvian Man as inspiration for the drawings of different anthro types in the middle of the page.
Fun fact: the cursive text in the background of that middle panel is written backwards, which is a nod to the way Leonardo da Vinci sometimes kept his own notes. The text itself is just lorem ipsum though, so sorry, no secret messages. I know, missed an opportunity there. Ah well. (Here’s an explanation if you’re not sure what lorem ipsum is.)
Published: May 13, 2014
I know I've offended some taxonomist somewhere. I apologize.