Feathered dragon refsheet 2
(2015)
Continuing the design of a four limbed dragon. Here I used first-angle projection to shape the head, then added the whole body to the front view. Note the parallel projection which may look odd to someone expecting perspective.
For a comparison, here is the other reference sheet of the same dragon: https://www.sofurry.com/view/1542440
The dragon's head was meant to be shaped as an ordinary reptile's, using monitor lizards and tegus as reference. A shortcoming of this head structure is how the eyes are located on the sides, making the creature having somewhat poor forwards vision. This is a problem for a flying design where he would prefer to hold his head straight to adapt the aerodynamically most favorable position. So little by little I pulled the eyes forth until arriving to a result which still looked reptilian enough, yet offered him adequate vision.
What came out looks interesting to think about, imagining oneself in his place, what he would see. By how I located the eyes, he would definitely see his own snout, obscuring his vision somewhat like the situation of a steam engine's driver. However he has a reasonable field of binocular vision, allowing for combining the image of the two eyes. Probably he would only use the capability of three dimensional vision at mid distances (maybe between about five meters and hundred). At too short distances the snout would hinder him focusing both eyes on the same object (nearer than about 150 centimeters this capability completely wanes due to the small blind area before the nose), at too large distances, like for any creature, the capability deteriorates.
Otherwise in normal flying position he doesn't see his own body, neither the tips of his horns or the wings due to his long neck, giving him quite wide unobscured field of vision (it is interesting to think about pigeons, for example, how their entire body would almost always show in their field as they see even backwards).
It would have been possible to design differently, but I wanted him to use his head as a ram, which requires the eyes to be seated deeper, protected by bony protrusions.
Some additional elements of the wing-design are also visible here. Mostly I took ideas from Pterosaurs, particularly how their wing-hands were constructed, relying on a massive extensor tendon. In normal flight position so he has the lower arms in the same orientation like when walking, the clawed fingers keeping facing downwards under the extensor.
The shoulder may look strange: it is simply not the same as a quadruped animal's which may be expected for a dragon, rather like that of a bird or bat or even humanoid. These all have somewhat similar construction there, required for proper placement at flight. Typical crouching wyvern designs are similar, but look different due to their natural posture on the ground. The shoulder is also wider than the hips (2.4 meters versus 2), required for the chest to fit with the large flight muscles.
I plan these beasts to be intelligent in the story I wish to use them. Their robust construction doesn't much suggest that, however in such a large skull a sufficiently sized brain fits for thinking. I don't really think brain size versus body mass has too much importance: while it may have a little, it could be negligible compared to the sheer increase in volume by simple upscaling. After all, people neither become less intelligent when operating large machinery (eh... could be debatable though! :) ). In real world intelligence might rather depend on whether it is a beneficial evolution or not, and maybe extreme results only come when some creature arrives at the border of establishing culture (communication, learned language), by which they could become more adept in survival than other races not having this trait.
Of course some world-design was already put in this one, I mean the story I imagined needing this large dragon thing, which includes how their culture forms, their relations to each other and mankind. Controversial, I like that way. Maybe some time I can start building this one, probably as a comic (in general, I experiment for that purpose with these line-arts and coloring).
Continuing the design of a four limbed dragon. Here I used first-angle projection to shape the head, then added the whole body to the front view. Note the parallel projection which may look odd to someone expecting perspective.
For a comparison, here is the other reference sheet of the same dragon: https://www.sofurry.com/view/1542440
The dragon's head was meant to be shaped as an ordinary reptile's, using monitor lizards and tegus as reference. A shortcoming of this head structure is how the eyes are located on the sides, making the creature having somewhat poor forwards vision. This is a problem for a flying design where he would prefer to hold his head straight to adapt the aerodynamically most favorable position. So little by little I pulled the eyes forth until arriving to a result which still looked reptilian enough, yet offered him adequate vision.
What came out looks interesting to think about, imagining oneself in his place, what he would see. By how I located the eyes, he would definitely see his own snout, obscuring his vision somewhat like the situation of a steam engine's driver. However he has a reasonable field of binocular vision, allowing for combining the image of the two eyes. Probably he would only use the capability of three dimensional vision at mid distances (maybe between about five meters and hundred). At too short distances the snout would hinder him focusing both eyes on the same object (nearer than about 150 centimeters this capability completely wanes due to the small blind area before the nose), at too large distances, like for any creature, the capability deteriorates.
Otherwise in normal flying position he doesn't see his own body, neither the tips of his horns or the wings due to his long neck, giving him quite wide unobscured field of vision (it is interesting to think about pigeons, for example, how their entire body would almost always show in their field as they see even backwards).
It would have been possible to design differently, but I wanted him to use his head as a ram, which requires the eyes to be seated deeper, protected by bony protrusions.
Some additional elements of the wing-design are also visible here. Mostly I took ideas from Pterosaurs, particularly how their wing-hands were constructed, relying on a massive extensor tendon. In normal flight position so he has the lower arms in the same orientation like when walking, the clawed fingers keeping facing downwards under the extensor.
The shoulder may look strange: it is simply not the same as a quadruped animal's which may be expected for a dragon, rather like that of a bird or bat or even humanoid. These all have somewhat similar construction there, required for proper placement at flight. Typical crouching wyvern designs are similar, but look different due to their natural posture on the ground. The shoulder is also wider than the hips (2.4 meters versus 2), required for the chest to fit with the large flight muscles.
I plan these beasts to be intelligent in the story I wish to use them. Their robust construction doesn't much suggest that, however in such a large skull a sufficiently sized brain fits for thinking. I don't really think brain size versus body mass has too much importance: while it may have a little, it could be negligible compared to the sheer increase in volume by simple upscaling. After all, people neither become less intelligent when operating large machinery (eh... could be debatable though! :) ). In real world intelligence might rather depend on whether it is a beneficial evolution or not, and maybe extreme results only come when some creature arrives at the border of establishing culture (communication, learned language), by which they could become more adept in survival than other races not having this trait.
Of course some world-design was already put in this one, I mean the story I imagined needing this large dragon thing, which includes how their culture forms, their relations to each other and mankind. Controversial, I like that way. Maybe some time I can start building this one, probably as a comic (in general, I experiment for that purpose with these line-arts and coloring).
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I imagine in a world with dragons there'd be a feedback loop where the predatory dragons eat anything that doesn't hide really well, armor-up like an anklyosarus, or try to eat them back. So you've got a ready made intellectual arms race where there is not enough to eat, and getting smarter is the eventual path to success.
The real world example that comes to mind is the kea, or New Zealand snow parrot, which is one of the smartest birds in existence. They live in high alpine valleys in which the cold conditions have forced them to become ever more relentlessly cunning to find food. In modern times, they have been known to kill small sheep during bad winters, or disassemble a car windscreen with their beaks, purely out of sheer curiosity.
Most traditional cultures describe dragons as either vastly cunning, evil and sneaky (Western) or vastly wise, good and intelligent (Eastern). Which are exactly the same sort of behavioral traits seen in a kea, depending on whether you're an annoyed farmer or a delighted tourist with rental insurance. So they're probably the nearest thing I can think of to the real deal.
Depends on the environment, there were actual somewhat dragon-sized flying beasts on Earth (Quetzalcoatlus), but when those lived, just everything tended to be a magnitude bigger. Including nasty adversaries on land and water alike trying to eat them back.
How I like to imagine dragons in typical settings I put them in (smaller than this one, he is just too ridiculously humongous to conveniently handle in the kind of stories I like to imagine) is otherwise something alike to our present day environment. There they are top predators in every regard, a few things may be able to get them if they don't take sufficient care, but normally they are pretty safe, and have a potential of driving all the wildlife of open areas extinct.
Getting to that point is likely a matter of competition amongst each other, making them bigger as far as they remain well capable to fly, and then to not kill themselves out by killing off their own sustenance, they need some intelligence, territory, probably herding, rudimentary keeping track of prey, maybe some means of birth control.
If they don't have that, since they fly, they can do a good job mopping up accessible prey, and then they themselves would die. The kea example makes sense, imagining there necessarily could exist such points in history when they are in this state, them competing with each other for the scarce food, eventually improving their intelligence as they solve it. I can imagine them becoming territorial, but they need large territories which they may not be able to survey themselves, resulting in slowly developing crude social systems to leave ample living space for each, and cooperating in driving off offenders for the mutual benefit, keeping their population in check.
So most of them would live on a big territory in a small clan or family arrangement, and collective projects or innovation would take place in the nearest free city, which would pay for importing its food with luxury and specialty items that couldn't be made elsewhere. They'd need roads (or for a dragon, sky-paths or flight-corridors) similar to rights-of-way, so you could cross other territories without issues, and maybe also a custom such as the Celtic 'hospitality' tradition (which kept peace among squabbling tribes by allowing you to demand one night of safe food and shelter, from anyone, but only ever the once).
That's about as far as I can imagine it for a dragon civilization, other than considering that they wouldn't be afraid to build high, remote and tall, and probably wouldn't bother much with steps. So maybe each major mountain in a range would end up becoming a city, and the plains and shores their agricultural territories (in an exact reversal of what humans tend to do).
The concept of aviatic civilizations in general is interesting, I considered that not only with dragons, wings can lead towards weird things.