Animallum: Earth Animals (Gliders)

The next batch of animals for the upcoming card game are none other than representatives of Earth's gliding creatures:

1.  Ptychozoon kuhli
2.  Cypselurus callopterus
3.  Rhacophorus annamensis
4.  Anomalurus pelii

Animallum: Earth Animals (Semi-Aquatic)

This is the next batch of Earth's animals for the card game.  Like I mentioned in the previous post, each grouping of animals is somewhat general and not divided biologically like mammal, reptile, etc.  Aliens have grouped the animals behaviorally.  Wednesday you saw the "insectivores" and, today, you have some animals that are "semi-aquatic."  Stay tuned for more categories!  (Also, if you have any ideas for animal categories, throw 'em in a comment!)


Of course, I had to find a way to get platypus into the game...haha!


From left to right, we have...


1. Varanus niloticus
2. Ornithorhynchus anatinus
3. Triturus cristatus
4. Pteronura brasiliensis

Animallum: Earth Animals (Insectivores)

Alright, so here's the concept of the card game I'm making.

Aliens have made first contact with a future Earth that has just begun traveling through space.  Unfortunately, the aliens that have found our planet value it for its biodiversity and immediately loot Earth for a great deal of wildlife.  In their economy, things that are valuable because they are rare on Earth are of no value because, throughout the galaxy, one can find many planets, moons, and asteroids with extremely high abundances of these Earth-rare materials.  Instead, their economy is based on something that is rare in the galaxy:  variety in life.  This is what made Earth seem like an untapped treasure chest.

Now, we want to get our wildlife back!

The problem is that we have nothing to trade with the looters, so Earth has turned to the help of three other alien civilizations that do have rare resources we can use to get our animals back.  In exchange for diamonds, gold, and iron, these benevolent societies will give Earth agents resources that they can use to bust our native creatures out of alien zoo banks.

I'll explain more about the mechanics of this 2-4 player card-based game in another post, but, for now, I'll say that every player is assigned an alien zoo bank to trade for our wildlife, and these zoos contain Earth animals according to various categories.  For example, this batch is made of insectivores (from left to right):

1.  Zaglossus bruijni
2.  Myrmecophaga tridactyla
3.  Tamandua tetradactyla
4.  Manis tetradactyla

In other words, each of the zoos assigned to players will have one insectivore.

Other categories right now include troglobytes, gliders, and semi-aquatic.  I'd like to come up with 8-10 categories so that each zoo will contain 8-10 animals...not human-assigned categories, like mammal and reptile, but categories that have more to do with behavior than biology.  Looting aliens, after all, might not categorize our animals  based on anything more than initial appearances.

Animallum: Alien Animals

Alright, we're almost to the core concept of the game I'm designing now.  These three alien critters are a sort of wild card in the game...you won't see them very often, but having them is good.  I haven't come up with names for them yet, but they each come from different alien worlds in the game.

Seaglassing Now Available!

Do you enjoy collecting weathered trash?  Are you besotted with mythical beasts?  Why don't you try Seaglassing on for size!

Now available on Etsy!

Animallum: Alien Resources

These are a few more of the elements of a card game that I'm attempting to design.  Part of the premise of the game is that the people of Earth really really really want to trade with an alien civilization to retrieve something valuable to them, but Earth has nothing that the alien's would want, so...we need to turn to other alien civilizations to obtain resources that the first alien civilization would want, and these are them, left to right, top to bottom:

Magnethyst, Rubilum, Sapp,
Opanet, Emerose, Crysopaz

Animallum: Card Game

Oh, boy!  Last week, I finally decided that, for sure, my third project as Orbital / Primeval would be to create a game.  The game I have in mind is somewhat simple and involves cards; the mechanics aren't too original, but I believe that it will be very fun and relatively easy to complete.  Pictured above are three items in the game:  Diamond, Gold, and Iron.  These are valuable resources of Earth that will be traded to alien civilizations for...well, I'll let you know that in a bit!

Seaglassing, Journal Excerpt

So, the second half of the Seaglassing book contains a Seaglass Journal:  12 pages that explore small pieces of the world introduced in the comic during the first half of the book.  I don't plan on posting all of the pages on here, but here is one that I especially enjoy...the Mishepishu's life cycle!

Seaglassing Front Cover

Here's the cover for the second book in the Orbital / Primeval library, Seaglassing!  These will be available on Etsy towards the middle of the month.

Seaglassing Has Printed!

The Orbital / Primeval library grows!  Seaglassing has printed, and I couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out!  The first 12 pages are the Seaglassing comic, and the last 12 pages are a "Seaglass Sketchbook," which is full of supplementary information about the world glimpsed in the comic.

Seaglassing, Page 12

...and away the seaglasser and little mishy go with a mind-blowing haul of sea glass.

Here it is!  The last page of Seaglassing!  I hope you enjoyed this small adventure.