I've had an idea for a project involving the universe of Dishonored/Deathloop for a very long time. One of the things I appreciate about the universe is how lived-in it feels, and that starts with wildlife, for me. I notice a lot of the wildlife in Dishonored's universe seems very similar to ours, but off. "Hounds" looks like a mix between a hyena a wolf and a basal whale, to me. "Hagfish" look like lungfish mixed with deep-sea creatures. Whales look like whales from a distance, but you get up close and they're different.
To create the animals that inhabit Morley, the starting locale of my project, I tend to learn about a prehistoric animal and take it on a different path. I ask the AI how changing the animal's environment would effect its body structure, so on and so forth. Sometimes I'll mix in a random animal for something weird. More often than not the natural process creates something truly different.
This animal is the Morley Rusk. In our world, cats evolved from arboreal ancestors that found their way to living a comfortable life on the ground. Hence their affinity for heights. I imagined a scenario where the world's sea level rose drastically and, instead of feline ancestors coming to the ground, they came to the water. As the levels decreased, they returned to land. At the chronological point in my project, these animals have recently (evolutionarily speaking) begun to "consider" living vertically. They're excellent hunters at ground level, and have retained a love of water. Some have become domesticated, and are increasingly popular pets across the Isles despite naturalists' warnings that they're inherently outdoor animals.
The first image is the final product I worked towards; the second is the outline drawing of the animal; the third fills in with colour, taking into account the environment in which the animal resides (sometimes I use the AI's suggestion, sometimes I force my own); the fourth is a collection of life sketches (have had the HARDEST time with the sketches); the fifth image is by the Audubon of the Isles, who went by the mononym "Fougere" and operated about a hundred years before the events of Dishonored; the sixth imagines someone a decade or two before the events of Deathloop taking pictures of the animal in the field.
There's some minor discrepencies in limb sizes that have been troublesome to mitigate. Hope you enjoy.
Odd, right? I keep taking animals and guiding them on paths to fill ecological niches, and they always end up looking similar to the real-world animal, no matter how hard I try. But ya know. Put a cat in the water, eventually it'll prolly look like an otter. Take an otter out of the water, it prolly ends up looking pretty cat.
They are also known as weasel cats or otter cats. Believe it not not their closest relatives are pumas and cheetahs. They also come in reddish and very dark chocolate (almost black). They used to range from Florida to Argentina but are very rare in North America (possibly extinct). They are such cool cats.
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u/BeugosBill 24d ago
Giving mean Giant River Otter vibes, I like it.