SO SORRY FOR ALL THE INACTIVITYY I've Been Mining Around And Working Hard On My Toyhouse For The Past

some quick concept doodles of the hunt avatars in the wof au

lionblaze, shadowsight, and the prisoners they released

Behold! Big Kitties!

I wanted to make one of these for fun mostly, also because I wanted to slightly update how I draw the Fleets to fit the Homotherium mummy; mostly in the lack of carpal pads and that brown is the wildtype colour uvu

Notes that didn't fit: - Eye colours can be anything natural-looking except in Ice Fangs, which are always blue (that's actually where their name comes from) - None of the colour variants are sexually dimorphic (though some may be sex linked) - All species can be fluffier than shown here (especially in winter), I just shaved them here to show the varied anatomy - All the cats probably have a melanistic and albino variant but there aren't any in Kindred so I didn't include them - I'm never gonna draw the characters in Kindred with detailed patterns as shown here, that would take 554637 hours per page cx

Don't @ me about paleo inaccuracies bc there's a lot of intentional exaggerations e.g. how variable they can be, for the sake of making characters actually fun to work with + the Tuft Tails are basically just lions because their skeletal anatomy is sooooo similar but bigger (and lions are pretty)

Image ID

"Kindred of the Mammoth- Pleistocene big cats"

Fleet Fang- Homotherium serum. Tireless hunters of the steppe. Male: Tom Female: Molly Nonbinary: Motte Young: Cub Grouping: Kindred A drawing in a slightly more realistic style than Kindred of a brown Fleet Fang with green eyes and extensive barring running down her sides. There is a headshot of a tom with shaggy grey and white fur, who has his mouth open in a slight pant to show dental anatomy. Notes read: "Inverted neck hackle Patterns run laterally. Tufted ears Heart-shaped nose. All teeth are serrated No carpal pad Claws don't retract fully Skin usually dull pink Paler under-tail No sexual dimorphism Huge incisors, tiny lower canines Tundra morphs shaggy and pale grey" There are a few natural variants shown as well: dilute few spots, joined-barring (lateral stripes instead of broken spots), Open-saddle ginger, melanistic with paler grey markings.

Ice Fang- Smilodon fatalis ssp. Powerful hunters of the north. Male: Boar Female: Sow Nonbinary: Urs Young: Cub Grouping: Sounder A drawing in a slightly more realistic style than Kindred of a white, grey striped Ice Fang with blue eyes . There is a headshot of a boar with pale golden fur and a darker beard under his neck. He has his mouth open in a slight pant to show dental anatomy. Notes read: False eyes on small ears Powerful neck/shoulders Vertical stripes Very short tail Bear-like lower lip Only sabers are serrated Very large dewclaws Skin usually dull pink/brown Boars have a goat-like 'beard'. Wide nose, sideways nostrils. Huge incisors, tiny lower canines. There are a few natural variants shown as well: Faded stripes with a pale warm grey coat, Few stripes only on the shoulders and rump, Tawny morph with broken stripes (they form vertical bars), Abundism- heavy stripes that are interlocking and covering the whole body.

Tuft Tail- Panthera leo atrox Coordinated hunters of the plains. Male: Lion Female: Lioness Nonbinary: Leo Young: Cub Grouping: Pride A drawing in a slightly more realistic style than Kindred of a golden tawny Tuft tail (lioness) with amber eyes. There is a headshot of a lion with greyish fur and a tawny underbelly. He also has a darker mane around his neck. He has his mouth open in a slight pant to show dental anatomy. Notes read: Larger ears Long, flexible spine Nose darkens with age Robust non-serrated teeth Dark pawpads Patternless or faintly spotted Long, tufted tail Lions have a mane (but less full than African Lions) Lions much heavier than lionesses. There are a few natural variants shown as well: Completely spottless warm grey with a tawny underbelly, orxy type dark markings that outline the paler underbelly, retained juvenile spots and a reddish tint, fully grey morph that is entirely desaturated.

A note at the bottom reads: Kindred of the Mammoth, art, and these speculative depictions belong to PencilPavlova [END ID]

Two things drive all creatures. Fear, and Greed.

bows! Archery! Dragons would probably do archery mostly the same way humans do, pull the string back and stuff. One slight issue is that dragons might have a shorter arm-to-body ratio than us humans, which can be an issue since a dragon might not be able to pull the bowstring as far back as required to effectively use the weapon… But that can be fixed with an extended grip! Which then creates a new problem as the dragon would lose or at least be limited with their ability to stabilize the arrow with their talons… so then you could get an arrow shelf to hold the arrow! Problem solved!

You can also fix the short arms problem by just, like, using certain art styles— Like, my art style for dragons has them have really long friggin arms, but a dragon in joy ang’s style is probably gonna have stubbier arms and thus a far harder time using a bow!

Now for flight archery! I think horse archery would be a good parallel to shooting a bow whilst flying since both involve shooting bows at fairly high speeds. there’s a bunch of horse archery styles and techniques in the world, so I’ll narrow it down to Mongolian horse archery since they’re the most famous!

Mongolian horse archers typically use a different style of shooting than how most modern archers, where instead of using the Mediterranean draw where you pull the string back with your index, middle, and ring finger, they’d instead pull the string back using the knuckle and thumb in something called a thumb draw! (or eastern draw/Mongolian draw/Turkish draw/—I’ll just call it thumb draw)

Mongolian horse archers also placed their arrows on the outside of the bow (that being the right side of the bow arm facing outward if your right handed and vice versa) which makes it easier and faster to knock arrows.

Both of these techniques, the thumb and placing the arrow on the outside, when paired together actually help stabilize the arrow. The thumb draw provides a constant torque/force against the arrow which helps keep it pinned against the bow arm which makes it less likely to get knocked about. This can be rather useful when shooting from an unstable and shaky platform like a galloping horse, or in this case, a flying dragon!

That doesn't mean its impossible to use the mediteranean draw on the standard olympic side on horseback of course, as proven by Lajos Kassai, a Hungarian bowyer who exclusively uses the Mediterranean draw due to a thumb injury he sustained!

The parallel between horse archery and flight archery isn’t perfect though, as in horse archery the archer is independant from the horse, meaning that the archer can shoot in whatever direction they want whilst also being able to move in a straight line at the same time.

For a dragon however, the direction of their flight is directly tied to the rotation of their own body, as their wings are connected to their torso. So if a dragon twisted their torso to the right, then the angle of their wings would also be changed and the dragon would begin to veer towards the right.

And In order to pull a bow, it has to be around perpendicular to your torso, meaning that you can only fire an arrow from your left or right flanks.

So for example, a human horse archer could just twist their body and shoot straight forward, and the horse would continue to run in the same direction. If a dragon wanted to shoot at a target that was directly in front of them however, the dragon would have to twist their torso about 90 angle or less either left or right in order to get the bow lined up with their target, which would then cause the dragon’s flight path to veer off course.

Of course, a dragon could probably just reorientate themselves right afterwards and continue on with their straight flight path, though it might slow down their speed a bit. That might not sound like too big of a deal, but in a scenario where the dragon is pursuing another target, it could become a bit of a hindrance as the dragon would be forced to slow down or make their flight path longer every time they fired their bow!

Also, it also might be practical for a dragon to learn how to be ambidextrous with a bow. For example, if the dragon was holding their bow in their left hand and wanted to shoot at a target to their right, they might find it faster to switch the bow to their other hand, rather than turning around in the opposite direction just to aim at the target.

A dragon also can’t exactly flap their wings whilst drawing a bow, as the bow would get in the way of the wings when being aimed. So a dragon would most likely have to glide whenever firing a bow to avoid accidently clipping their wings.

There’s also a problem with aiming, as most WoF dragons have helluva long necks, so their eyes aren’t going to be as aligned with the arrow. It’s not impossible to shoot an arrow like this, but its definitely trickier! I suppose the dragon could technically twist their neck down to the arrow and aim it regularly, though that does sound rather uncomfortable and there’s probably a good chance the string might slap the dragon’s cheek or ear whenever it’s released, which can be a problem if your use a heavy draw weight bow.

Oh, also one final tangent that isn't too relevant but I thought was cool, a WoF dragon bow would be really big. According to that one official Rose and Smolder measurement chart, adult dragons can be like around 17 ft/5m tall. Long bows can usually be as tall as humans, so if you upscaled that to a dragon height you could probably end up with a bow in the 15-20ft range depending on the type of long bow, that's basically a seige ballista right there! Imaging getting hit by that? You’d just immediately vanish! Poof! Gone! Nothing!

…Yeah that's about all, cheers!

diluted amenome or something

Collection of arts for Lordmarble ...... Guys my head hurts so bad

So save your prayers / For when we’re really gonna need ‘em…

Drew this almost a year ago now! Time passes