Dun dun dun dun...

Dun-dun DUN-dun Dun-dun DUN-dun...

... It was either John Williams or Stephen Spielberg, but one of them originally thought the Jaws theme premise sounded ridiculous - good thing they went with it anyway!

Indeed. I don't think they could've made a better one

He's not going to get much protein out of those. It's like eating half a peanut.

lol, I know. Poor fellow, desperate to find enough to eat...

Always hungry = always hunting = terrifying.

Always hungry = always hunting = terrifying.

I could never get when, in some movies (even good ones), a creature will be eating a huge kill (or will have just fed) and then leave the kill to chase another animal/human.
No known creature does this. A lion might sometimes defend a kill to make sure she gets enough, but she's not going to stop eating to chase down a jackal, or a vulture, or kill another Zebra.
Jurassic Park III did this with the T-Rex: Eating a huge carcass, and then leaves it to chase down a few humans. I seriously don't think so. Especially if they're going to stick with the "Dinosaurs are bird ancestors" theory.

Anyway. Love your stuff. The fact that this makes sense is actually a bonus.

Thanks! While I have to bend a lot of rules for fantasy games where I'm not the one in creative control, I do think my being a biology graduate helps sometimes.

*chuckles* Yup, although in JPIII, wasn't it partly that they were in the area near the rex nest? It wasn't that the rexes were hungry, they wanted to get rid of "nest aggressors." But yeah, stuff like that is pretty common in movies. Sort of like how defibrillators are always used to bring people back from death when that's not what they're for at all :V Or that people only use 10% of their brains. Totally and completely untrue.

Pretty much any TV show or movie that has "science," police or court proceedings involved almost always commit at least a few errors, where people in the field are like, "...That would NEVER happen." I know a lot of people who are either police officers, or work directly with the police as part of emergency services, and most of them can't even watch most TV/movies with police in them, because the media does so much blatantly wrong :V

Because of the popularity of guns, most media deal with them okay, but swords and other weaponry are also commonly abused, where people who actually know how to use and take care of weaponry just constantly have to ignore mistakes and whatnot if they want to enjoy media XD

LOL, yeah. Film and Animation were my majors, so I pick at movies a lot. Doesn't mean I don't love a guilty pleasure film now and then, but I also enjoy BAD movies (Something I learned from Mystery Science Theater 3000/Rifftrax). So I can appreciate everything from the artsy, to the schlocky, to the $#!t for all different reasons.

Some of my favorite WORST tropes:
- "Enhance Image". Zooming in = more and more grainy/pixelated... a computer can round, smooth, or blur that grain but it can't "enhance" new data into an image that isn't there! This happens in everything from Blade runner to CSI and it hurts every time.

- "Keep him talking, Trace that phone call!" Maybe in the days when you had operators plugging chords in manually to route phone calls, it would take a little while to trace a call's origin. But unless you are some kind of a hacker who is bouncing their phone call through proxys all over the world, this isn't a thing. Bad guy calls from a PAY PHONE in the same city and they need time to trace it? I have a $5 house phone showing caller ID before I even pick up.

- "The contrived misunderstanding" This one isn't technical, so much as lazy writing. Romantic comedy's are infamous for this. Some point in the 2nd act, to drag out the plot longer, someone misinterprets something by overhearing a conversation out of context, finding some form of erroneous evidence, or being given some form of false information by a 3rd party. "I guess this new development means we were never meant to be together".... 20 minutes of contrived drama later, they realize it was a mistake and live happily ever after. Just goes to show good communication is key to a happy relationship, and jumping to conclusions is for idiots in badly written hollywood scripts.

Oh yeah, for sure. I believe while there is a way to be objective about things, you have to look at what KIND of thing it is, and what its purpose is. For instance, you can't judge horror films on the same grounds as a serious drama, just like you can't judge abstract art on the same grounds as textbook illustrations.

Ahaha, yeah. If "enhancing" were so easy, graphic artists wouldn't have to worry about pixelation when enlarging images. Ever. And, haha, I forgot about the tracing of phone calls - yeah, that one's pretty outdated. Usually, when it comes to problems like that, I just take it as a "shortcut cue" to audiences that something is happening, and it isn't to be taken literally. When someone's heart monitor flatlines, and then is brought back by the magic of cure-all defibrillators, I just interpret the scene as "The filmmakers want us to understand this person almost died, but were saved by doctors." I actually don't really have a problem with most "cues" like that - I'll play along for sake of immersion and whatnot, not a problem. I DO have a problem when it comes up consistently.

For instance, "Lucy" drove me nuts - I wouldn't have minded them mentioning once, "She's got magic powers because she uses more than 10% of her brain" as a "We've explained it, get over it now." However, the "science" of it is a big part of the movie, and there are scenes where respected Harvard professors are all talking about how humans could basically became gods if we used all of our brain, and it made me so irrationally angry XD

And yeah, there's nothing helping bad writing much. The worst is when you have a writer trying to write intelligent characters, and can't do it - they keep telling us they're the greatest geniuses, top of their field, the smartest and cleverest, but they can't SHOW it. Instead, they show the characters doing ridiculously stupid things in complete opposition to what the writer says they should be like (like the world's most respected zoologist just walking up to an alien predator and poking it in the face). But yeah, that's like the big rule SHOW DON'T TELL of all creative/narrative writing, but it's sort of amazing how often professionals will get away with it in major movies and TV series.

*chuckles* My story is sort of based on a "contrived" misunderstanding, but the whole point is supposed to be how screwed up perceptions of things can get based on how things seem, so I'm hoping it's a bit different :b But yeah, I wouldn't know necessarily, since I tend to really despise rom-coms and don't watch them :V No problem with romance, some character romances can really get to me, just when things are TRYING to be romantic as the main draw of the film, it tends not to work for me :b Sorta like with books - big difference between a novel with romance, and a romance novel o_o

I guess the misunderstanding trope wouldn't be as big a deal if it was only in one or two films, but it's almost as much of a staple as a car chase to a 70's cop movie.

Don't get me started on the Prometheus' pantheon of galaxy's dumbest smart people. Cartographer who can't navigate the halls he just mapped, biologist who wants to kiss the posturing cobra creature, or the two geniuses who don't even know enough to not run in the path of a falling object. Natural selection is the hero of that film, Darwin awards for all. Shame too. I love the lore they added to the Alien universe, and hope the next film gives just as much or more. But the humans and their plot threads were pretty much worthless.

This film isn't that bad in comparison to the majority, but for me this was the peak of cinematic insult to intelligence. G.I. Joe: Retaliation...
Most of the film was just what you'd expect, a big dumb harmless action movie not to be taken too seriously. No problem. I don't mind a Transformers or Independence Day when I'm in the mood. So my tongue was in my cheek and my disbelief firmly suspended until the 3rd act:

1. Shape shifter posing as the U.S. president, while in a room with the world's nuclear leaders, fires ALL the US nukes at their countries.
They retaliate and fire all theirs back. Then he aborts the missiles mid flight, inviting the world leaders to destroy theirs. Which they do.
(First, is anyone that stupid? But ALL of them are? seriously?)

2. "Aha! You fell for my trap!" says the U.S. president reveals he has a doomsday earthquake machine in orbit and destroys London to prove he's serious.
(Of course he's the only global leader who kept an extra weapon, because none of those other leaders thought to hold back a nuke or two)

3. The Joes burst into the room, steal the fake president's doomsday-machine-controlling-briefcase and have a big final chase scene and fight... at the end of which, the beefcake hero simply opens the briefcase, which has no lock of any kind on the ouside, and without entering a pass code, finger print scan, or even so much as a "log in as Guest user", he presses an obvious big red button and the orbital strike satellite instantly self destructs. Cobra had the world by the balls and failed to put so much as a 4 digit pin on their world-domination football.
I swear to god, I was in the cinema, and it took every bit of self control I had to keep from leaping to my feat and yelling "NOOO!!"
I have never felt so angry, insulted, or just in distress from a film in my life before or since.

*chuckles* You can see its role, though - most people experience at least one or two "misunderstandings" as a new couple, part of their new experiences together, and it serves as a convenient problem for the protagonists to overcome, since the story isn't really focused on anything other than their relationship. Maybe why I don't like rom-coms that are nothing but? They seem potentially rather limited in what they can do, other than have "some kind of relationship drama" be the problem facing the protagonists, whereas if it's also a fantasy story, or science fiction setting, or historical piece, there are other things going on of interest, and the relationship/romance seems more natural and less forced.

Aahahaha, you knew exactly what I was talking about! Yes, Prometheus was a mess o_o We really wanted to like it, and we enjoyed at least some of it, but it just had too many problems like that >_O

lol, I enjoyed the G.I. Joe movie XD We generally enjoy and are capable of poking fun at "stupid" action movies, and I recall there were some actually pretty decent novel fight sequences. Don't remember a thing about the plot, though, haha. Sounds about right :b But yeah, it sort of sounds like it was your "Lucy" - that movie just made me so irrationally angry and offended XD My husband thought it was just hilarious, though :b

Yeah, that's the hardest part about drama/romance. You need there to be conflict for it to be a good story, but when they fall back on lazy writing it hurts the most. I actually am fond of half a dozen or so 90s style rom-coms, but none of them fall heavily on that particular lazy trope. I'd prefer to see protegonists overcom an actual relationship dilemma rather then the plot conveniently making one up due to "cupid ex machina".

Yeah, you're right. I actually liked the other parts of the G.I. Joe movies. It's just those couple awful moments at the end that just made me forget how fun the other scenes were at the time.

Guilty pleasure comedy is something I enjoy now and again too. Not every comedy can be as witty and well timed as the old classics or new quippy stuff. Some comedies are almost groan-inducing. Some cheap joke comedies that are self aware of their cheesy nature indulge in it and work even better that way (like the Muppets or Mel Brooks). But some comedies are just sort of "meh", heavy on the cheese and obvious slapstick, light on the wit, yet they some how are still funny regardless of how bad we feel about ourselves enjoying them. I'm talking about Ernest Goes to Jail, Jingle All the Way, Houseguest, Larger than Life, etc.
But as you said with Horror vs. Drama, comedy has to be judged almost like porn... if YOU enjoyed yourself, that's what matters. What works for you may not work for everyone else. But it's always nice to find someone who appreciates the same fetish (or humor) that you do.

Yeah, it sounds like you have pretty decently well-rounded tastes, which is good for someone who considered going into the field! And yeah, I actually quite like a lot of self-aware goofy comedies that are just having fun and not taking themselves too seriously.

And to be fair, that's kind of my opinion on everything - there's a big difference between something enjoyable, and something "good." Like, maybe the Ernest movies aren't "excellent" movies in the normal sense, but there's nothing stopping you from finding them enjoyable. McDonald's cheeseburgers are far from quality, but I don't begrudge someone who finds they hit the spot now and then.

But then that leads into "What makes something good, then, if not its ability to be enjoyed?" and that's more my husband's field, haha. (He's getting his PhD in metaphysics and metaethics :b)

I agree completely. Especially because I make adult artwork for a living at the moment. It's not the same level of quality as your work here, but then it serves exactly its purpose for the right price and satisfies the customers. So, it's fast food, but it's made with love.

Well that was a lot of fun. Not too often a comment tuns into an interesting conversation.

Wow! That sounds pretty impressive. I hope he does well. It takes quite a mind to tackle that stuff, let a lone get a Doctorate.

I look forward to more awesome creatures from your gallery.

Heh, cheers :) <3

Goodbye ships :o

Heh, yup :b Won't even see it coming - it'll just get suddenly dark with a violent thrashing and that'll be it :b

Haha, thanks!

I would imagine this species to be cannibalistic, since there are few things big enough to sustain them in the oceans at that size.

*nods* I made up a species sort of like this for my world, although not quite as large, and yeah, same sort of premise. If two of them run into each other, they're either going to mate, or murder each other :b Maybe both :V

But yeah, I imagine this creature is also at least partly magical in nature, more a force of nature rather than subject to nature's normal laws :V Convenient excuse in fantasy games to have impossible things, heh :b Who knows, though, maybe it's got a baleen-type gill/ramjet-like system somewhere, where it's constantly sucking stuff into its mouth, and anything organic in the water gets filtered out and processed. Works for blue whales!

Or it goes into long periods of hibernation/torpor that lasts for decades, then when it finally awakes, it basically becomes a living natural disaster in consuming enough to keep it going, then it goes back to sleep :b

Or they could be like Angler fish, with the male being much smaller than the female; Latching on to a specialized section and eventually becoming dormant. Continuing that line of thought, this could be a weak-spot for the PC's to exploit, as killing the male/attacking the empty patch of softer flesh may cause the Leviathan to bleed, or at least get pissed off :P

And I can understand the magical part of things, though I was thinking more along the lines of symbiotic organisms lining it's digestive tract/stomach that do most of the digesting and breaking down of food for the leviathan itself. Anything left over, including the residents themselves eventually end up going down into the intestines where various and perhaps unique kinds of bacteria do the rest of the macro-molecule sorting. In this way, it might not necessarily be a game over for the PC's if they are swallowed, as they will have a chance to fight through the swarms of various arthropods, jellyfish, anemone, limpet or barnacle like creatures inhabiting it's throat and stomach, before busting out alien style :D.

And that pretty much describes the Tarrasque... And while the leviathan could probably eat D&D's most feared enemy... It would give serious cases of internal bleeding, indigestion, organ failure and probable death :P.

Yeah, that would be cool :) Or maybe they could cast some sort of spell that would never work on the big one on the smaller one, and use it to "infect" it. Like, the main huge leviathan would be immune to a poison spell or whatever, would just sort of bounce off it, but if you could cast it on the little guy, it would transmit the effects of the spell onto its partner.

Heh, classic "You're inside a giant monster" scene, never actually done one in PnP form, but definitely familiar with them in movies/video games, heh. That could work, too.

Heh, yeah, good ol' tarrasque :b

I have the feeling you could feed a nuke to that beast and all it would result in is a big fart and a burp. Maybe some tummy aches but nothing else

Haha, yeah. A bit grumpy and some indigestion, haha.

Also, god damn your avatar XD I'm sick, and now I REALLY want soup, and I don't have any D:

Awww sorry to hear that. And yeah..my avatar seems to have that effect on a lot of people :D

It makes me extra-sad because I'm in the UK now, and authenticity and availability of Vancouver has spoiled me - now if I want any sort of Asian (gotta call it Oriental food over here, otherwise people will think I'm taking about Indian food) fare, I have to make it myself :b

But but..Indian food is delicious o.o

Heh, it is, not complaining. Just saying they have a ton of "Asian" food around here, but by "Asian cuisine" they only mean Indian food :b Not Oriental. So I was kinda disappointed :b

Huge sea creatures have always freaked me out. I know it's not necessarily uncommon to have that fear, but it exerts a certain fascination on me at the same time.

Heh, my husband has a bit of that - the ocean is one the single most unexplored part of our world, and we honestly know more about space and the moon than we do about the deepest parts of the ocean. The ocean is where "real life monsters" live, like a portal to prehistoric times or another planet, and is one of the few habitats that allow creatures to grow to truly massive sizes. And the ocean is dark - light only permeates the top miniscule fraction of it - and its hostile to us, and all humans, on an instinctual level, are at least a little bit frightened of a deep, dark, dangerous mystery that they know contains unseen monsters.

* how gay men imagine the vagina

lol, I'm sure :b

This is a particularly effective one and the Endless Realms people ought to be incredibly happy with you!

With teeth like that, one wonders what the Leviathan's natural prey is. After all, if it found something big enough to sink them into, they might break off. Na, you know what I think? They strain the food out, like baleen. This critter eats whales like whales eat krill.

Thank you kindly, I appreciate it :)

You know, I had originally intended on giving it wide shark-like teeth, but then... didn't for some reason :V And yeah, I imagine they'd break not infrequently, but fish teeth have that creepy habit of growing back regularly. I didn't explictly show it out of laziness/illness, but I imagine them having this sort of set-up: http://38.media.tumblr.com/fd652304.....fgB1s5r5h1.jpg - behind their main teeth is a whole rolling conveyor of new teeth ready to replace them when they fall out or break.

But yeah, I also thought that, if they were real creatures, they'd need some sort of straining/baleen-like system to provide enough nutrition for them, except since their mouth seems better suited to piercing or trapping big things so they can't get away, they'd maybe have a secondary buccal chamber that worked like how ramjet ventilation works in shark gills - water was forced through, and anything organic was strained out and then swallowed.

So that explains why deep-sea fish often have this appalling snaggle-toothed fangs-everywhere appearance. Wonderful. :)

As long as I don't actually have to meet one, face to face in its native environment. Shudder.

lol, yup. I remember dissecting a dogfish shark in university, and you could see all the little baby teeth nubs "rolling" up behind the bigger teeth at the front - it was kinda neat. But yeah, fish/shark mouths can be pretty gnarly :b

Well, based on your most recent post (the kraken) we have a sense of what those teeth are at least occasionally used on! I can only imagine that they are a staple of its diet, in order to sustain such incredible mass.

*chuckles* Poor kraken :b

Now we are talking.

<3

Looks absolutely amazing!

Thanks a lot! I appreciate it :)

This fills me with so much nope. If i ever play this, mu character is never going in the ocean.

*chuckles* Fair enough - there was a reason why only the early explorers had a bit of a reputation about them :b Everyone normal avoided the open ocean if they could help it!

Does it at least give any good loot or experience if it's possible to kill? Is there any cult that worships him?

I'm sure it gives tons of experience, since it strikes me as a fairly high-level monster, and when it comes to high level monsters, they usually have good loot, if even it's the chance to use its various "bits" as special weapons/armour/etc. Beyond that, though, I'm not sure! I'm not responsible for developing the lore, and don't have access to that information, I'm afraid!

Here it comes...are you ready for it?
WUR GUNNA NEED A BIGGR BOAT
*runs away giggling*

I think the size of their boat is going to be the least of their problems soon :b

Ah, yes, this is very nice indeed.

Thank you kindly! Glad you approve ;)

Ahhh perfect :D that's such a cool monster x333 :D nice!!!

Thanks a lot :3

QUICK, someone find medusa's head!

Hm, there's an idea! I wonder how well that'd work :b

I don't know why, maybe my liking of contradicting imagery, but I would love to see a picture of this massive, mean looking, creature rising from the deep near a rocky coast, and a little girl standing on one of the rocks, or in a small raft, holding a small cloth doll, just staring at the creature, shy, but unafraid, the creature making no move to harm her, as if in admiration of her bravery and nonjudgmental demeanor. Although at this scale, she would be like a grain of rice to the creature, haha.

Awesome work. ;3

Yeah, I love stuff like that, too :3 Would definitely make a neat surrealist painting, I think.

Thank you kindly :)

Gorgeous Big Ass beast. Would love and hate to find that one in a game i play: Sunless Sea.
The fun there is: you can guess by location and partially Shadow-size, which kind of monster might hide under the waves. So seeing that big guys shadow would definitely make me flee XD.

Heh, I've heard of Sunless Sea - how are you liking it? Haha, yes, it seems a rather unfair monster to put in when the odds are already stacked against you :b

Oh, it#s totally awesome in the way it is designed: you have to explore to make enough money, while it will cost you resources all the time. So you need to rebalance them for your favor, and even than it still can be a gambling, as the storytelling holds so many events, plots and forks, that if you'd have to play for weeks to get all potential outcomes if you'd be on your own.
I especially like how they packed some "Statboosts" into the officers, which (mostly) have quite an interesting backstory and just being some tasy sideplots on their own.

If you ever have the chance to lay your hands on, go forward and enjoy it. Experience how unnerving the song of the drownies echoes in the Sea of voices, while only the hummed hymn of Port Carnelia will bring Salvation if you ever dare to sail South...

So yeah: i love that game

Cool, glad to hear it!

that boat is like a snack XD dam, thats one big beast

lol, I know, I feel a bit sorry for him.

((Although, don't get me wrong, I feel sorry for the people on the boat, too :V))

pfff hahahaha XD

Awesome! ^D^

I... have something in mind of a giant sea monster of my own to make too... Hopefully it won't be too similar though.. : <

Awesome work as always. ^u^ Though I'm curious... Why do you feel sorry for the leviathan?

Well, no worries :) It's not like mine is terribly original - I was mostly going for an "ancient placoderm meets plated sea dragon" look.

I feel sorry for him because his size means most of his available food is basically all crumb-sized for him :b He must be hungry pretty much all the time :b

Awwwwwww Poor big guy... He's just starving. :<

Kinda reminds me of the time I drew an oceanic leviathan. How old was that ... hmm, 2008? Nope, 2005 WOW TEN YEARS AGO WTF https://www.furaffinity.net/full/757147/

I really like it - the dark, shadowy form that both establishes its size but leaves much of it "formlessly" mysterious, just shadow. Well done!

That's actually one of the things I didn't like about some leviathan pictures I've seen - they were too clear, just the thing sitting out being visible, and it starts losing some of its massive scale and that "fearsome mystery of the deep ocean" feel if you paint all of it entirely clearly. The art director wanted the image to be full body originally, but I did my best to "hint" at the body without just literally showing the entire thing.

So yeah, I appreciate the design choices you made for it, even if it was made awhile back ;)

Leviathan is one of my favourite mythical creatures. This turned out so well! :)

Awesome, I'm glad to hear it!

I'm upset I missed this one on my feed >_> it's amazaball lol. And every person who uses levi needs to hire you now. Like seriously lol.

Haha, thanks a lot! <333 How'd you miss it? Just didn't show up, or eye glazed over it?

It did not show up le rawr lol.

Ah, weird :b

That is just terrifying.

I kept thinking about this kind of stuff when I went on that cruise way back when.

lol, yuuuuuup. You're staring out at the ocean over the waves, everyone else is enjoying the natural beauty or whatever, and you're just thinking, "Oh fuck, I wonder how many sea monsters there are underneath us in the darkness RIGHT NOW..."

I thought it's Charybdis, though.

It could be, I suppose - charybdis, leviathan, and scylla are all giant sea monsters, except leviathan comes from the Bible and the others come from Greek mythology :)

Scylla was nowhere as gargantuan, I suppose.

Holy crap those jaws! and the rest of it is hidden under the dark of the sea. I play dragon, obvious by my profile pic, lol, and even he'd stay away from that thing and he's a demi-god!

Haha, yeah, this guy doesn't mess around :b X3

nope, but i doubt my RP version of my dragons' city destroying attacks could tickle that beast, fuck all the more reason to avoid open oceans for him if that's lurking about. still though. love the art work and you cought the scale for one of those bad boys perfectly. can't wait to see what you do with metallic dragons.

Thank you very much :)

Afraid we're not doing the traditional metallic dragons, although the one I did today (posting tomorrow) is pretty close to gold in appearance ;)

Even finding this in the Creature Compendium still sends shivers down my spine, plus that lore. I recall the first time I seen the thumbnail, I thought "Oh man, those birds are about to~ HOLY CRAP!"
Love the art and I'm glad I got my copies, now to just get my other friends to agree to a campaign lol

Haha, thank you so much for the support :D

Not a problem! :D
Love all the art you did for the books, it's fantastic! Definitely what drove me to get them and I'm glad I did and could support your work in some way ^w^

<333