Twocupsofsugar - TwoCupsofSugar

Haphazardly put together recap of my favorite artwork - 2024

Not as much art as i wanted to get done, but significantly more than I've ever done in, well years actually. I made this blog in 2018, and never really took art seriously until this year. I had actually considered quitting it all together a few years ago (general depression and lack of motivation), but found myself constantly wishing to write stories and making comics again but my skill was never in the place I wanted it to be.

Well this year, i got the guts to really get it together and try to improve and while its been difficult considering my lack of time nowadays (and my overall wish that i did it sooner) I'm happy that I started now rather than never.

There's still a lot I want to work on, skill and technique wise but I've discovered the mediums I like to work with, where i want my art to be skill wise, and what i need to do to get there. So for once, I have a sense of direction and even an action plan of sorts. And I've done the thing I initially set out to do, learn to draw robots (there's a long story in here but way too long for this post)

Anyway cheers to 2025, and hopefully nothing world shattering happens and another year of trying to Git Gud.

So long 2024, see y'all 2025, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

Decided to do a slight redesign of my greylings i posted a long while back i want to do a big post on all of the "genetically modified humans" (i.e my excuse for humanoid aliens, as while I prefer non-humanoid aliens i still like the classic humanoid ones too) in my setting, I've been looking at a lot of fashion as of lately and was enamored by the work of balmain fall 2022, This outfit is fairly conventional but i really want clothing styles in union station to really weird and out there.

Inspiration was pretty much from these outfits

I'm going to try and find away to shoehorn these dresses in there some where, especially the one on the right

speed painting early character concepts

Sketch WIP

Imsee Recorder with adopted child

I've been thinking a little bit how the Imsee relate to their intelligent constructs. I'm a bit hesitant to call them robots since I think its a very human-centric term that probably doesn't translate well to other sophonts. The idea of the mechanical servant, just wasn't really prevalent among their kind and they had more of a tendency to view technology as either tools or direct extensions of themselves. Mix that in with their propensity to cybernetics and you essentially have a species who finds the concept of an intelligent machine kind of absurd.

So why do they have sapient robots anyway? , you may ask. Well Imsee have incredibly long and well detailed memories and due to the nature of their language can communicate amongst their kind much quicker and in far greater detail than humans. And so, for a long time, most information was retained though oral traditions and the death of a storyteller or a record keeper was a pretty big deal. For the Imsee, intelligent machines were not workers but instead a unique way retain life past death. Its kind of a soma situation, recorders retain the memories of Imsee who've pasted on, and are seen as an aspect of the individual which created them.

This is part of my ME:A au universe, I’m calling it ME:Singularity at the moment. The basic gist is that the Andromeda Galaxy has pre-established alien societies that are the main governing power in the Andromeda, much like the milky way, but strange and foreign by ME standards.

This is the Omaridyne, they are one of the three original founders of the Galactic Commune, the largest political and governing body in the Andromeda Galaxy. There closes earth analogs are echinoderms or sea cucumbers. The Omaridyne evolved on a moon orbiting the gas giant Oli and as a result, started space exploration significantly earlier due to the close proximity of Oli’s habitable moons. They would later have first contact with the Tyreem and found the Galactic Commune. 

The Omaridyne are the only species in the galaxy that have three biological sexes. These are male, female, and namlee. Their third sex, the namlee allows them to produce hybrid offspring with other levo-amino acid species. In addition, Omaridyne also changes their sex based on the availability of suitable mates. 

There’s a lot more about the Omaridyne but I’ll continue it in a later post

A purple space dragon partially inspired by sea-slugs. I wanted to get some more practice using colors Ii don’t normally use. 

I decided to color this really old piece of lineart, from like years ago. Might work on it a bit more in the future, or maybe not but either way, I'm done messing with it for now.

Alright, I've sorta only talked about humans a little bit in my world-building project union-station (working name considering changing it) but earthlings are kinda rare in space, mostly because they don't travel or migrate much. Most humans you'll see wondering the known galaxy are their genetically modified descendants. (I've taken to calling them colonists). Chimeras, are one such group. They're from a tropical world called Amazon (named after the then long gone amazon rainforest). Life on amazon had a higher degree of biological compatibility than on other alien planets, and a unique domain of life which was capable of modifying their own genome by integrating the genes of other organism. So when the first human colonists came to amazon, they opted to splice their genetics with some of the fauna there.

Genetically chimeras are a bit more biologically unstable than other old era colonists in that they're prone to some rather interesting mutations with the most common being the duplication of organs and other body parts. This amazonian is sporting an extra set of arms, which is a fairly common mutation among the population.

Afternoon sketches

The Dram

A slight redesign of one of an older design, in color this time. These are the Dram, a mammal-like sophonts from an very earth like planet. On the left is a female and the right a male. They're the closets your going to get to a "humanoid" alien in the known galaxy.

Some bits on Biology

I call them mammal like but their not like placental mammals, they're really more akin to marsupials and monotremes in that young are hatched very underdeveloped and are nurtured in a pouch. While not depicted accurately here male dram are considerably larger than their female counterparts, and are around 2x times their size on average. They're feathers are display features which are used to express mood, and in mate selection. Oh and they're also venomous, they've got two fangs in their mandibles which in ancient times they'd use on their prey. They're aren't exactly immune to their own venom, but they are resistant to it.

The average global temperature on the dram home-world is considerably cooler than earth is while they are capable of regulating their own body temperature they do terribly in temps greater than 80 degrees fahrenheit, and often find room temp uncomfortable. When working in environments of other sophonts they tend to wear refrigerated chill suits.

Some bits on Culture

Dram family structures are similar to lions, so polygamy is the norm and their societies tend to be matriarchal. Their home-world is currently in its glacial maximum stage of their ice age so the northern hemisphere is largely covered in permanent ice sheets. Due to over industrialization by nations in the south their planet is unfortunately dealing with gradual global warming. The effects of which were much more intense and immediate due to their planets larger axial tilt than that of earth, so as you can imagine they're dealing with a lot of issues as a result. They were contacted by aliens , ~20 years ago and interacting with the wider galaxy has only added to their list of political and socio-economic problems.

In terms of tech, they're a little more advanced in some aspects and behind in others but they've got a comparable tech level to 21th century humans. (so us right now!) And they've already made crewed missions to other neighboring planets in their star system.

I really like the idea of the sort of role reversal, where instead of humans getting contacted by aliens its the other way around. Like I can imagine the dram equivalent of SETI discovering human ship or message and all the shenanigans that would cause. Would be a cool story i think.