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[Supermikhail]

Arrgh... Truly alien alien. You know what you're talking about? We've been trying to make something like that for 3 months now in another thread, and recently slid back into unicellulars! Although, if you're not OCD with science, I might conjure up something bizarre.

Phantom: I'm not sure how it's going to work. All the characters are supposed to take modest parts of the picture, so a true close-up might prove difficult. I can put POW on the tower, but then the guy's going to be from the back, and still not very big and distinct. After all, I've got an Elder God battle and a horde of elves in the same picture.

Also, I think that's enough requests for one picture. There's a nice uniform battle theme through most of the requests - except for a couple of daedra on a tea break - where fantasy races desperately try to survive in a crossfire between elder gods and futuristic mechs. I think that's nice.

Addendum: Oh, good, Barbarossa. I haven't encountered that name before, so I though there's some twist to this obscure (to me) name.

jaked122: Well, we're sort of got a coupe of detached protagonist-like characters - a group of elves at a campfire and daedra on a teabreak. Have you got any specific ideas?

[Soadreqm]

There's a thread for making truly alien aliens? What are your requirements? Many completely mundane animal species are pretty alien from a human point of view. Are they instantly disqualified by virtue of living on Earth?

[Sean Mirrsen]

To extrapolate from Phantom's suggestion - A guy standing on a tower in the middle of the picture, while everything else rages around him, would make for a fairly recognizable "protagonist" picture, even if the relative size of the guy and tower is fairly small.

[Virex]

You just cross out anything you find on earth. Solid materials are right out, so your alien is either gaseous or liquid (liquid is already semi-used because of bacteria). Chemical, thermal and radiative energy sources are all being used on earth, leaving only magnetic and electric energy as possible sources. All sizes under 20 meters and many over them have been present on earth so you're looking at a size in the order of several hundred meters. All movement types are present on earth except for teleporting or wheels. All beings we know are material, so you're looking for something virtual. All beings we know are found in gaseous, solid or liquid environments, so for this one you're looking at a dead vacuum or a plasma environment. All known beings are roughly euclidian so you're looking for something quite different. All beings try to survive, so your alien is morbidly suicidal.
There I think I got most.
Oh wait, they also age backwards and inherent traits of random strangers they have never had contact with, when those random strangers are born. And they do not reproduce, they just appear out of nowhere.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Everything except being suicidal, I guess, since simply not striving to survive would aready be in opposition to the survival instinct. Which would actually make sense if they don't reproduce but simply pop into existence.

So, we're looking for a noneuclidean being of pure electrical energy condensed into a liquid form, living in the vastness of interstellar space, which doesn't have instincts including survival and self-preservation, and does not have a life cycle per se, instead appearing and disappearing at the whims of the universe, which is nevertheless considered an intelligent lifeform. I can easily imagine something like that appearing in a Star Trek episode.

[Supermikhail]

Soadreqm: The third link in my sig. Thread has about 2.01 participants, and the requirements are such that the alien has to have evolved on an alien planet. From a scratch, basically, which makes it boring to most people.

But I'll be picking this alien out of thin air. I wonder if "Alien" aliens are considered humanoid... I guess not, so "not humanoid" is not a very limiting requirement.

Edit: Virex I'm not gonna draw that!

[Virex]

Hey he asked for a truly alien alien so he got a truly alien alien

[Soadreqm]

*words*

A post-singularity species that used to be some kind of animal, but now exists as a giant space fortress in interstellar void. Not quite what you outlined, but the closest I can think.

Soadreqm: The third link in my sig. Thread has about 2.01 participants, and the requirements are such that the alien has to have evolved on an alien planet. From a scratch, basically, which makes it boring to most people.

But I'll be picking this alien out of thin air. I wonder if "Alien" aliens are considered humanoid... I guess not, so "not humanoid" is not a very limiting requirement.

There are too many words and letters! ._. Yeah, I don't think evolving unicellular life forms is my cup of tea.

I'd say the Giger-aliens are mostly human-shaped. Well, the facehuggers weren't. I'd suggest just picking a weird sea animal, such as an octopus or a jellyfish or a lobster, and drawing an environment suit around it. An octopus-operated land diving suit. Think of what a powered deep-sea diving suit would look like if it was designed to move on land by a swimming invertebrate. Probably some kind of water-filled observation dome, carried around on wheels or treads or little legs or something. Like a mars rover with an octopus inside it. Or possibly something shaped roughly like an octopus, a suit that follows the wearer's body more closely and merely provides him with an exoskeleton and additional strength, although I doubt it could move in a manner than an octopus considered natural. Too heavy to crawl. It'd have to walk.

[Phantom]

Well, uh, you could put the smallest requests in the foreground, and everything else in the middle of the picture and the background.

[nbonaparte]

You don't need it to be the antithesis of all life on earth. But you shouldn't be mashing parts together like in Spore or something.

[Supermikhail]

Phantom: Your guy is gonna be in the foreground, but maybe a bit out of focus. That is, compositional focus, not optical.

And fuck. I for some reason confused phoenix with sphinx. That kind of changes everything. I wonder what this bird might be doing on the battlefield .

[forsaken1111]

Phantom: Your guy is gonna be in the foreground, but maybe a bit out of focus. That is, compositional focus, not optical.

And fuck. I for some reason confused phoenix with sphinx. That kind of changes everything. I wonder what this bird might be doing on the battlefield .

It's a Phoenix. It would be BURNING SHIT

[Supermikhail]

Phantom: Your guy is gonna be in the foreground, but maybe a bit out of focus. That is, compositional focus, not optical.

And fuck. I for some reason confused phoenix with sphinx. That kind of changes everything. I wonder what this bird might be doing on the battlefield .

It's a Phoenix. It would be BURNING SHIT

It's a phoenix, not a dragon! I thought.

It's supposed to produce flame only when it "self-destructs", isn't it?

[Vorthon]

@Virex: Yeah, I was thinking of what tvtropes calls a 'starfish alien'. They're still squishy carbon sacks of mostly water (usually, although there could be life which uses a boron-nitrogen substrate with ammonia as a solvent. Or they could be squishy carbon sacks of mostly water mixed with hydrogen peroxide. Or if you want to get really weird, lumps of sapient degenerate matter inhabiting the exterior of a neutron star.)

[forsaken1111]

Phantom: Your guy is gonna be in the foreground, but maybe a bit out of focus. That is, compositional focus, not optical.

And fuck. I for some reason confused phoenix with sphinx. That kind of changes everything. I wonder what this bird might be doing on the battlefield .

It's a Phoenix. It would be BURNING SHIT

It's a phoenix, not a dragon! I thought.

It's supposed to produce flame only when it "self-destructs", isn't it?

Depends on what mythos you subscribe to. Its your phoenix, make him do whatever you want.