Creating creatures

#1
Creating my world and writing the story along with the background information I need so that I can better envision my world. I find myself at a lost with creating creatures. For example if my Mc is about to sit down and have a meal I dont want to be like he ate some roast duck. Yet my mind is stuck on trying to figure out how to make 'duck' become a fantasy creature.  Help... is there any websites or interesting methods to help me come up with new and exotic creatures and beast so that I can develop my world and not just have to use real life creatures in my story like duck, chicken, cow and so on.

RE: Creating creatures

#2
'Archeto' pid='446535' dateline='1449945819' Wrote: When I write my story(Evolve), Which is about a world of only beasts. I also find it quite difficult, I would compare it to finding good names for main characters. What I simply do is pick an aimal or creature and and add a characteristic that would make it different form others. For example, in my story I have beasts like: Albino Wind Hawk, Black Silver Wolf, Halo Wing Golden Dragon, Cloudy Mane River Lion and plenty more. Really just think of a creature and add things to the name, but make sure the animal follows the characteristic the name gives it, I guess. I mean this is how I do it, and Im pretty sure Other people have diferent Ideas. Sorry if my english is not that good. Hope it helped.


No your english is fine for me at least, and this did help I will try it out and see what I can come up with. Do you do same thing when making up dishes for mc to eat?

RE: Creating creatures

#3
Think of an animal, then place it in an impossible environment for it to live in. What sort of adaptions could you add to it to allow it to survive there? Can these adapted parts be eaten? How so?

Like imagine a cat at the bottom of the sea. It would need some sort of organ to breathe there and something to tread the water. So it might have gills and a fin or webbed toes added to it. Then bam you can have crap like Sea Cat Fin Soup, Filleted Sea Cat steak, Sea Cat Chips (short for fried Sea Cat Webbed toes).

Names don't need to be terribly creative, just throw in the terrain, maybe something unique about them, maybe a random name that's actually the name of the guy who discovered it, etc. Don't have to be real animals either, can throw in mythical creature names too and alter some parts.

Foods are simply trying to find a way to cook it or prepare it, just need to look up stuff. Like soft parts of animals can be fried to make a chip like food like pig ears. You can make pretty much any type of meat into a soup or stew alongside weird veggies.

RE: Creating creatures

#4
'Archeto' pid='446564' dateline='1449947809' Wrote:
'oscblade' pid='446556' dateline='1449947452' Wrote:
'Archeto' pid='446535' dateline='1449945819' Wrote: When I write my story(Evolve), Which is about a world of only beasts. I also find it quite difficult, I would compare it to finding good names for main characters. What I simply do is pick an aimal or creature and and add a characteristic that would make it different form others. For example, in my story I have beasts like: Albino Wind Hawk, Black Silver Wolf, Halo Wing Golden Dragon, Cloudy Mane River Lion and plenty more. Really just think of a creature and add things to the name, but make sure the animal follows the characteristic the name gives it, I guess. I mean this is how I do it, and Im pretty sure Other people have diferent Ideas. Sorry if my english is not that good. Hope it helped.


No your english is fine for me at least, and this did help I will try it out and see what I can come up with. Do you do same thing when making up dishes for mc to eat?

The food part I havent done anything with it as of yet, I apologise. Maybe someone else can help out with that. But if it does come up in my story, Ill take the name of the animal that is comes froom and add the food tyme. Like Green Tailed Bird Omelet, or an Iron Back Boar Stake. I dont know, I havent thought of this much.


Cool thanks for the help.


'Vocaloid' pid='446665' dateline='1449956846' Wrote: Think of an animal, then place it in an impossible environment for it to live in. What sort of adaptions could you add to it to allow it to survive there? Can these adapted parts be eaten? How so?

Like imagine a cat at the bottom of the sea. It would need some sort of organ to breathe there and something to tread the water. So it might have gills and a fin or webbed toes added to it. Then bam you can have crap like Sea Cat Fin Soup, Filleted Sea Cat steak, Sea Cat Chips (short for fried Sea Cat Webbed toes).

Names don't need to be terribly creative, just throw in the terrain, maybe something unique about them, maybe a random name that's actually the name of the guy who discovered it,  etc. Don't have to be real animals either, can throw in mythical creature names too and alter some parts.

Foods are simply trying to find a way to cook it or prepare it, just need to look up stuff. Like soft parts of animals can be fried to make a chip like food like pig ears. You can make pretty much any type of meat into a soup or stew alongside weird veggies.


Thanks this helps me out alot I wil defiently try this. What I did in my curent chapter was "they ate roasted meat from a purple furred Ox." However  next time I will think of the evironment and try to make something up.

RE: Creating creatures

#5
Do note that long names, aka anything longer than 2 words for an animal will often be shortened, so something like a purple furred mountain ox or whatever would be referred to as just a purple ox by most. Keep the full name in mind but in casual conversation a shortened version will be used most of the time.

RE: Creating creatures

#6
'Vocaloid' pid='446745' dateline='1449961744' Wrote: Do note that long names, aka anything longer than 2 words for an animal will often be shortened, so something like a purple furred mountain ox or whatever would be referred to as just a purple ox by most. Keep the full name in mind but in casual conversation a shortened version will be used most of the time.

Makes since will keep that in mind.

RE: Creating creatures

#7
'Archeto' pid='446535' dateline='1449945819' Wrote: When I write my story(Evolve), Which is about a world of only beasts. I also find it quite difficult, I would compare it to finding good names for main characters. What I simply do is pick an animal or creature and and add a characteristic that would make it different form others. For example, in my story I have beasts like: Albino Wind Hawk, Black Silver Wolf, Halo Wing Golden Dragon, Cloudy Mane River Lion and plenty more. Really just think of a creature and add things to the name, but make sure the animal follows the characteristic the name gives it, I guess. I mean this is how I do it, and I'm pretty sure Other people have different Ideas. Sorry if my English is not that good. Hope it helped.

I hate when people do this. Your names seem somewhat 'normal', though long for my taste. But usually a lot of authors now try to use stuff like 'Blue Wind Empire', (Obviously from Against The Gods or in short ATG) while I can understand when the authors put words in the original language together without the words/signs themselves not having any proper meaning as such, but does end up as word play or simply sounds good in that case. I can not understand why the translators, or those inspired by these kind of stories use the same naming style if they are writing their story in English. Seriously, how can Wind be Blue? It just feels like someone put 2 random words together. If you want to translate or use these kind of naming conventions, why not Bluewind Empire, or Bluvind Empire? It would still 'sound' the same, but the meaning that should be conveyed is a lot better with the letter then the one first mentioned above.

Same goes for your animal names, why would someone call a Dragon "halo wing golden dragon". I can understand that the dragon is yellow, or golden if you will, but what about the Halo Wing? It got wings? That should be in the name? There is a wide description of the word 'dragon' but most of them have wings one way or another. So why put the word in the name of the species? Does that mean dragons usually do not have wings in your fictional world? It makes things confusing, and in most cases is meaningless as well, which is the worse thing of the two. Not to mention the Halo thing. No clue what that should be.

Same goes for 'Black Silver Wolf'. Is it black or silver? Both? In what way? Stripes? Dots? Upper body silver, lower body black? Or maybe a mix like a penguins? Maybe it should be a darker shade of silver? In that case, why not dark silver wolf instead of black? And if so,why use a metal and change brightness, why not Darkgrey Wolf? A lot more people should know what dark grey is than dark silver. The names should describe the creature in question, not make it harder to guess what it is.
“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.” - Winston S. Churchill

RE: Creating creatures

#8
I always wondered how the names for some things get created like that. Reading a translated LN/WN/internet fiction is understandable but if you're making a "purple flying winged colossal ferret" for example, that's simply way too wordy for a name and makes itself a bit redundant. That one could be truncated to "Flying Ferret" and the rest could be inserted into a description instead... unless you intend to make the extremely long and descriptive names one of your running jokes. See below:

Quote:Hey, Bob. What happened to your purple flying winged colossal ferret, Fred?

Oh, I made it into purple flying winged colossal ferret stew last winter. It was so big that it fed the whole village for a week, saving us from famine. Fred, you shall be remembered for your sacrifice.

OR

Quote:The flying ferret is indigenous to the tropical forests common in the eastern continent. Large in stature, they seem to defy gravity as they fly from tree top to treetop with a membrane stretched between their fore and rear legs. Their typical diet consists of both nuts and any creature smaller than them; this includes humans. The flying ferret is easily identifiable they their 3 meter stature and purple pelts along with the territorial marks they leave in their territory so it should be fairly easy to avoid wandering into flying ferret territory for the moderately knowledgeable.
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RE: Creating creatures

#11
'Archeto' pid='458968' dateline='1450786702' Wrote: Quite Simple, The halo Wing Dragon, have a halo for its wings. Hence the name ¨Helo Wing Dragon¨ Pretty self-explanatory to be honest. The same goes for Black Silver Wolf. They are wolves made out of Silver that happened to be black, -_- I don't see what is so hard in using brain power to understand these names. But then again I quite understand your Opinion and I respect it.
That's exactly the problem, it isn't simple. English is a highly subjective language in both its execution and interpretation.

Ex: Let's eat grandma.
VS
Let's eat, grandma.

The first reads as saying "let us eat grandma" as in, we shall have our dear old granny for a meal (granny IS the meal). The second reads as addressing your dear old granny and prompting her for a meal.

As for creature names, it is highly subjective in interpretation due to background knowledge or lack there of. I'm not even going to bother interpreting the halo wing dragon because it just gets too confusing too fast.

Let's look at the black silver wolf. You said that it's a wolf, made of silver, and colored black. What most people would read is a black-silver wolf, as in its coloring is both black and silver and it is a run of the mill flesh and blood animal. If we don't know that your world is inhabited by metal animals, we translate that sort of name to being two colors and an animal, not a color, a type, and an animal.

In short, background information is extremely relevant when making a name for creatures. Without it, a 3D 2D doodle creature reads as either a contradiction incarnate or a living drawing (2D) that has manifested in the 3D plane of existence.
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