In my story, A Civilised Nation, a prequel science fiction story, Commander Qwatajawa encounters a dangerous arboreal glider known as a vaelisk. The creature appears for only a few pages, but designing this alien creature turned into an interesting experiment in balancing speed, worldbuilding, and visual storytelling.
Letting creatures appear mid-draft
Generally speaking, I usually create concept sketches for my characters well in advance of getting down to writing. I find that the process of illustration greatly aids not only visual description of the characters but unlocks a huge amount of character background details that really enrich the story. But that’s characters. Flora, fauna and technology tends to be another matter. Those things come about during the writing process itself.
This was the case for the vaelisk, an arboreal glider native to the Zurxok homeworld of Maroussia. In the setting of Z-Verse, vaelisk are a highly prized (and, unfortunately, frequently abused) species of winged creatures that Zurxok keep as status symbols. The danger these animals present is part of the allure. Although it’s not mentioned in the story, vaelisk inhabit the vast forests of Maroussia, though habitat loss has decimated their numbers.
Skipping the sketch and going straight to Z-Brush
I began the process for the vaelisk by jumping into Z-Brush right away. This isn’t typical for me; usually, I much prefer to start with a sketch, then a low-poly model in Maya, before I even start touching sculpting tools. However, I knew that I only required one image for my story, and the pose would be basic. Therefore, no rigging was required. What that means in practice is that topology (the edge flow of polygons) wasn’t a major concern.
The vaelisk is described in the text as having sharp teeth, a spiked tail, and a frill around its neck. I was basically on autopilot during sculpting and something draconic was the result. That’s a useful reminder that without a blueprint, and without time for concepting, we reach for familiar archetypes. I think that had I started with a sketch, the result would have pushed things further.
Perfect is the enemy of the good
Having worked in the creative industry as a professional designer for over a decade now, I have seen this play out countless times with other designers and artists (and, yes, myself sometimes, too). I’ll share a brief work story: on one occasion, I worked with a very talented 2D artist who was given the task of redesigning icons for a game.
After three months, only a few icons had been made, all of which were beautiful, none of which were readable on a mobile phone (the device of choice for our players). The task was thrown to me with the urgent command to finish in a week, in time for a major update. I made a set of icons that looked good enough ‘for now’, and they remained in the game for several years afterwards.
In the case of the vaelisk, I knew that I wanted to get this prequel story out into the world, I knew that the vaelisk model only needed to suffice for a single image, and I knew that if I was really bothered by it, I could always return. So, I stuck with the design and textured in Substance Painter before rendering things out.
Texturing and emergent worldbuilding
As often happens, when I create an illustration, worldbuilding lore emerges.
In this case, I gave the vaelisk a mottled, scaled look, one which would enable it to hide among the canopies of its native forests. One can imagine that ancient Zurxok would have had to keep their eyes up in case they were set upon by a descending vaelisk.
Bony growths on its snout and chin aid in stripping bark from trees, which males use to build dens in order to attract females. The fact that Zurxok prize vaelisk as status symbols despite their ecological decline says something uncomfortable about their society. In my series, it’s noted that the Zurxok are enthusiastic terraformers, with the technology to carve up planets to their liking being their crowning achievement.
Although this has allowed the Zurxok to colonise dozens of planets, this process destroys the original ecosystem of the planet. This ugly side to Zurxok expansion is brought up in A Sense for Memory: Part One and is definitely a topic that Xa-Kol, our co-lead, circles around during her story.
What I’d change in the future
I see a lot of opportunities with this design. If this critter were to appear in another story, there are a number of changes I would make. First, I would definitely have to retopologise so that the beast could be rigged. A resculpt would refine those areas of the mesh where I knew the camera wouldn’t be focusing on, like the feet and tail. Overall, however, I was pleased with what I was able to achieve in a day, and the vaelisk itself provides a humorous action beat in the story.
Read the xenofiction story featuring the vaelisk
A Civilised Nation is free to read right here on my website.
