I'm not a huge fan of this one design trend when comes to dragons and fantasy of 'make it realistic' instead of believable. Everything has to be grey, dirty, dragons just having lizard or modern reconstruction faces slapped on without mixing many more animals, sometimes without ornaments and so on - ThreadSky

kinseviing.bsky.social • 40 days ago

I'm not a huge fan of this one design trend when comes to dragons and fantasy of 'make it realistic' instead of believable. Everything has to be grey, dirty, dragons just having lizard or modern reconstruction faces slapped on without mixing many more animals, sometimes without ornaments and so on

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kinseviing.bsky.social•40 days ago

Relies too much on 1: a period of history that never existed, we never had a grey medieval era it was pretty colorful and 2: people simply not know what an allosaurus looks like, it's so jarring when you look at a dragon and is like aight thats just a monitor lizard/dino.

kinseviing.bsky.social•40 days ago

More importantly: misses the point of Fantasy. Fantasy should not have realism as a priority because that's anathema it should have being BELIVEABLE as priority. Make it whimsy, make it colorful make it a feast for the eyes be it dark and scary or bright and awe-inducing.

kinseviing.bsky.social•40 days ago

Show me how people live, how dragons work, a solid system of magic or a more free formed one, make it LIVED ON. Make it Beliveable. Just... dont make me see it and think ah so this is 'fantasy for people who hate fantasy and think grey=mature'

flamingskia.bsky.social•40 days ago

especially since if you wanted "realistic" dragons, we literally already had Yi Qi as the most well known example of a "real life wyvern" dinosaur, or even just the spinosaurs. Reality *is* full of whimsy on its own, and yet people who refuse to look at it or be inspired by it in a non boring way

kinseviing.bsky.social•40 days ago

the problem is that they just copy paste the animal's face without adding anything more, give it interesting new colors and patterns, play with the anatomy, get inspired by different creatures, add until it has an unique personality, there are many good examples

flamingskia.bsky.social•40 days ago

i absolutely agree there. Especially with creatures like dragons it's so easy to make them unique

flamingskia.bsky.social•40 days ago

worded it weird but I'm saying that there's so much to be inspired by in real life too, yet people will default to just. Grey and scaly.

laikalgagarin.bsky.social•40 days ago

and like if you want "realism" there are plenty of lizards and reptiles that are like

very colorful!? Not every lizard looks like an alligator or komodo, you have some that are like bright red or blue, have patterns on them like snakes do!

kinseviing.bsky.social•40 days ago

yeah, just dont like copy paste the exact same pattern or mix two-three ideas and you already have a very original looking fella

thebronzedragon.bsky.social•40 days ago

People who claim its 'not realistic' have never learned anything about the platypus; a very real animal with some serious....quirks. Or how about those spiders that lactate?

Life is a myriad of combinations that we still haven't mapped out. And that is just on this planet.

warmred.bsky.social•40 days ago

I love unsaturated "boring" dragons as long as they are adequately structurally appealing. Lack of bright, strong colours makes you focus on the texture of all parts of their scaled body, scale patterns, shapes of spikes and horns.

kinseviing.bsky.social•40 days ago

I know what you mean, tho it just doesn't compel me, even a white, brown or grey dragon can be colorful and doesn't need to be saturated is about the lightning, problem is most of these dull dragons just tend to be in already boring dull looking places with barely any color and is sad to me

warmred.bsky.social•40 days ago

You start to comprehend the shapes, appreciate the plated mosaic spreading across their body. You begin to notice those little scratches, scars, thickness and hardness of scales. The marks of time. It emphasises the age and massiveness of a dragon. Making them look so ferociously awe-inspiring.

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