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Alien Art Tip 2: Copycat

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Plagiarism can be a serious crime but many great ideas came from other people's work or mistakes. Thankfully, Mother Nature is not obsessed with lawsuits so it's alright to steal from her work. But if you want credibility for your alien world, you will have a hard time if all of your animals look common as cattle or maple trees.

But you can get away with rare creatures or plants that don't stand out very well. For example this random plant that I have never heard of that grows in the Manitoban grasslands.

You can stop there, but you can also use your finding as the root for something stranger. When creating the creature on paper, modify its design so that it looks more alien, especially like the creatures you have already established for your world. You can make the plant 100 times taller or make it grow glowing cyan bulbs. Maybe instead of sap it bleeds a sticky yolk like substance.

On the other hand, making the life forms you create slightly similar to Earth's life forms can make them as equally intriguing. An example are my Hexabisons from Midgard, six legged horned furry animals with large beaks to chow down on Algae. Clearly I was inspired by American Bisons: these animals move in large herds in open areas, vegetarians, have horns as weapons and are hunted for their meat. The differences are that they have snake pitts, six legs and they occasionally visit forests for grazing and cover.
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Sciocont's avatar
I believe that's Ironweed.