A Brief Red Dog Q&A (fool human)

The artist over at Platinum Giraffe asked me a few questions about Red Dog recently and I thought it might be interesting to the other three people who read the blog to see the questions and answers as well. (And no, I am not going to explain the nidus and the vespiary!)

Does he have antennae?

Yes, standard millipede with maybe just a touch of the moth-like feathering to help pick up pheremones.

How does he hold things?

Cilia and chitin hooks (think of the ridges on a preying mantis' front legs.) The cilia are also sticky.

How are his back legs spaced?

Millipede standard, one pair per segment. That's a bunch of legs and they go all the way up. He turns his upper segments upright to use the front legs as arms but every segment has legs.

How does he smell things?

Like most pseudo-insects, he smells very differently from humans. Antennae polyps give him pheremone and veremone access while, like crickets and some other true insects, he also breathes through his knees and has lesser chemical receptors there as well. (Bugs are built WEIRD.)


Double mandibles. Is it one set inside of the other, or one set in front of another?

One set inside the other. An outer, larger set for gripping prey and a smaller inner set that is more beak-like for ripping it into digestable chuncks.

Can he curl up into a ball like a millipede?

Yes although, because his is old and large, not as tightly as a younger and smaller Cillian. As a result, he's more likely to "hunch and bunch" than truly curl up, especially since curling is a defensive posture and Red Dog doesn't really do defense.

Calamity's Child Art 5x5 (part two)

So, this is what I ended up painting. I called it Selous' World (the reference should make sense if you've read the book.)

Now, one of the neat things about the 5x5 canvases is that they are stretched around a wooden frame that is a bit over an inch deep. To a guy that likes to use chapter titles as a way to add content to a book, I thought, why not use the side too? This is the angled view.

Despite my considerable lack of skill, the canvas was, indeed, purchased.