![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/love1-1024x966.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/love2-1024x966.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/love_sheet.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nI looked into some cryptids that were dolphin-like, and most of them were pretty boring to be honest. A lot of globsters (animal carcasses that wash up on beaches and are misidentified as monsters, extinct animals, etc), and just not a lot of particularly original creatures. Which is to be expected when looking up a monster based on what it probably is in real life! But I did find one that gave me at least a bit of a starting point for our design: the rhinoceros dolphin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/delphinus_rhinoceros.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe rhinoceros dolphin supposedly was spotted in 1820 off the coast of the Sandwich Islands and New South Wales, and was described as a large dolphin (around 9 feet long), with a black and white splotchy patterned skin and two dorsal fins. The men who originally spotted this “species”, Jean Rene Constant Quoy (who was a zoologist and anatomist) and Joseph Paul Gaimard (a naturalist) claimed to have spotted a whole pod of them, about 9 in total. No known cetacean has two dorsal fins (they all either have one or none at all), and despite a few more sightings of dolphins with two dorsal fins over the years, the rhinoceros dolphin is thought to be an old classic–misidentification! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are a few explanations for what Quoy and Gaimard saw that day: a dolphin with a remora stuck on its head, a dolphin exhibiting “somersault” behavior (lying on its side with a flipper and fluke out of the water), or a pod of inbred beaked whales with some genetic mutations among them. I personally believe that the most likely explanation is a pair of beaked whales that appeared as one creature because of perspective! Baby dolphins sticking closely to their mothers’ side is a commonly observed behavior, and could easily explain the strange placement of a second dorsal fin on the animal’s head!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our dolphin Phantom takes a lot of inspiration from this cryptid! I incorporated the two dorsal fins, since those are the most obvious feature of the original rhinoceros dolphins, and converted the big black and white splotches into little heart shaped ones! I also took the liberty of giving our Love starter a more obvious reference to the cryptid’s name with a little rhino horn on its snout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fear Starter \ud83d\ude31<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Fear starter was the second Phantom to be finalized, after our little Joy friend (you can read about the Joy starter here<\/a>)! I actually drew this Phantom up before we’d decided on what emotions we were going to use as types in the game, so its expressions originally weren’t entirely fearful \ud83d\ude05<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/bat2.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/bat_sheet-2048x1289.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nMy idea from the start had been based on another mythological creature: the Dullahan! The Dullahan is a mythological headless horseman (sometimes horsewoman!) from Ireland. They’re pretty dang spooky sounding! They carry a whip made from a human spine, has a hideous grin and rotting flesh, and typically carries their own head under their arm! They are also somewhat commonly portrayed with a ghostly flame coming from the stump where their head once sat \ud83d\udc7b<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/The-Dullahan-696x311-1.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nScary! But our little Fear friend isn’t quite so intimidating. However, they do take a few similarities from the Dullahan. For one, their head is, indeed, detached. Around the stump is a ring of ghostly purple flames (to be animated… soon \ud83d\udc40). It would have been easy to make a bat-like creature draw from vampire mythos, but I like to make things hard for myself \ud83d\ude43<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Thanks for reading! These creatures and myths have been really fun to research! Congratulations for reading this far, and I hope you have an awesome day \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Heya! Sera here! Devblog time! So! Today I’m going to be chatting about the Love starter and Fear starter! By the way, the order in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","tag-concept-art"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276,"href":"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions\/276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinedrakegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}