not going to name names but a lot of the non humanoid alien designs people bring up as the most interesting and well designed ever are often just "wayne barlow if his stuff was dead boring"
i'm not talking about his concept art for avatar i'm talking about the stuff from expedition etc
I love Barlowe’s aliens! They’re not the most biologically plausible, but they are nonetheless evocative. Perhaps my favorite is the Emperor Sea Strider
The planet all these aliens are from, Darwin IV, has one large body of water, the Amoebic Sea. Most of the rest evaporated during a past aridification event, and this sea survived because a supercolony of microbes and plankton adapted to hold in as much of the water as they could, so now the entire sea’s worth of water is locked away within it. So naturally something evolves to feed on that. The sea strider walks along the surface of the Amoebic Sea, taking bites out of the microbe colony with mouths located on its feet. With such an easily accessible and limitless supply of food, the sea striders can grow large, the adults being hundreds of feet tall!
like, there’s a whole herd of the cow-sized littoralope sheltering in that thing’s skull!
Is any of this plausible? not really, but is it cool and interesting to think about? you bet!
Hell, bringing it around to the original point (kinda) his work on Avatar is a good example of ‘Barlowe if his stuff were boring.’ Like, there’s hints of his influence in the creatures, but it’s pretty obvious someone higher up had a list of animals they needed for the movie and told him 'but make it alien’
Like, these are just a horse, a panther, and a whale but with some extra bits to look just alien enough, and they are boring because of it! It’s kind of hard to believe they’re from the same guy who done these
Barlowe’s aliens may not be the most plausible, but at least he’s being interesting with the implausibility
justgoji