Anatomy of Oorieu

© VaraAnn


[link] Here are some sketches of Oorieu. There are two; the top one shows Oorieu walking on a beach and the second is a river Oorieu, still in progress.

NOTE I plan to add onto this or draw another reference explaining things about him, about how he hunts at depth and how he walks on land

I'm submitting this now because I've been itching to submit it for a couple of weeks now, I was trying to get everything in order with this. Oorieu is a deep sea dragon.

Anatomy description
For Oorieu to swim comfortably, I designed certain things about him to adapt to water. One: I greatly reduced the length of the humerus compared to a wyvern, because Oorieu’s arms stay at his sides most or all the time. It allows him to swim a lot easier without having to bring his entire arms forward to propel himself through the water, mainly because it is difficult to do, it would slow you down, and tire the arm muscles a lot faster. Two: I gave him small legs because he spends most or all of his time in the water, but he can use his wrists to walk on, on land. Three: To make catching prey at his deepest range of depth interesting/possible, 3500 ft, I gave Oorieu a lure that has a thin band of muscle that allows him to have control over it, not letting the water current move it while he is hunting. The muscle is attached right underneath the bottom jaw. Four: I put skin over his horns to protect them from the icy waters of the deep. Five: I gave him a overall coverage of fat to keep him relatively warm in the water. I added thicker bands of fat for insulation and padding, such the fat on the back and the wrists, respectively.
Those are most or all of the anatomical adaptions that I can think of. To me, I think these anatomy diagrams look physical possible, except the lure.

Sources and Info on design
[link] is an awesome website that easily informed me of the creatures of the deep. From there, I was able to see what animals live at what depth, learning how to base my design on this info. In the ID flash animation, I took/learned from that: I wanted to not focus on the deepest of creatures, but somewhere on the top of the deep, in between the twilight and midnight zones of the deep; I wanted to base my design on something shark-like, something with form and mass to it, such as the oarfish, sixgill shark, whale, and coelacanth. Based on the average depths that these creatures live in, I wanted Oorieu to be able to go down to about 3500 feet, an area where some bioluminescence can be used for hunting.
[link] An Oarfish is the fish I that to be the most inspiring for Oorieu’s coloring and theme. After some other research, I found that most deep sea creatures are red or black, so I made Oorieu colors similar.
[link] I looked up this website because I wanted to base Oorieu on a seal/shark, not angular fish that are very small. For Oorieus anatomy, I based in on seals, animals that can dive to the deep sea, the same range of depth as Oorieu. I also learned many physical adaptions seal do for diving in the deep.
Here is a list of a seal’s ability to dive in the deep sea.
A. Hold and maintain low oxygen levels during a dive
1. Turn off shivering
2. Allow entire body to chill down in water, close to hypothermia
3. Allow the brain’s temp to drop by 5 degrees to prevent hypoxia
B. Fat


© VaraAnn