Okay, not looking TOO bad...I'm not an Aurleon fan, but I was worrying for a friend of mine.

I'm quite intrigued with the design and am looking forward to seeing them finished and I love the females hovering position... However I do agree with the many others in that the females look... off. The long necks are fine, but her chest just looks way too tiny. For a bird she just doesn't seem to have enough muscle.

Interesting, though the male still looks rather clumsy. Might have been better to have him with his head and neck down, just above the ground, like a hissing gander, wings half folded.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=image+of+a+hissing+male+goose&view=detailv2&&id=495E4B548278D794AC21B0D979207BBDA775E753&selectedIndex=4&ccid=d6UzNjl%2f&simid=608014078104896112&thid=JN.UZnFS97KLHWlqnoAN18v7w

and possibly


https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=image+of+a+hissing+male+goose&view=detailv2&&id=495E4B548278D794AC21C31E9F9F59C728DC4044&selectedIndex=50&ccid=BOqyVbcP&simid=608012630704525293&thid=JN.TYQp%2bvtpk%2bOHAGQANEpZ8Q

and this for a head position

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01905/goose_1905334c.jpg

This is an adult swan in attack formation. http://www.peterloud.co.uk/photos/MK/Wildlife/Swan-Goose_2977_Adj-w768.jpg

I love it! Now it's easier to tell male and female apart when I'm out going Aurleon hunting.

Something about the female aurleons' (both mature and hatchling) neck angles and lengths are really weird to me. They dont look natural and rather contorted. Body proportions are also awkward, especially the female one; female one looks like she is alllll neck and no body (as in, her chest/abdomen area has no volume to the point it just looks like an elongation of her neck. Thus she looks basically 70% neck and no body mass elsewhere).

Regarding the hatchlings, I have no clue what's going on with them. The neck is about half of their body size, which looks very unnatural (once again, severely lack body mass elsewhere)

Tails, they look a lot softer and flowy-er on this new version, and I like them very much. Unfortunately I cant say the same with rest of the feather artwork; they look closer to scales than soft feathers (unless that was the goal, which in that case, nice work!)

Overall, to be honest, I dont like it compared to the original. The artwork looks less sophisticated and I'd believe it if this preview design was the "older" version and current version is the "revamped" version.

But I wont mind that much if we stuck with the preview design; not a fan of aurleons anyways xD

Wow, they're awesome! Love them!

From a swan 2 a tengu

Ok: I love the overall new look. less goose, more swan, and very pretty. Love the postion the female is in.

Although i must agree, the adult female looks too thin around the chest.

Also: i think the babies should be... poofier, like most baby birds, all poofy, and snuggly, and cute.

IMHO: the babies look kinda evil, lol.

OMG!!!!!!!!!!! This revamp is soooooo pretty! I might end up loving auroleans more than i do NIXIS!!

Very nice! I love the female and hatchlings, but I feel like the male is super close to the original and looks a lot less dynamic.

I noticed the foot in the air and I started thinking about different bird poses, and I think maybe the male might look better if the wings were curved just a bit forward instead of standing straight out behind him.

Kinda like this:




Edit: As for the female, I think with that pose, it looks just fine. Maybe compared to the more flat pose of the male, she looks skinny, whereas the male still looks chunky.

I imagine the aurelion species to be a fenghuang (Basically a chinese swan phoenix rooster thing), and so it would have the lean-ness of a swan, and the huge wingspan of a phoenix.

The female, with her pose, is smaller than the male, but to me that's more of a positioning thing, to show off her large wingspan, and I think if the male was redrawn a bit to be more dynamic and less flat, they would both match, and together their sizes wouldn't look so drastically different.

Only change I'd go with for the female is to tilt her head to give her more of a 3/4th view, like the rest of her body.


Third edit's a charm! Hope it's ok but I did a bit of redlining to better show what I'm talking about :O



I redid the wings to show what I was talking about, fixed a bit of the female's fluff and musculature like a lot of people wanted, and added some quick fluff for those who didn't like the raptor-y look of the chicks.