Uh, oh! I think 'we' are the 'mice'!!! by Redfern
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Description
Hey, at least it's not a cat-"girl" this time!
Anybody here ever read Niven? No not David, the actor, Larry, the author of "RingWorld" and the "Known Space" stories within which it is a part. If so, then you may remember a problematic species humans encountered, the Kzinti. Sapient, felinoids, the males weighing a couple of hundred kilos each, their "scream and leap" philosophy of combat ironically backfired when they first met an odd little race of hairless apes from the planet Earth. Noted for their furless, rat-like tails and bat-wing shaped ears, their spaceflight technology was initially superior to that of humans, but they never fathomed these puny primates would have used their "primitive" drive system as a particle beam weapon and so destroy the Kzin's attack cruiser.
I hope to improve the facial design when "GhostofMcbeth" releases his upcoming add-on morph set which will include a couple of dedicated feline shapes, but for the time being, I thought I'd try recreating Niven's popular "rat-cats" using Luthbel's "Lycanthropos" and Gareee's "Night Wolf Plus" morphs. I substituted the included tail geometry for Little_Dragon's "Bushy Tail 2" using the "rat" settings. For the odd, fin-like outer ear membranes, I shrunk the ear geometry into the skull and "parented" the wings of the DAZ Mil' Dragon, scaled down of course, onto the head. Some judicious spinning of selected facial dials and I created, uh, "something" that hopefully looks a tad more feline than canine.
Sincerely,
Bill
Comments (9)
Seaview123
This is a great reminder of Larry Niven's great "Man-Kzinti War" sagas. I always envisioned them as a little more feral looking, but this is a great image all the same.
JOELGLAINE
Smaller eyes,less 'smiley-face' looking and you hit a home-run. I loved Larry Niven's stuff. As such everyone has their own vision of the Kzinti. Except for the tail and ears, your's isn't very close to mine. It's IS a better starting place than any of the other's I have seen,though.
MaPPer
Neat!
Faemike55
I agree! great image of them. If I remember, their fur was a little more orange. Thinking of course 'Speaker to Animals' Now if we can come up with a puppeteer and of course, Louis Wu and Teela Brown...
Cimaira
Wonderful work. Great character.
Biffowitz
I haven't read any of that, but I like the render!
LostinSpaceman
Kinda hard not to see the Kzinti as a more Tigerish looking race when all the book covers of the Man-Kzin Wars series shows them as such but nice image all the same.
Raymar3d
I first got an introduction to the Kzinti in the animated Star Trek episode, "Slaver Weapon" written by Larry Niven, of course, based on his story, "The Soft Weapon" which I read years later. I think the animated Trek episode should have had Lt. M'Ress in it, instead of Uhura, particularly since Spock said to her, "Kzinti females are dumb animals." M'Ress, as a Caitian would have been even less likely to draw the Kzin's attention. Still, it gave Uhura something cool to do in the series. She actually got a lot of opportunities in the TAS, more than the TOS. :) Ken
Redfern
Raymar3d, my experience was similar. I saw the animated adaptation in 1974 and roughly 10 years later I finally read Niven's original short story. I see your about M'Ress' inclusion, but since you have read the original, you may remember it was a human female in that version as well. It appears they were trying to stick as close to the source material as they could. Despite the superficial differences, it's amazing how well it did translate. Spock, being a supposedly pascifistic vegetarian fit very well into the role Nessus had. Chuft-Captain was still shamed by getting wounded by a "cowardly herbivore". Have you ever read Alan Dean Foster's novelization of that pisode? It's printed within the volume originally titled, "Star Trek: Log Ten". "Slaver Weapon" was the only remaining episode to adapt, so to "pad" out the book to a length similar to the earlier releases, Foster included three additional adventures from his own imagination. One of these was a kind of "B" plot, depicting what was happening aboard the Enterprise while Spock, Sulu and Uhura were gone. It seems M'Ress, as well as two other female Caitians, seemingly go psycho and try to seize the ship! In case you have not read it, I won't spoil the surprise as to the "cause" or the "resolution". I'll just say Scotty finds a clever way to save the day. His methods might be ridiculed by people who think it weird to fawn over characters like M'Ress. Sincerely, Bill