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Tiffanie Gray's avatar

I love coming up with aliens as well as unusual traits for advanced humans and "uplifted" animals, and then you start working with AI and robots and there is another whole vista! Once you decide on a trait or traits, you get to think through how that difference would effect their culture or even just their daily lives.

There are a number of Role Playing guide books that have suggestions of various advantages for humans and aliens that might develop over time, such as the GURPS series. But, even so, just reading or watching videos on the "10 Best" or "10 Strangest", etc can give you lots of ideas. And they can work for Fantasy races, too. Why just have elves, dwarves and orcs?

Like the Pistol Shrimp, that can snap it's claw so fast that it creates a cavitation bubble, that super heats to plasma level creating a shock wave that stuns or kills it's prey. So, lots of cool things!

Affinity has a number of videos on YouTube that are very good for learning Publisher. (I use Affinity Publisher for my covers and the covers I do for other authors.) Not just the official channel, but a couple of other "tutorial" channels. Once I got the basics down, I love it WAY more than InDesign which I used previously. You can even use Designer for whole magazines and such, but I haven't gone there, yet. If anyone has questions, they are welcome to message me and I'll answer or direct you to a video answer.

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Harvey Stanbrough's avatar

I glanced over the videos, but I'm more of a "read it and do it" learner. Plus I couldn't find anything in Help, Tutorials, etc. that went straight to using Affinity to create a cover. I wish they'd just continue providing the "old" Serif PagePlus for those who want it. But they won't.

Like I said, I found a book that will allegedly address book covers specifically, so I'll try that.

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Tiffanie Gray's avatar

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7C-ZLjkPbsAyFTu-WEVmHiOpbRcus_0C

I'm not sure if this will show to you. This is my playlist of the best Affinity tutorials that I have used for my work. If it doesn't show (to help everyone) then let me know and I'll paste all the links on a document and email it to you.

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Valerie Emerson's avatar

Aliens are fun! I have a story I wrote recently where the aliens are basically octopuses with dimension-hopping spacecraft.

I hope to get more varied and creative with future aliens if my creative voice decides it’s time for aliens again :)

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Harvey Stanbrough's avatar

I think it shows up all right. It shows one screen labeled "Play All" and they're all listed to the right of it individually. I'll share it in tomorrow's TNDJ.

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Carrie's avatar

I have an idea for my aliens from a dream. When the time comes to write it I'm sure it will be awesome.

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Harvey Stanbrough's avatar

The time is Now. The time is always Now.

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Carrie's avatar

I'm writing a different story right now. But yes!

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Emilia's avatar

I was going to say I haven't written sci fi, but I do have three sci fi short stories. Two have skinny, tall aliens with fur/scales and a dog like face. The third story has a industrial robotic arm which developed a personality.

I drew creatures all the time as a kid and in my teens. I also wrote stories for them, so writing alien characters comes naturally. I did have some critical voice issues for awhile which slowed me down.

A bit of a "cheat" for writing or practicing writing non human characters is shapeshifter characters. The author can write the character with a human mind, but use the animal/creature senses.

I did that first, but I also just like shapeshifter characters.

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Harvey Stanbrough's avatar

Yep, I like shapeshifters too. One of my favorite characters from the Star Trek stuff is Odo, the ultimate shape shifter. In fact, I think I have one in The Journey Home saga.

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Emilia's avatar

I've had two people recommend Star Trek to me because of shapeshifters. I really need to figure out a way to watch the series :D

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Harvey Stanbrough's avatar

Some of the movies are good.

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Carrie's avatar

What do you use the affinity publisher for? What were you using before that? Just trying to figure out if it's something I might need eventually 🤔

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Harvey Stanbrough's avatar

Affinity Publisher (and the suite, including Affinity Photo and Affinity Design) is a low-cost and one-time cost alternative to the Adobe suite. I plan to use it to create book covers. Until now, I used Serif PagePlus, which is no longer supported or available. Affinity rose from Serif's ashes.

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Harvey Stanbrough's avatar

Oh, and Adobe requires a subscription, whereas you buy Affinity products outright and own them, including all upgrades.

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Carrie's avatar

Nice!

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