Scud Terrestrial Animals (Patreon)

More world building stuff for the scud short story. I based the jaw structure for these fellows on the scud fish I'd already drawn, which have the earth fish jaw structure but flipped upside down.

The (non digital) writing system for the researcher's culture revolves around punching holes to form letters on a sheet of paper. Dye and pigment based marks are prone to leeching away underwater, and book pages having holes gives them the added bonus of being less resistant to being turned in a thick fluid medium.

The tools drawn here are one of the many ways to "write" on the go, where you put a page in the page basin and punch it, after passing through the page the blade sinks into the sponge underneath. Pages are usually a different color on the flip side so you can immediately tell if you're trying to read the message backwards.

There’s also an up and coming modern writing method that uses a fast curing wax on a stamp to write, but it's known for smearing and cracking over time. It’s also been criticized because it’s harder to make duplicates with wax than with holes, with holes you just put down multiple sheets of paper and punch through them all. Instant duplication! Wax proponents say it's better for conserving paper, since you can write on both sides of a sheet.