The old art for the Ice Hellion species NEEDED re-doing. The poor thing looked like it was some minced beef put on a potato, rolled in hair from the floor of a barbers and then put in the mircrowave for 30 minutes. It also does not help that the fluff for it is very contradictory, some sources say its a flightless bird;
The flightless Ice Hellion birds
whereas this thing -
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Ice_Hellion_(species) is anything but a flightless bird and is more a therapod like dinosaur that's trying to be 'extra'. And then there's the Hellions symbol which looks more like a secretary bird, and there's also art for Ice Hellion units depicting a tusked but squat and fat quadrupedal thing with a beak and tusks. So there's zero consistency.
So with this in mind I contacted Matt Plog about doing a take on the Ice Hellion, we kept the same kinda 'raptor' esque shape (and size, the Veloceraptor of Jurrasic Park fame was only really about the size of a turkey, the Ice Hellion's 40cm tall) but instead of it running on two legs it can move as either a biped or quadruped (which is needed for running on snow and ice) as well as eliminating any raptor like killing claws on the feet. Instead we made the Ice Hellion all about the bite.
I'm sure folks have seen that vid of the Aligator Snapping Turtle biting down on a water melon -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgSurkfqXuI and here its the same, I asked him to model the head somewhat after a Snapper's but the 'problem' is that in all the art, Ice Hellions have these rather pronounced tusks that would get in the way of any bite. So in the fluff write up where i've headcanon expaned on them, the Ice Hellion has a very wide gape when it bites something, and here the tusks are useful because they dig in and gouge whatever they're biting, in addition to the beak acting like some organic bolt cutters.
Add lots of floof because Hector's damn cold, cold weather adaptions like the broad, padded and furry feet to act as snow shoes (not without precident, Canadian Lynx's have something similar) and I think we're a bit closer to something that works better as an animal rather than the hair covered burger potato. Oh and he put in a bit of sexual diamorphism, the female's the one on the right and she's a bit bigger than the males.
Any feedback is most welcome!
