Hello there, friends, and welcome to episode 294 of Just the Zoo of Us. This week, I am joined by

Roxy Valdez, who is a digital artist and illustrator who has been working across the medium for

almost 20 years. They have worked on big projects like Angry Birds, Fall Guys, Animal Crossing New

Horizons, and was even the character design lead for Comedy Central's

animated series, Loafy. You may have noticed that this episode is a little extra long. That is because

this episode is a bit different from our usual format, but I am so excited about it, and I think you're

all going to have a great time along with us, especially the sci-fi nerds out there. In the first half of this episode, we talk about speculative evolution.

For those unfamiliar, speculative evolution, which is sometimes called speculative biology,

and can be abbreviated to spec evo or spec bio, is basically a realm of science fiction that explores what-if scenarios

using real-world biology and ecology and evolution.

Roxy tells us about the academic research that goes into developing fictional creatures

for science fiction or fantasy worlds, and we go into detail about their own

amphiterra project, which is an exploration of the wildlife populating and imagined Earth

dominated by amphibians. They share with us some of the really fascinating scientific

concepts that inspired their creations and some insights into the creative process that I think

any science fiction artist or writer or even just a curious fan will really enjoy. Then in the

second half of the episode, we get hands on. Roxy and I teamed up to create our very own

fictional creatures using a really, really fun

interactive dice rolling experiment that they came up with just for us. They also have made

gorgeous illustrations of the creatures that we came up with together that will be shared on our

socials. I have seen them. I'm thrilled about them.

They're really beautiful.

...