Not to get emotional about my big dumb bird friends but, I love my big dumb bird friends.
If you watch Sunwings in the late afternoon, they will keep their wings outstretched to catch the last sunrays on their solar panels. Then as soon as the sun sets, they panic. They'll frantically flap up towards the west, squawking and flailing, before landing and booting up their shields - they'll repeat this pattern over and over again until dawn. But why raise their shields when there is no active threat? My theory is, they're scared of the dark. Their source of energy and light is gone and their tiny bird brains don't know it'll come back again because they aren't programmed to know about "morning". So they boot up their glowing shields, wasting their power, so they have some light against the dark.
Then the sun rises in the opposite direction and they go "...OH." and turn around to sunbath and recharge again.
[id: two digital art pieces of characters from horizon: forbidden west. the first image has three different drawings featuring aloy, seyka, and beta. aloy is in the oseram artificer outfit with leather armor, bracers, and a leather crop top vest with red cloth; beta is in the nora huntress outfit, with a leather tunic and a light blue bandana around her neck; and seyka is in her usual outfit with a white-and-gray fabric armor and a pink-and-gray scarf. the backgrounds in these pieces are a textured light pink.
the first drawing is an upper body shot of aloy and beta, who are side-by-side, each with an arm slung over the other's shoulder, the sides of their heads touching. aloy has her other hand on her hip and is smiling at beta, though she also looks slightly concerned. beta is ducking her head slightly, her other arm curled into herself as she also smiles, albeit a little anxiously.
the second drawing is of aloy and seyka. aloy is sitting down, her legs outstretched while seyka is laying back against her chest. seyka has an interface open in front of her that she's curiously navigating through, her tongue sticking out. aloy is peering down at her and smiling. they're both slightly blushing.
the final drawing is an upper body shot of aloy and seyka. seyka is grabbing aloy by the shoulders and frantically shaking her, gasping in amazement, her eyes sparkling. aloy looks pretty startled but otherwise isn't fighting against it.
the second image is of a sunwing, a pterosaur-like robot. she is standing, lifting one wing to preen at it. she is simply colored a slightly darker shade than the background. the text reads, "Sunny the Sunwing <3" end id]
guess who had lots of fun making the papercraft sunwing? yep, me!
because of a print issue, I decided to paint it. not the best painter, and it's more inspired by rather than looking exactly like a sunwing, but I think he looks good, my bird boi 💙🦅