Oni2:Hex Hound

Cyntaurs are multi-purpose biomechanical entities used by META : 4 rather short legs, 2 huge arms. Very versatile, they come in a variety of sizes and with a wide range of additional equipment. They may have 100% biological counterparts.

Pictures coming soon :)

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References

Most of these connections came a posteriori : the core design came pretty much by itself; 100% biological cyntaurs came first, with a few variants, mechanized variants next. The idea of a swift, blurred motion, with incredibly "elegant" envelopes for the Cyntaur's movements even though it consists of rigid parts is relatively new, and especially appealing as far as the graphical support is concerned (rendering that "creepy grace" is much more of a challenge for a 3D modeler/animator than for a 2D artist).

Mechanical Hound

The one and only mech in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, the Mechanical Hound is described in a vague and disturbing way.

The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the fire house. The dim light of one in the morning, the moonlight from the open sky framed through the great window, touched here and there on the brass and copper and the steel of the faintly trembling beast. Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently, its eight legs spidered under it on rubber padded paws.

Nights when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the hound and let loose rats in the fire house areaway. Three seconds later the game was done, the rat caught half across the areaway, gripped in gentle paws while a four-inch hollow steel needle plunged down from the proboscis of the hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine.

[...]The Hound half rose in its kennel and looked at him with green-blue neon light flickering in its suddenly activated eye-bulbs. It growled again, a strange rasping combination of electrical sizzle, a frying sound, a scraping of metal, a turning of cogs that seemed rusty and ancient with suspicion.

[...]He turned and the Mechanical Hound was there. It was half across the lawn, coming from the shadows, moving with such drifting ease that it was like a single solid cloud of black-grey smoke blown at him in silence. It made a single last leap into the air coming down at Montag from a good three feet over his head, its spidered legs reaching, the procaine needle snapping out its single angry tooth. Montag caught it with a bloom of fire, a single wondrous blossom that curled in petals of yellow and blue and orange about the metal dog, clad it in a new covering as it slammed into Montag and threw him ten feet back against the bole of a tree, taking the flame gun with him. He felt it scrabble and seize his leg and stab the needle in for a moment before the fire snapped the Hound up in the air, burst its metal bones at the joints, and blew out its interior in a single flushing of red color like a skyrocket fastened to the street. Montag lay watching the dead-alive thing fiddle the air and die.

[...]Mechanical Hound never fails. Never since its first use in tracking quarry has this incredible invention made a mistake... [a] nose so sensitive the Mechanical Hound can remember and identify ten thousand odor indexes on ten thousand men without resetting!

At other occasions, the narrative highlights the silence it makes when moving (various faint sounds are used to depict that : soft whisper, Autumn leaves, etc). All in all, the descriptions are always very succint : some creepy perfection and efficiency, a state of near-death whenever the Hound doesn't serve its only purpose (to bring death), and movements so swift and silent that they don't seem to qualify as life either. The blurred motion (assimilated to a cloud blown across the ground) is out-of-this-world, as well as the electric glow. The silent motion (because of the rupper padded paws) are somewhat more fit for a feline that for a "hound"; then again, it has 8 legs, so...

Tatari Gami

This is the basic curse in Princess Mononoke. It is first seen on the boar god Nago : the boar is covered in a thick layer of snake-like tendrils/feelers. The resulting creature (a demon) doesn't so much run or gallop as it crawls, in a creepy, shapeless way, and at great speed. The motion and the outline of the creature are blurred by the restless filaments. The eyes of the demon don't seem to to correspond to the eyes of the boar god : they're located up front and wide apart, and glow with a red light.

Later, the great boar god Okkotonushi is also taken over by the curse. San is accidentally trapped in the mass of his Tatari Gami filaments and nearly dies, rescued in extremis by Ashitaka.

Off topic : the Tatari Gami curse eventually kills its bearer, but gives them supernatural strength in the meanwhile (another possible connection with the Daodan symbiosis).