#abstract gelert

[problematicperiwinkleplum]

If TNT decided to do a rematch for every failed color from the late 2010's pet color polls, who would you vote for to become canon?

[adobe-outdesign]

Will you review the Maraquan pets? I think Buzz is my favorite based on design, and there are so many really creative/punny ones. Personally, I’ve never liked Wocky.

Maraqua is probably one of Neopets' most distinct lands given that it's, you know, underwater. The idea of making a color that fits with the Atlantis-esq aesthetic just makes logical sense, and the actual designs tend to be pretty cool. I like how there's actual thought put into how [X] Neopet would function if it was adapted to life underwater, with the bubbling pit area vaguely implying it might be a natural mutation (given the amount of "painted" Maraquan pets we see in Maraqua).

Maraquan also didn't do too badly with customization, mostly because they're not compatible with normal clothing anyway so the poses are at least somewhat distinct. That said, it is weird that they changed the poses at all; they already have to have clothing drawn specifically for them, so why force things like fists onto some of them? It's so weird.

Even weirder is the seemingly arbitrary decisions regarding which ones got UC versions; Maraquan Chombys barely changed at all yet somehow got a UC, while Maraquan Zafaras changed drastically but never got a UC. What gives?

(I can't count it on the favorites list because there are too many good still-obtainable Maraquan pets, but shoutout to the unconverted Maraquan Zafara for being one of my favorite Maraquan pets. Shame it's no more.)

Favorite Species:

Gelert: While the unconverted Maraquan Zafara is my all-time favorite Maraquan pet, the Maraquan Gelert is a very close second, and is definitely my fav if we're talking pets that are still obtainable. I love Maraquan pets where the design is just abstract, taking cues from various sea creatures without being a 1:1 parallel of them, and the Gelert is particularly beautiful in this respect. It plays with the Gelert's long ears and tails by making it vaguely eel-ish—adding in a back fin, a few spots, and a lovely green and purple color scheme.

The UC version is particularly gorgeous, having this lovely flow that curves back from the head and leads straight into the curled tail. The converted version is still fine, as it's a fairly accurate recreation all things considered, but the pose is much more awkward (the body suggests an S shape, but the paws and ears are going opposite directions and the chest sticks out too much).

It does, however, at least fix the shading; for some reason the UC Maraquan Gelert has one layer of shading with no highlights or shadows to speak of, which is really weird. (See the above, which is an edit I made years ago that just adds the layers of shading that the actual UC is missing. The lineart should also probably be thinner but I digress.) Anyway, the point is that both are beautiful designs.

Uni: Maraquan Uni are also really beautiful. Similar to a Peophin (arguably too much so, but hey, there's no Maraquan Peophin at the time of writing anyway), they've swapped their legs for a tail and their wings and mane have become fins themselves, with a pretty curved horn and some subtle striping to boot. Even better, the converted version is basically the same as the old art, so there's no difficulty in obtaining one (other than the PB cost, of course).

Lutari: While there are still a lot of great abstract Maraquan designs that I love (Eyrie, Draik, etc.), I have to give a shoutout to the Lutari for being a really great design based off of an obvious animal (in this case, an axolotl). The cream and pink color scheme is lovely, and I love the subtle mottle gradients on its limbs. The multiple sets of ears forming the gills is fantastic, the tail is pretty, the black claws add contrast, and it still reads really clearly as a Lutari despite the animal influence. Really good stuff.

Least Favorite Species:

Kacheek: The Maraquan Kacheek just looks incredibly uncanny to me. The best Maraquan pets are either ambiguous or choose an animal that fits the Neopet, but here they just... took a Kacheek head and slapped it on a goldfish body??? Don't like that at all. The head in isolation isn't terrible and I could see it working on a more Kacheek-ish torso, but this... no. At least it's nicely drawn on a technical level, I suppose?

[limejellyblumaroo]

Neopets. But as fursona types, Standard, Rare, Fantasy, Abstract.

Long post:

Standard Furry (Fit into popular fursona types and mostly “real animals” or interpreted as various real animals)

Lupe, Gelert, Bori  

Aisha, Wocky, Kougra, Acara

Xweetok, Zafara

Rare Furry  (Uncommon fursonas “real animals” or interpreted as real animals)

Cybunny, Usul, Kyrii

Yurble, Lutari,  Ixi

Elephante, Tonu, Kau, Gnorbu

Nimmo, Quiggle, Techo, Krawk

Bruce, Lenny, Pteri, Korbat

Tuskaninny, Flotsam, Jetsam, Koi

Buzz, Ruki

Fantasy Furry 

Peo, Uni, Eyrie

Skeith, Scorchio, shoyru

Draik, Hissi

Chomby, Grarrl

Abstract Furry (???? Interpreted in many ways)

Vandagyre, Ogrin

Jujub, Kiko, Chia

Kacheek, blumaroo, Grundo 

Poogle, Meerca 

Edit: gomenesorry I forgot Acara

[freezeusw]

J’s perspective

As we were creating our work, we decided to make the concept of the piece that each scene was a perspective of each of the characters. For my character J, we decided that the scene about all the characters getting ready to go out to Cardiff and sell the drug ‘Freeze’ would be her perspective. When we first spoke about this scene, we knew that we wanted it to have a lot of abstract movements and not many lines or none at all as we felt that we presented the story better with little lines. We first decided that in this scene there would be a song playing whilst one by one the characters went centre stage and showed the audience them getting ready in some way but after we decided that this scene was going to be J’s perspective we knew that it had to focus more on her. We then changed it so that we still had a song playing but instead of each character coming to the centre, J would stay in the centre and each of the other characters would go to her one by one and help her get ready whilst still showing her relationship with that character. For example, Wolfy does J’s hair badly and J gets annoyed with Wolfy and gestures for her to go away, Baby helps J with her makeup but doesn’t do a good job, Gelert helps J get changed and lastly Llewellyn goes up to J and hugs her from behind and we decided this to show their romantic relationship. The point in creating this piece is that we all include something that we are passionate about and enjoy and as I enjoy dancing, we decided it would be nice to create a little dance for this scene. The song we chose was ‘I Got 5 On It’ by Luniz and Micheal Marshall and as we only had one rehearsal on this scene before the coronavirus the dance I created didn’t bring enough to the scene and I definitely would’ve liked to develop it more because we had a lot of good content and everything needed to be at the same level. This scene then moved into the characters being on the train on their way to Cardiff. We had a few different ideas for this section, first we thought that the characters could look like they’re obviously on drugs and then they would be talking back and forth to each other and commenting on how they look but again we didn't want a lot of dialogue. We then changed the scene to still look like the characters were on drugs but instead of them speaking they would all have different sounds for example a sigh or someone could chew gum and also we would be moving our bodies to show that the train is moving. We also wanted to record people in our class and have them say stuff like ‘ugh look at them’, and this would play over the scene to represent people on the train talking about us. We spoke about some lines being in welsh as the characters are going to Cardiff. When focusing on the movement I did suggest if each of us had a certain movement and a sound we could make some sort of rhythm and just keep repeating it, I saw us standing in a tight group and then each person does their movement one at a time for example someone looking at their watch and then some else stumbling over. The movement and sound would then continue until the audio of the people on the train started, the characters could then have stopped the movements and sounds and just go back into doing a small movement to show the train moving or we could continue doing the specific movement and stop the sounds so the audience would focus on the audio.

- Jade

[problematicperiwinkleplum]

In 2018, a color poll to add new colors, Steampunk, Origami, Toy, and Burlap was held. However, two additional colors were created as candidates but were not in the final poll; Abstract and Action Figure.

What do you guys think? Were we robbed, or did we dodge a bullet?

Proof, of course: https://images.neopets.com/images/pbpoll/y20jan/abstract.png

http://images.neopets.com/images/pbpoll/y20jan/actionfigure.png