#look at my new sparkledog. i love her

[knifegremliin]

WELCOME BACK TO 2010!

[pleb-the-original]

Day 5: MS Paint

(Ok so this one is actually really special and honestly my favorite creation so far. I went with the sparkledog route since it fit the idea of something really garish. I used some generators to create her, but after writing her story I fell in love. I dunno what it is but once I wrote her entry she just stayed in my mind. So now I have a new fursona: Hecrie the living digital art piece.)

Name: Hecrie Species: Dog Personality: Approachable and talkative but needs a lot of time to open up due to shyness. Obsessive. Acts like a tumblr user. Very steeped in fandom culture. Creative. Has a slight temper. Neurodivergent coded. A little clingy. Childlike. Summary: Somewhere on an old computer lied a drawing of a young teen’s oc. They were a sparkledog named Hecrie. She had yellow medium length fur, rainbow paint splatters, thick orange stripes, aqua paw pads and nose, a green mouth, green blood, narrow rainbow eyes that dotted her face, and floating wings that hovered above her back. She also wore cyberpunk style clothes. Specifically a leather jacket with copper studs and rainbow accents and a pair of sunglasses that displayed holographic messages that covered a few of her eyes. The innocent love and care poured into her creation would actually bring her to life, although she only woke up after the teen had grown up and decided to abandon their old passions. That’s when Hecrie managed to escape into the wider internet by crawling out of her file and hopping into the cloud. Now she was connected to the modern internet and fell in love. She also inherited the interests of the teen, specifically browser based pet games and horror media. Now she just surfs the web, creating accounts on sites relevant to her interests masquerading as a normal human user. Unlike the human users however, she can actually coexist with the elements of a website since she is a digital creature herself. She likes to actually play with her online pets like a real person. She also loves to read creepypastas and online horror, both old and new. This extends to actually hopping into fan art made by others to admire their work, although she does so when their creators aren’t looking. She has made a lot of friends across several internet communities, engaging and indulging in fandom content. Hecrie also has an interest in creating their own content, although she has to do so carefully by sneaking into other computers and using their programs since she cannot write or draw on her own. Despite her friendships with others, she is terrified of people discovering her true existence, especially after reading tons of horror stories about rogue AI clouding her idea of what humans would think of a living digital program. However, she has pegged some people as hopefully someday being able to accept the truth, those being the ones she is closest too to the point of clinginess. She hates the idea of being abandoned again and gets angry when the thought is brought up of abandoning something. She has even learned how to steal files and content from people so she can save them from abandonment, although none of them have come to life like her. But she still clings onto the hope of finding someone she can consider a true friend.

[lizard-isms]

whoever is responsible for the culture around ocs having to be “good” i will hunt you down and biting kill you. if i see one more “ouhhgh but ONLY if they have believable flaws” or “nooo you cant do that it’s unrealistic” i am going to animorph into the jokedler. im not writing a novel over here im just making up some strange little guys. and that ok. more under the readmore (it is long)

i think this came up mostly around that huge wave of. oc “fixing” or finding and making fun of “”bad”” deviantart ocs, and the mary-sue mockery that was Ridiculously Prominent. and still has not died like it should have years ago. but like. god. who is it harming. if someone wants to make a ceepy passa self insert oc that’s like. ouuuugh evil powerful murderer in a haunted videogame kills you through the screen. jeff killar’s wife and boyfriend slander men’s daughterson. who are you to corner them out of that y’know. its fun. my first oc was a sparkledog-esque warrior cats character who started her own clan when she was a literal child. and i loved her with every ounce of my 10 yr old body. but once i gained a certain level of awareness of the greater art community (??? what should i refer to this as??)’s attitude towards characters like her i was TERRIFIED to publicize any of my ocs. i would agonize over them like ohhh is this too much is she too overpowered is he too boring is he too unrealistic etc etc. and. man. i wish i was able to have fun with that stuff. NOW agonizing over character motivations is fun to me but theres a big gap between being like. cornered into it when you have no interest in it beyond not being mocked mercilessly and doing it because you choose to. i am choosing to agonize. when i was twelve i just wanted something vaguely me-shaped to project my desire to run around in the forest onto.  i know im not the first person to bring this up but GOD it still makes my brain twist into a new shape every time i see a Horrible OC Take. and only recently has there been a notable push to have people Not be evil and awful over this. at least that ive noticed, im sure there’s been plenty of people talking about it before??? i would like to believe there were plenty of people talking about it before that i just didn’t see. please let me live in blissful ignorance if i am wrong. and it wasnt just people having a chuckle over an un-spellchecked deviantart oc bio this was people putting out MULTI PART YOUTUBE SERIES that were DEDICATED to tearing peoples characters apart. shits kinda fucked maybe idk. a lot of people that were the targets of this kind of stuff i feel were Not looking for criticism, constructive or otherwise, also. many of us were not focussed on getting Better, we were focussed on kissing fictional character of choice. or running around in the woods. or projecting poorly-processed trauma.

[snally]

when i was like 12/13 i was really active on deviantart/oekaki boards and like the new big thing back then were sparkledogs (they werent even called sparkledogs yet i remember) and other overdesigned animal/pokemon/whatever characters and a big part of the culture was making elaborate reference sheets complete with exact hex codes for every color (and there were always soo many colors) of your characters and then doing art trades so everyone was just drawing everyone else's sparkledogs etc. i really liked a lot of them and i remember dreaming that someday i would draw dogs real good and then i'd get to be with the cool sparkledog crowd, but even back then i also remember thinking that the ones that were soooo detailed and colorful were really ugly and ridiculous like especially every color needing to be exact bc it was such a fuckin pain in the ass to type in every hex code in oekaki apps. so for a like a joke i made a reference sheet of a cartoony vulpix named sprinkles and she was only one color and it was just the default oekaki orange and that was like The Joke and so many people loved it that for like months the "bandwagon" (meme didnt exist as a word yet) on the main oekaki i frequented was to draw sprinkles fanart. and like even though it was a joke character i got so much fucking sarah tonin from 17-20+yr olds drawing my character. i still totally remember exactly what she looked like too i could probably draw her now. i should try and find out the exact orange she was lol

[scicraft]

I give my 2 cents on every band's design

Yes, every one.

(Part 2)

Notes:

-I am not a professional character designer by any capacity

-I'm purely looking at cohesion of group design, but I will touch on how well individual ones are handled

-I am clinically insane

Okay let's get into it 

Plasmagica

THE titular band. Unfortunately doesn't stop them from looking like they're all a part of a different band. While all the individual designs work well to showing their personality, it doesn't allow the band to have a really well defined look. ESPECIALLY considering the anime, they really could've done to have redesigns to show character development(and also stress my sister out when trying to pull for the new outfits /j). It'd also help if they didn't look completely removed from their band name. Like seriously. Plasmagica is not the first name I'd pick.

ShinganCrimsonZ

I like how they're described as a visual kei band, that's just kinda cute. That being said they're so paradoxically cohesive and not??? I really do love them but they all really, really do look like they're going to different Halloween parties. One thing shingan could really benefit from is either

A) not having 3/4ths of the band with the titties out look

Or

B) give the titties out look more variety

Like dude Rom is probably the worst offender his top half has none of the band's main color(which is objectively black) and this could be fixed so easily. Give him a sheer crop top. I don't care. Just something

TriChronika

TriChronika.... Bad. The songs they sing are fucking weak sauce and so are their designs. Which is so unfortunate because they have the MOST bangerang theme?? It doesn't help that I still am physically incapable of telling Kai and Riku apart. Their palettes make them look like they belong in a different band entirely when put next to ShuuZo. I get, on some level, that Shuuzo is supposed to be the center focus and thus is designed accordingly, but Mr Sparkledog left his companions with no flair of their own to speak of, and no, Kai and Riku being twins is not an excuse for them to not have good tells??? Get your shit together TriChronika

CritiCrista

FINALLY. GOOD DESIGN. clear themeing, really strong palettes to set them apart, I love it here. Holmy and Jacklyn are my favorites u_u but I think Rosia's myumon form has the weakest palette, and could probably do better if her fur color was just adjusted. That being said, these girls are overall one if the best designed groups that appears in the anime.

Tsurezure Naru Ayatsuri Mugenan

I legit think the only weaknesses of TNAM is how hard it is to remember their name (/j) in all seriousness they work really well too, and I especially love Daru Dayu's daruma. Their "far east" look is very clear to see.

Shizuku Secret Mind

The anime very smartly avoids having Turtle B.I.G make an appearance in non-myumon form bc he looks so out of place next to the band, and that's entirely bc of his palette. The obvious solution is to just... Give the other band members a more varied palette? Sea creatures are so many colors, why are they all blue???? Also Wendy looks like a different person in all her card art and that's so funny to me.

NinjinRiot

I cannot begin to tell you how accidentally funny NinjinRiot is in the anime. They legit show up, dispense the stakes, and ollie outie. Which I can respect. This is one of those well designed band, except for Obero's myumon design. The torso area gets melted into the arms. Still!! Really stylish

Studdo Ban Gyashu

Now these motherfuckers deserve to get called a visual kei band. My one complaint is that their distinct colors don't really enhance each other designs, so none really stand out.

Dropout Sensei

Beemtle :-)

Gauga Strikes

I'd be more upset about one of the members being a literal fucking mountain if I wasn't already aware that they were based on a real band and that this real life band made of human people was sat down by Sanrio and told "hey, we're going to turn you into furries" and one of them went "actually, I want to be a large geographical feature" and Sanrio replied "okay, that scans" and yknow what? I can't dunk on that

AND TUMBLR IMAGE LIMIT KICKED IN. FUCK. Looks like this is going to be a multi post thing

[projectshadovv]

Can you tell us more about your fursona?

im gonna assume you mean Blank, my albino white shepherd!

Blank’s original name was Raven. i wanted a “dark” name to contrast her light appearance, like Shadow, or Shade, or Coal, or Smokey, but i went with Raven, i dont know why but i did!

i chose a white german shepherd because i was currently obsessed with Bolt, the disney movie!! its still one of my all time fav movies. 

I made her super plain white, turquoise eyes taken from the anime character Toshiro Hitsuguaya from Bleach (i always thought his eyes were the most BEAUTIFUL shade of blue EVER...)

i was also really into bandanas and camo patterns, specifically gray camo, thus ending up with THIS:

she wasn’t my main fursona then, i had a different character, but she was one of the many i had. i didnt draw her much, cause i liked complicated, fun designs, and she wasnt all that fun to draw. i mostly drew her in vent art cause it was the easiest, and she was more of a serious character (dont let that smile fool you)

When i finally up’d her to my main sona, i added a SHIT load of gear to her. this was during the era of making fun of wolf a boos and sparkledogs. they were major cringe, and i took great pride in NOT having such a colorful, blinding character. but she was STILL boring to draw, so what did i do?

GEARED HER UP BABEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i LOVE wearing hats, ofc i gave her one, including a spiked collar, and her gray bandana. wristbands, a ...bandage? i liked to wear as if i had some sort of wound, gave her an ipod arm band (including headphones), a sticker (it mightve actually been meant to be a TATTOO?) with my favorite number (11), and on her right shoulder an LOL face sticker, earrings, a chained wristband along her leg wristbands cause i played LOZ twilight princess and i liked the chain on Wofl Links leg, AND............A CHAIN...HARNESS?? oh also changed her eyes to red. cause red eyes were badass.

i almost NEVER drew her harness tho. FUCK CHAINS...

i changed my fursona again tho, to a lil fennec fox named Zenka. i made Raven more of a High school persona kinda of character, and also for vent again. i updated her designs but kept a lot of stuff on her still, i was really attached to a buncha her stuff. got rid of the chains and wrist bands and the stickers. combined her collar and bandana, made a camo printed collar, gave her a KITTY HAT i loved these types of hats back then!!! i collected the hell out of them! i gave her a pink nose, green eyes, and black faded tip tail (i played okami recently ghfdk). oh and i actually learned a bit of anatomy, so she looks more like an actual shepherd dog.

(got a tablet recently. did i mention the ones before were drawn with a mouse? its all tablet drawings from here on out)

i drew these only a few years ago for funsies, but this is a side by side comparison

i started to FINALLY become attached to Raven, but i wasnt feeling her green eyes, and i was starting to love pink. minus the black tipped tail, which i forgot (or maybe i didnt cause this was when i got the albino idea), here is when i officially started the process to permanently changing her design to what it is today. i also noticed i had a nick on my left ear, so its been an official staple of all my fursonas designs ever since.

made her a new anthro form that i ended up NEVER drawing after i made this cause i had no idea how to design clothes. disclaimer, ive NEVER smoked but i thought it was Cool(tm) back then, so id draw my sonas smoking. at least smoking rainbows didnt sound or look so deadly. OH and teh declawed design idea comes from when i started working in the job industry and bc of it i have bouts of joint and muscle pain every now and then, possibly arthritis, who can a afford a doctor and official diagnoses these days. and the effect of declawing animals shares the same symptoms, so i use it as a little hidden tid bit.

fast forward a bit, new ref 2015

i finally came out being a lesbian and its just been good designs since then. LOOK AT HER LIL FLUFF HEAD

new ref in 2017, finally new official name!! took getting some used to. i had a childhood friend who was considered a bad influence/bad seed child, but i enjoyed her company, and loved the name she picked for herself Blank.

besides liking the name, its “””””””symbolic”””””””” as seen in the second pic, a ref sheet i tried making earlier this year

(also ditched the ink stained tail design idea, nvr used it. now its just a silver tipped tail)

and HERE WE ARE NOW!!!!

THE COMEBACK OF THE GRAY CAMO............ anyways thank for hearing me out!!! ilove this girl so much

[peekychu]

The history of my fursonas! 🐱

I’m in an especially infodump-y mood at the moment and I watched a video about fursonas that inspired me (Shoutout to Pocari Roo’s channel!) so here we go ^o^ 

Click under the cut to read the whole enchilada! (It’s a long post, make sure you have the appetite for it first xD)

I first learned about the furry fandom in about 2013-14 from some friends at school! Granted, the two teenage boys I talked to a lot were more obsessed with the... sexual side of that xD I won’t go into that though because that would involve me talking about more uncomfortable stuff >.> I also had another friend that was such a huge influence to me and they’re a big reason that I still draw fuzzy animals to this day! Their fursona at the time was named Icy and I thought that character was the freakin’ coolest. I remember going home after talking to them, filled with inspiration and making my very first fursona!

Her original name was Rogue Feather, but the name Scarlett came later and ultimately stuck way better! Her design was simple, a red fox with a purple bandana! Not much thought was put into her, I just put together what I thought a typical fursona would look like :P I didn’t draw her much since I was way more focused on MLP and my ponysona Starfruit, but I still enjoyed doodling her!

Shortly after Scarlett, I created Citrus the cat! To be honest, she didn’t really represent me other than being a cat xD Her design was actually based off of a girl that I had a crush on at that time, but that’s a whole other story >.>

Also, it was coincidental that Twinkie has elements from both of these beginning characters, I just noticed that making this post! I learned that I loved cats from creating citrus, and I loved drawing Scarlett’s wings and bandanas so I suppose it was natural that my current fursona would have all of these traits :P

Well, months pass after posting the first drawings of Citrus and Scarlett on my Instagram, and at this point I decided to try taking up digital art! I downloaded FireAlpaca for free (still my program of choice x3) and worked really hard at drawing with only my mouse!

My friend that inspired me to draw more furry characters had changed their fursona over from a bright sparkledog-ish color scheme to another character with muted browns and oranges. Inspired once again, I designed another cat character to represent myself!

Meet Macchiato (or Mac for short)! They were made when I switched my focus from My Little Pony to furry characters, and I moved from Instagram to DeviantArt as my main art site. 

When I made Mac, I was close to beginning high school and I questioned a lot about my identity, mainly my gender and sexuality :P For a period of time, I pushed aside my adoration for ponies, Pokemon and colorful things in favor of things I thought were “cooler” and more boyish. A large part of this was my complicated relationship with my gender identity, but also because I thought I had to act more mature... so I expressed this by drawing myself as a cat? It was complicated xD

Anyways, while I have a soft spot for Mac, they’re sort of my own Rex Dangervest if that makes sense :P I mean, they were my first expression of feeling neutral to gender which was a big deal for me, but when I look at their drab colors it sort of makes me sad that I didn’t have much fun designing them. (I did have a blast drawing that pixel reference though, I remember that xD)

I also created a few more furry characters just for the fun of it! I won’t post pictures of all of them for the sake of length, but they were Chamomile the fennec fox, Minx the cat, Caira the alien dog, Pfeffer the bunny, Flicker the bat (who I should draw again sometime >.>) Mitzi the dog and... Whatever animal Skyler was supposed to be xD I made all these characters before I attempted to make a fursona that I felt more connected with...

Along came Clash the cat, an even more depressing character than Mac for me to look at xD I was considerably depressed at this point from the pressure of high school and my identity issues, the droopy eyelids and chaotic color scheme of him sort of reflect this. 

It’s a good thing you can’t read his description in that screenshot, Believe me, but I think I should quote a part of it because it greatly represents how I felt about myself during the time period when I made him.

“If you were to dissect his brain, you’d see something much like somebody’s tangled collection of thread and yarn. Colorful, unkept, and full of pushed aside potential.”

Ouch!!

Well, after a period of depressing fursonas I played that one cat icon creator game that circulated on Tumblr for a while, and I made my favorite old fursona! I think that he had a lot in common with Twinkie and I used them more than everyone else beforepaw.

Here’s Cetrada, my little Nickelodeon slime cat xD I named them after the Italian citron-flavored soda that my friend Francesca (Love ya buddy!) sent to me in the mail! That soda is actually spelled Cedrata, the misspelling of the name was not a creative choice but an actual dumb mistake xP 

I genuinely still love this character, I nicknamed them Limey since it’s simple and cutesy like them, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever use them again. Think of them as teenage Twinkie I guess xD I love ya Cetrada, you were a good kitty <3

Eventually Cetrada grew stale for me and I went through a couple of other fursonas. I don’t have much to say about them since they were pretty short lived, but I’ll post a single picture of each of them! I’m getting a bit tired of making mini collages of them anyways :P

While Reese’s design and colors are a bit awkward, I genuinely adore their mini companion Mallow the bat :P They look like pistachio pudding, what a cutie!

Ugh, this fursona stresses me out to look at too xD I mean arguably they’re the closest in design to Twinkie (yellow cat with angel wings and star knee markings) but they remind me of a rough time I suppose? I drew a couple pictures of them looking more sexualized and with a more slim body type when in reality I was overweight and scared of intimacy... they just remind me of an unhealthy period of my life @_@ I must have felt that too though, I dropped this fursona pretty quickly.

I do actually like Kit even though I used him very briefly, I was starting to have WAY more fun with bright colors in my drawings! Sure he’s a bit too pastel 2015 Tumblr, but I do still like that pink and yellow combo ^w^

Eventually I grew sick of my DeviantArt and mostly just posted art on my main Tumblr where I got super into the kidcore scene! I had rediscovered my love of fun colors and sparkly eyes, kidcore sparked a new me! I wasn’t doing fantastic in life, but I developed more optimism and a genuine love for simple things which grounded me a lot. This was such a wild part of my life, through reblogging pictures of rainbows and Pokemon and slime I gained over 2,000 followers O.O Two of my closest friends told me that they found me by my influence in the kidcore Tumblr community back around 2016 and were intimidated to talk which is just nuts to me x’D

Anyways I’ll try not to go on a tangent about that anymore, but 2016-17 was wild! I should give a shoutout to my very first sparklesona Cosi, but he was made only barely before my true fursona...

That’s right babey, the one... The only!!!

HE’S FINALLY HERE! Twinkie, the fursona I truly felt a personal connection with. I mean, he’s everything I love bundled into one! Pikachu has been my hugest comfort ever since I was four years old so naturally I would have to incorporate it into my fursona somehow! I also gave him a bandana, my favorite accessory to draw on furry characters, and wings! Of course I love rainbows too so I gave him rainbow wings..... But I tweaked his design since the colored wings made him more bird-like. Nothing against birds of course, but I thought plain white angel wings were simpler and more iconic for him! I did give him a touch of rainbow later with his tag design! I also scrapped his red dot eyebrows and his tail bandana, but overall I loved the character I made! I was thrilled to have a fun cartoon kitty that I could use to express myself :3

Before him my only true-feeling ‘sona was Starfruit the pegasus, it was fulfilling because I feel like when I made Twinkie, I started to find myself! 

Twinkie did go through a couple redesigns including a semi-drastic color change sometime in early 2018, but I really do feel content with the way he looks right now! In Twinkie I see friendliness, optimism, and a caring heart which is what I strive for! He represents the journeys I took to be more comfortable with myself and he radiates the confidence that I hope to achieve one day as well >:3 I mean it is possible I could change him for a new fursona or even flat out drop him in the future, but after 3 strong years I think Twinkie will stay a part of me for a while ^w^

Anyways, if you’ve read all of this, THANK YOU!! This was a really personal post and I think it’s fascinating to look at my own self progression this way, I hope somebody gained something from this but if it was just for me that’s okay too xD

If anyone read all of this looong post and wants to make a similar post, PLEASE tag me! I’ve been so interested in fursonas and how people see/represent themselves through cartoon animals, isn’t it a wild phenomenon?? 

If you don’t feel like making a big post like I did though, you should reply with some cool facts about your fursona or count how many you’ve made in the past xD That would be rad <3

[fursona-reviews]

Blease… review my fursoña. Her name is Chouli and she is a menace. (Ps I love u….)

i am ignoring my teacher to do these reviews becasut this is more fun. and boy oh boy, am i am so happy to get to finnaly talk about this BEAUTIFUL GORGEOUS woman.

ALSO I LOVE YOU TOO????????

overall design: ah its been a while since we’ve had a honest to dog dog. refreshing. clean. she seems so so nice and so so fun to be around. shes a big beautiful orb of fun. and look! she has the same likes as me! except for eggs. i only medium like eggs. but lets talk about Chouli!!!!!!! big soft hands for holding, strong legs with which to up hold goodness and love. and of course great hair. 2/2

originality: i used to see a lot of sparkledogs. but not so much anymore, unfortunately. i mis them. for some reason they arent ““realistic”““ enough, even though furries arent even real you noobs. but i digress. the point is that i love her and i believe she can lead the way to a new era of beautiful fun sparkledogs. 2/2

color scheme: i love pink and purple together such a good combination. but the brown hair is such a strange and diffetnet thing. i see the brown hair and i think, it is good, it is soft and easy on my tender eyes, ty, but somehow it seems so odd. perhaps the hair could be a color instead that matched the clothes? or if it just had a little more pigmant? i feel like a lier because i always say that bright intense colors need softer colors with them, and she does! but i still am not appeased. actually, i think maybe if he clothes just matched her hair that would help my brain. but it is not a bad color pallet!!!! i would just remove one of the colors and repleace it with one already there. but her main body is perfect dtn ever change. 2/2

animal accuracy: as a sparkledog/dragonwolf, feel like i speak with some authority when i say...... FLAWLESS. 2/2

clothing: soft comfy clothes, for hanging out at home to eat potatoe chips and play videogames!!! which is my favorite activity as well. 2/2

Final score: 10/10. what a good pup.