veryimportantsparkles

[veryimportantsparkles]

@mous-bones Okay so hello! We've never met before now. I have been doing a deep dive into the back pages of the Gaia Online breedables subforum. Mostly I'm looking for sources on my own pets, but I also click on random threads just to see if the photobucket images still work. Creatures of Gar was one of the threads with working images. And amongst them was...this freebie!

Because I love Gaia pets I saved it. It's so cute, the teeny tiny file size makes it cuter. I decided to do a drawing.

I shrunk it down to canonical size too.

I shared it to a discord server for a pet shop that's still around (Kitsusagi) and I told them my version's a freebie too in the spirit of the original. So anyone can pick up one of these lil guys. That's when I decided to check for the original artist and found my way to you! To show my gazere fanart!

Thanks for being part of the history of online pets!

[veryimportantsparkles]

I decided to go to the very back of the Gaia breedables subforum and go forward page by page, combing through for things I recognized. Miraculously, it's actually working. I've found several sources for old pets. I drew some, because I love them.

Miss Pimp and Cleo are foxes from a mini-shop that exclusively sold foxes. I'm 99% positive Cleo was drawn by a different person than the shop owner, and that her artist was also responsible for an adorable bakery minishop I was obsessed with. Funnily enough I found their shop thread through a shop thread for my own very first pet shop. I had a 'toybox' post at the bottom of the first page and it linked to the fox shop.

Spot's a 'Bloomster.' I didn't think I'd be able to find his shop thread, because the artist put in initials instead of a full name. But I found it, just sitting there in the December 2004 crust of dead threads. I'm not sure if the little pine tree behind him is actually coming out of his head. If I could find other examples of Bloomsters it'd help me know, but the shop thread's images are all dead. I gave him a pinecone tail instead.

I already had the thread saved for Blathannas, but I kept seeing Blathanna auction threads in the archives so it got me thinking about them again. I'm actually going to change Altamira's name because my main Mycena Cave character is also named Altamira. Altamira the Blath came first, but Altamira the Ineki has more art and lore, so she wins. Tentatively this one's new name is Cantabria.

In my search I'm currently on page 1111 of the breedables subforum, where all the dead threads were last posted in on March 29, 2005. I've already missed some pets that are definitely 2004 purchases, and I think in those cases the threads are either deleted or have their titles changed to 'closed.' I'll do a finer combing of threads later. I'm not sure how many more unsourced pets I have going forward, there are at least two that I think are 2007 purchases and it'll be a while before I get there. But still I didn't expect this to actually work.

[veryimportantsparkles]

Did some drawins.

Horse- Adopted from the Wajas forums about a year ago. Her name is now Nuvoletta.

Wolves- I'm gonna have to dig around but they're from some Gaia shop. Ignore the text on the originals, those aren't names. According to my files, mistletoe wolf is named Deathkiss and evergreen wolf is named Conifer.

Bear- Got this off DeviantArt years ago. Never named it. He is now named Rodan.

I just kinda picked them at random from the stack of stuff I adopted but never drew to make them my own. Four down, hundreds to go?

[veryimportantsparkles]

Just a lil cooldown doodle. I've finished the drafts for the first six pages of chapter 7. Not sure how long the chapter's going to be by the end. There's scene ideas I'd like to include but probably won't because they'd disrupt the flow of time. I'll figure it out.

[veryimportantsparkles]

Working on the chapter 7 draft (viewable on patreon) and man...this one guy is having a bad day. I kinda want to keep him around.

[veryimportantsparkles]

I've been working on concept and draft work for the next chapter of Laserwing, and it's made me want to do some more random drawings of Trieg and Penki at other points in their lives. I've drawn baby Trieg before but it occurred to me now (not for the first time tbh) that this character's timeline is kind of messed up. Like it's kind of weird to have art of this toddler (who is maybe 25% human) being treated like a pet. He hatched with quadruped legs and took a few years to start talking (maybe Penki didn't know that's normal for human babies). Penki thought she failed to create a sentient creature and decided to keep what she thought was an animal. But we know, in the context of the present, that that's a guy! A real person guy!

So I reached forward into the timeline to ask Trieg's dad's opinion (he won't show up for a long time, and was last drawn in...2019?) and he agrees, this is messed up. Currently in the Laserwing 'present' he doesn't even know he has a son (a partial clone actually) but when Nanru shows up to meet Trieg he instantly likes the kid. Every time he finds out another upsetting detail of Trieg's upbringing he starts yelling at mom.

[veryimportantsparkles]

And finally, some backgrounds. Backgrounds are hard, guys. Like yeah perspective is hard but also consistency is hard, and thinking of buildings is hard. I'd say even if I didn't develop carpal tunnel and spine damage during the making of chapter 6, the cafeteria table backgrounds would still have made updates very slow.

The Mistaire drawings are from when I was testing pen tools in Krita. Chapters 1-5 were made in an unupdated Gimp 2.2 installation. Chapter 6 was done in Krita so I had to decide what pen settings to use to match what I was used to. About halfway through the chapter I switched to a new tablet too!

[veryimportantsparkles]

Here's outfit models for the mains, including Clarisse and Taylor who are barely in chapter 6. And outfits for the last two pages of the chapter, which takes place the next day. There's actually an error on Marjolaine's aura picture; in the page where you actually see her aura it has the Scythe medal properly on her chest.

Speaking of auras, there's a little side note on Tony's page where you can see his pre-Mistaire aura. Taylor has two auras too, how interesting. I wonder what that means!

[veryimportantsparkles]

The girls at the cheer table were visible uuuuuh once. Jackie is a cameo! She's from Miss Melee. On the page she appeared on, I also did a quick addition of Rachel and Zeki from Raccoon Girl.

Britnee (along with her older siblings Kelly and Ivan from the goth table) is a holdover from a very old story idea from when I was like 13. Becky has existed since early drafts of Laserwing but exists purely as crowd filler. Christi is a newer concept, I just knew I'd see the cheer squad once and a while and they should have a captain.

[veryimportantsparkles]

I finally finished chapter 6 of Laserwing, and that means I'm releasing chapter 6 concept art into the main blog. You could've seen these character models early if you went to the Patreon, but now they're here! And I know you were all waiting to see the details on those goths at the cafeteria. That was very important.

Gunnar and Verna are for an entirely different concept that should have a separate continuity that doesn't intersect with Laserwing. But I'm probably never going to hash out that story idea, and I wanted some filler for the table. You can KIND OF see them in like...one cafeteria panel. Well I like them anyways.

[veryimportantsparkles]

"I'm not supposed to talk about it but souls are real and you definitely have one, okay?" Shouesh did his best to sort of lean in around the hologram avatar of Zatz. They couldn't touch physically, but he could sort of...mime a little pat on the shoulder. He then slapped one stringy palm down on the restricted access panel. "I can see it. It's literally right there, safe in the meat part of you. And nothing they do to the robot part of you can ever change that, alright?"

Nothing short of killing you, Shouesh thought to himself. But that wasn't an appropriate thing to say aloud.

"Thank you," Zatz spoke softly. The 'whisper' hissed over the speaker in the secluded maintenance closet they kept his core in. "Thank you..."

"So don't let them pick on you. Okay? You're a person. A real full person just like the stupid fucks who built you." It was a simple statement Shouesh found himself repeating in his head, silently to others like himself, or sometimes just to himself. It felt good to say to someone who could hear it, who needed to hear it.

Zatz nodded. "What does my soul look like?"

"Oh, disgusting. Like someone soaked a rat in vinegar. Hope you never have to look at your own core because it's probably horrifying."

"A-aaoh. Okay."

[veryimportantsparkles]

fuck, fuck, shit, i made a minor edit to a laserwing blog post yesterday and now tumblr wants to default me to posting on that blog instead of my main, so I made this post and then had to delete it to move it to the correct blog

I'm pretty sure I've sent capslock feedback to tumblr about dashboard default blog selection at least twice, I'm so mad

Anyways this is TRIEG he's showing up in the next chapter with his EVIL MOM and her HARD TO DRAW FACE. His aunt's here too today

[veryimportantsparkles]

Here's a warmup doodle before Laserwing work. There's three panels left to shade and then I color it all. I felt like drawing Zatz, the incredible endgame spoiler lad. I always default to airlock stuff for his dialogue. There's not a lot else he can talk about without putting him in a more complicated context. He doesn't get out much, he doesn't have hobbies, but he DOES have airlocks and will open them to get rid of you. I'm workshopping a second subject of interest for him to talk about but the best I have so far is "I will not go back in the tube" and that just gets followed up with more airlock threats.

Anyways he's not showing up for a while so it doesn't matter.

[veryimportantsparkles]

This was long overdue! BellaBella finally has her fully evolved design. I was actually reluctant while leveling her to replace Vine Whip with a bigger move, because she's had it since the beginning and it's kind of her thing. But with Leaf Blade, I realized I could do a reference. Ivy from Soul Calibur even has an appropriate name for the plant theme, so it felt good to steal her weapon gimmick.

I wasn't originally expecting her outfit to come out so suggestive, but every visual motif I wanted to work with came together perfectly to make a skimpy dress and heels and a whip. I originally didn't even put the little shorts on under her Victreebel dress, but it felt a little incomplete without them.

[veryimportantsparkles]

It's 5am and for some reason I spent 20 minutes trying to work out a 'thumbs down' pose for Matt's right hand then realized I couldn't even make that angle with my own hand without moving the whole arm into a position that obscured the sweater

and anyways the whole point was that I wanted a good drawing of Matt's 90s sweater with the smash logo on it, because it's never shown at a good angle in the comic

[veryimportantsparkles]

Just finished coloring the next Laserwing page but I'm going to check it tomorrow for errors before I post it. Anyways here's a cooldown doodle.

[veryimportantsparkles]

Look how much background detail I made just to get covered up by the foregrounds. It's intentional, I use my horrible, ugly backgrounds as practice, but it still feels like wasted effort at the end. Anyways the next Laserwing page has just foreground coloring left to do.