Comments

• Blacky

  August 2021 edited August 2022

  -The Seven Angels-

  You are now entering the dragon's lair...

  What they call a fantasy
  It's nothing but a key
  To the world that now you're in
  That they call a wicked dream 

  
  

  No, those lines aren't from myself but from a song called “The Seven Angels”. I really like it and so I decided to name my dragon project after said song.

  It started nine months ago (holy shit, time passes by...) after the release of Furry VNE's dragon update. I really love dragons and so I simply had to create some myself. While that process went on I came across the idea of creating one dragon for each "classic” element like fire, water, wind and earth. I declared Cyrill as a dragon of the wind and started to work on a female something that turned out to be known as "Aurelia the Light”! Ok, so let's also do one for darkness and Kyra was born. Now that would make six in total. Pretty balanced. Yeah let's make seven with one special dragon that I don't know yet but who cares, MORE DRAGONS!

  The Seven Angels: a organisation of elemental dragons who work together in order to keep the world in balance...That's what they say about themself. In reality they are a bunch of troublemakers, fighting personal vendettas against each other. Beneath the sheets or on the streets, it really doesn't matter.

  Now they are all here and I'd like to show those seven to you:

  -Hoshi the Celestial-

  -Archangel of the Seven-

  
  

  The making of

  Hoshi is based on a Asian type of dragon, so she has no wings but lot's of wild and colorful fur on her back, tail and extremity due to the color-T and color-offset functions in the fur authoring tab!

  I learned a bit about the PBR-Layer inside furry VNE and UV-Maps inside blender in general to make this dress and kimono textures happen. Quite happy how it turned out if I dare say that. I also made some new meshes like the horns and her "beard". Her tip of the tail however consists out of multiple “tuft” meshes from FurryVNE joined together in blender to create one piece to save some draw calls.

  I chose the pinkish palette this time in order to show some connections to Japan (cherry blossom).

  So I investigated a bit on weaponry and I have a concept for the next character that will also use quite a lot of the stuff you can already see here so this was the enhanced practice session for the next character release.

  To turn her into a real traditional styled Japanese lady (ok the heels might be a bit off or to modern) I decided to work on that dress from the old version of her. I grabbed the base mesh I did back then with Simply Cloth Pro and extruded the edges of the sleeves. With every step of extrusion I did a bit of scaling and proportional editing to get that trumpet shape. Also after I reached her wrists I did a bit of sculpting with the brushes inside Simply Cloth (mainly the drag brush) to get that wrinkles going.

  Now comes the wrapping part:

  I cut the final shape in half and separated the objects with "P" -> selection. Now I grabbed the bust part of the left hand side and with proportional editing I dragged it around to her right side. After that was done I rejoined both parts and made the belt with the curve path/circle technique I mentioned a few times already.

  The katana was a mixture of fun and nuisance to do. It is really nice when you get the hang of it and everything start's to work but until you reach that point it can get on your nerves. I had to restart once because I didn't like the outcome and the topology of the blade. I followed some tutorials on Youtube though to get this to work.

  Oh and just in case you wonder: Yes, Hoshi is left-handed
  

  So a lot of work went into those two items!

  Story

  Hoshi is a ancient dragoness, old as time itself. She is the leader of the "Seven Angels", trying to coordinate the other six members across the globe in order to prevent natural disaster or "evil activities" with more or less success.

  Time doesn't affect her body at all after she matured and no foe could harm her in combat ever since. So we can pretty safely assume that she is immortal. However she bears a heavy burden on her shoulders:

  Ever since the world started to turn Hoshi always tried to keep all of her dragon companions safe but since that time she saw many of them pass away.

  When a elemental dragon lord dies a new one - mostly their children - will carry his legacy on and Hoshi made it her duty to instruct those elemental incarnations of their great responsibility to the world. So she could be called the mother of all...or the sole survivor, cursed to witness every child raised by her to die some day until the end of time.

  Hoshi is a caring yet strict person and very protective about her comrades. She seems to be stressed almost all the time but hates to show weakness in the presence of anyone.

  She has the ability to channel all the element her comrades posses but not in such a powerful way. Still she can be seen as an incredible strong spell caster and she has mastered her own element to the full potential enabling her to levitate and fly or call cosmic thunderstorms upon her enemies. If however it is necessary to engage in close combat she is always armed with her blade "Starblind", a magical weapon made out of a material not from this world.

  Hoshi build the headquarter of the Seven Angels somewhere in Japan, rumors tend to say on Mount Fuji, but due to the eruptions that's most likely not the case. Fact is that no one except the members of the Seven Angels know the location of those sacred walls.

  She is very close to Kaiga and Thelonious, the two oldest members of the organization beside herself and she has always to resist the approaches of Cyrill towards her even if she secretly plays with the thought to simply give in.

  She has a lot of shared secrets with Aurelia and Eilidh and welcomed Tallulah warmly after Kaiga retired. The only member that she has real trouble with is Kyra because Kyra herself is not a person who accepts orders from anyone. The only one keeping her under control is Aurelia and the fact that she can't go anywhere if she would leave the organization.

  Trivia

  The name

  Hoshi is a Japanese female name meaning just "Star" referring to the celestial body. I gave her that name to show her special position inside my dragon roster.

  Her title "the celestial" refers to the fact that she is basically not from this earth but came from the cosmos and her second title "Archangel of the seven" shows her position among all the other dragons. Basically she is the ruler of all but even a king is no king without kingdom and she was alona for a extreme long period of time until she decided to found a organization with the goal to bring peace and balance to the world.

  Game references

  

  This symbol can be found on her left chest where the heart is. It's the Crest of Riegan or the Star Dragon Sign from "Fire Emblem : Three Houses". So again we have a reference to the stars here.

  Also all members of the Seven Angels bear on of those signs somewhere on their bodys to show a bit of a unique trait to them.

  
  

  -Aurelia the Light-

  "Ambassador of the Sun”

  Aurelia is back with lot's of new stuff. I decided to have some fun with creating weapons for my dragons and Aurelia is the archer of the squad:
  

  

  The making of

  Could you believe that Aurelia once was such a bad character that she was left unnoticed by everyone? Yeah, her first version was indeed pretty bad and She has quite the journey behind her but now she really shines!

  "Updated 2021-01-14:
  - Added a ton of rings!"

  That update was so crucial! After those rings were on board Aurelia started to climb up the ladder to the top ten of 2021. Big thanks to you guys!

  After two more months it was again time for a big update since @iDog brought the old Ilinir parts from yiffalicious to blender. I grabbed Ilinir's wings and improved the ruffle to the state it is now.

  Now, with a lot more knowledge in terms of making clothes, normal maps, textures and weapons I came back to turn those dragons into characters that everyone will remember!

  Aurelia has quite similar body shapes to Hoshi, so giving her a dress was the simplest and most effective way to wrap her up I thought. I made a new set of lingerie for her and after trying a few different colors I finally decided to stick with red. I really like this one on her, especially because it works with the rings around her hips so well! I also took Hoshi's heel model and adjusted a few things to make them fit.

  After throwing together a little unique ring for her I finally came to the bow. In my mind she is a archer for many months but I never really considered to turn this very thought into reality until the latest improvements of mine with blender. The Idea of making a bow in combination with the element of light is nothing new of course. Most common example for that would be princess Zelda from BotW. Anyway, I decided to create a pretty unique model for that bow and arrow but with no real concept at all. I made the basic shape of the bow and started to extrude alongside this shape and ended up with this one. I felt like it was the right thing so everything went pretty fast.

  Story

  Aurelia is the first commander of the Seven Angels, forming a powerful team with Thelonious and Eilidh on her side. She serves alongside her sister Kyra their common leader Hoshi. Aurelia is very loyal towards Hoshi and they became extremely close friends over the centuries. She has a calm and just nature and is easy to get along with. She's almost always smiling and takes life as easy as possible in her position. She has a very strong affinity towards her teammates but cares about everyone in general so you can cal her simply a nice person.

  Aurelia can move at the speed of light causing the flow of time to stop for her surroundings completely while she uses this ability. That's also the reason why she states in her text that “time flows way different” and why she feels lonely. She lived way longer than she actually did and that gets to her head from time to time.

  Back in the old days she had a fierce fight against her sister Kyra ultimately resulting in a defeat, granting the darkness the power over the world it currently has. For better or worse has jet to be decided, however Hoshi believes true balance can only be achieved by working together. Could it be that this fight was secretly initiated by Hoshi herself to unite the two sisters under one flag, namely her own?

  Aurelia wields the legendary bow "Lightbringer", passed down in her family from one Lord of Light to the next and only she can make use out of this weapon. By channeling her magic abilities she's able to shoot arrows at the speed of light and even change the direction of the them while they travels making her an extremely powerful member of the seven.
  

  Trivia

  The name

  The name Aurelia is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "the golden one”. For this one I didn't even have to google. While creating her I already knew that she was "the golden one" and since I learned a bit Latin in my life I knew that this would be the perfect name for her.

  “The Light” and "Ambassador of the Sun” are both titles resembling her power. Her element is the light itself and the Sun is her source of power.

  Game references

  
  

  This symbol is known as the Crest of Cethleann or the Light Dragon Sign from "Fire Emblem : Three Houses" and can be found on her back.

  The name of her bow "Lightbringer" comes from the the game League of Legends, where it was a legendary item exclusive to the game map Crystal Scar. So -in short- something from a time long forgotten

  

  
  

  -Thelonious the Earth-

  "Loyal Servant"

  It's finally time for the legendary right hand of Hoshi to return to the public!
  

  

  The making of

  I'm not gonna lie, every time I bring him up it is a pure struggle. Starting with his shape to the coloring and now the equipment.

  Thelonious has always been the hardest part to make out of the Seven Angels. I can't quite describe why but it seems that a earth or nature based dragon is something that really kept me clueless for quite a while. I googled some references but I couldn't find anything that would suit my and FVNE's style despite being capable of doing custom offsets and mesh.

  What brought me to this point was actually more the background lore I made up for him. I figured he might be some kind of aged dragon, maybe not in the best shape but he has been a passionate warrior once and he is the right hand of Hoshi who lives in Japan.

  A loyal warrior to the throne.

  Maybe a samurai?

  

  Now we're heading in a nice direction. I took the helmet ("kabuto") of this armor piece here and figured how to transfer that into a natural shape for a dragon and the outcome was this:

  

  It turned out pretty nice and I went on to add in those shoulder plates as well. As you notice by now I took a bunch of colors from that armor as well. Having a lot of brown and green tones in there helped out a lot to nail his color scheme and after adding a bit of metalness and playing around with the some shaders and masks I found what I was looking for.

  Now garment update kicked in and I wanted to design the rest of this armor for him. I already trained for that with Kyra's chest-plate buuut in the end I decided to scrap the Idea. In order to make it I would have to invest a horrendous amount of time and would probably end up with something that looks ok-ish but not what I would like to have on him. Also triangles could make a problem and it's simply not worth it for now.

  So instead I decided to do it more simple, took a kimono top with pants, grabbed a nice texture and invested time on making weapons. That was indeed more interesting than hammering armor pieces together

  Trivia

  The name

  The origin of the name Thelonious is quite disputed. Most sources say it's from German but it is also stated that it is of Greek, Latin or even Dutch origin. Now the meaning is very interesting because the most common translation would be "Lord of the People" but also "Sprout of the Earth". I really enjoy those!

  
  

  Game references
  

   
  

  This symbol is known as the Crest of Cichol or the Earth Dragon Sign from
  

  "Fire Emblem : Three Houses" and can be found on his chest.
  

  Hikari and Yami

  Thelonious is wielding a classic katana named Hikari meaning "light" and a more fancy looking sickle-ax named Yami meaning "darkness" in Japanese language:

  

  
  

  Inspiration for this specific design comes from "Richter Abend", a character from the "Tales of..." franchise:

  

  
  

  References to Hoshi

  Yes, I really give this one a own headline because there are a lot of references to show the deep connection between those two. Not only because I created them simultaneously.

  They are a bit like ying and yang, while Hoshi resembles heaven Thelonious is of course the earth.

  They both have pretty much the same body measurements and wear traditional Japanese kimono while wielding katana swords. I gave Thelonious purple colored eyes, the main color of Hoshi while she has green eyes, one of Thelonious' main colors. They both have their dragon crest on their chests. While Hoshi's crest is placed on her left hand side, Thelonious' crest is located on the right.

  Story

  Thelonious has seen many wars in his long life and emerged from a simple warrior to the general loyal to the throne and finally became head strategist of the old regime of Japan. After he found out that his strength and sharp mind comes from a source known as the "Earth Dragon Sign" he got invited by his regent for a audience. That was the day he met with the most beautiful woman in his life: Hoshi. He swore eternal loyalty to her and agreed to her plan to find all the other elemental dragons across the world and unite them under her flag.

  Thelonious is a calm and quiet person in general, always keeping a cool head even if a situation is starting to run out of control. He is considered introverted and even a bit cold towards people he don't know but he is a extremely good at listening to the problems of his fellow teammates Aurelia and Eilidh and he cares about everyone in the whole organization like his family.

  He is hopelessly in love with Hoshi but would never even dare to think about confessing his true feelings towards her. As a samurai he has a codex of honor which includes loyalty towards his lord...or better lady but he secretly hopes that one day somehow this would change.

  He is always keeping an eye on Cyrill because of his approaches towards Hoshi and the two don't come along so well in general because of their opposite elements and lifestyles. Thelonious calls him a man without honor with a reprehensible personality. Cyrill on the other hand thinks of Thelonious only as Hoshi's puppy and that he has no balls at all.

  
  

  -Eilidh the Fire-

  "Shooting Star"

  Eilidh has no fancy meshes like other girls of mine but she has color masks beyond everything I made to date and that is why she is showered with love from you, so big thanks and let's dive in on the Lord of Fire!

  

  The making of

  I had -like almost always- concepts for her on my table for quit a while. I worked on one, but scrapped it entirely. It felt way to mainstream and not "Blacky-like". A few months later I came back with a new idea after reading @iDog 's tutorial (big props to you!) on how to create some textures inside blender which opened the path for many garments and meshes I did since then, but I never used this knowledge on a character.

  So I started of with a few ideas, played around with some shapes and generated some basic layers.

  If you use the fill tool with black color inside blenders image editor (Shift F10) on a already existing white painted plane you automatically get the contour of that layer. I used this technique to create all those fine lines on her whole body between the light and dark areas to break it up a little. This had an horrendous effect on her look and I'm very happy how she turned out.

  I went from blender to FVNE, filled all my layers and went on with detail work. I used yellowish capsule gradients on the red parts of her body to achieve the blurry orange color you see here. I wanted to imitate some kind of radiance or sun burst like look.

  Now, making clothes for her was kind of a experiment once again. I really had a hard time to invent something that would suit her as a character. The thing is that she is definetly no girl who would wear any kind of skirt or something like that. So pants and leather jacket would be sufficiant, but that is also something I tend to do like A LOT and inside the Seven Angels the dresscode is a bit more traditional...most of the time at least.
  

  So I once again took the risk doing a loincloth and it worked way better than the last time (for Tallulah). I must say that the textures make this loadout so colorfull that I''m actually not sure if it can stay like that. I wanted to implement some fire-style textures for her, but since her body coloring is also already super vibrant this might look a bit overloaded.

  Tell me what you think about that.
  

  
  

  Trivia

  The name

  Eilidh is a girl's name of Scottish origin meaning "sun, radiant one". Seemed perfect for me, since the color of her face and extremity resemble pretty much a radiant look. Also Scotland has a few myths or legends around dragons although they are more about seas serpents. Talkin' “Nessie” from Loch Ness, you know?

  Starting with Cyrill I gave every dragon of mine a title of the element that they are resembling so, of course, Eilidh is the Lord of Fire.

  "Shooting Star" Refers to her signature move when entering a battle, chargin at her enemys covered in a cloak of flames.
  

  Game references

  There are two major things going on:

  and

  Now, I realized after I finished painting her, that I saw this color scheme somewhere before....well It's -partially- Typhlosion's. Oh well it's hard to make something new I guess...

  Now to that sign/tattoo that can be found on her left shoulder: That's the so called “Crest of Daphne” or “Flame Dragon Sign“ from the game “Fire Emblem : Three Houses”. It increases your Characters “Might” Stat. Yeah pretty self explaining, also the reason why I made her a martial arts expert in her description.

  Story

  The Lord of Fire comes from Scotland, she is a women with lot's of temperament and strong will. A born fighter. At a young age Eilidh was found by Hoshi and travelled far across the ocean to learn several fighting styles like Kung Fu, Jiu Jitsu and Karate on order to join the ranks of the seven angels.

  She can't give up control easy and needs some time to let people get close to her.

  Eilidh is the elemental rival of Tallulah and in search for Cyrill who left her heartbroken after a longer lasting relationship. Also as the Lord of Fire she has a strong friendship towards Aurelia the Light.

  She hates to be asked about her age because she's reminded how old she really is. No one knows her real age except Hoshi but she won't tell any secrets, not even to me.

  
  

  -Kyra the Darkness-

  "Fierce Deity”

  Character number ten has to be something different I thought and I was already in a rush for dragons since I finished Aurelia not to long ago. Now, let's create her counterpart, the incarnation of darkness...but how?

  
  

  The making of

  From the first second on I struggled with Kyra alias “Fierce” back than. I had the Idea to bring a certain someone over to Furry VNE but it never felt easy to accomplish. Until the very end I was unsure about the gender and I changed the look of her eyes since the first version of her was blind to create a certain look.

  What I'm talking about is this bad boy:

  

  The fierce deity from "The legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask".

  Trivia

  Game references

  Kyra is full of little things from different games so let me show you all the secrets behind her appearance:

  Starting with what you can see on the first glimpse: The hair style, the ears with earrings, the face marks and the armor resemble the look of the Fierce Deity Link. In the original Japanese version he can also be called "Oni Link" which means "demon Link". So yes, Kyra looks indeed more like a demon than a dragon. I gave her a rather slender yet athletic body since Link is no muscled beast either.

  That armor took a little while to create and I wanted to make way more than you can see but despite cutting down things like crazy there is no way to stuff more on her...for now. I even had the cloth part of the armor that sits underneath the metal plates finished but scrapped it entirely for several reasons. It didn't look that good on her and it created a lot of distance to her body. I like the look of that tight locked chest plate way more than to have some cloth wobbling around on her.

  The twisted horns on her head resemble the weapon Link is wielding while in his deity form: the Helix Sword. Back then I wasn't able to recreate that sword and since it doesn't add much sex appeal if you wield a sword almost as big as yourself I left it out, but now I thought why not throw it in for fun's sake.

  Moving on to that tiara of hers:

   

  Yeah, I really had some fun implementing "Majoras Mask" on her. That's the infamous final boss of the game. If you challenge him in the form of the fierce deity he feels a bit like a joke though since you literally crush him.

  Because of that I let Kyra wear him in her armor. Evil is always watching you... >:D
  

  Next is the Crest of Timotheos or Dark Dragon Sign on her Chest and armor as well as the moon on her armor.
  

  

  
  

  There are several reasons for placing those things where they are: of course since she is a member of my Seven Angels she has to wear a crest somewhere but since Kyra is the counterpart of Aurelia who wears her crest on her back I decided to place Kyra's on her front.

  Also check out the armor of Fierce Deity Link once again. There you can see a moon resembling his dark element and a piece of the Triforce, the ultimate source of power in the Zelda Universe. I replaced the triforce symbol with the Dark Dragon Crest as symbol for power and you might know someone who has a moon tattoo like this...

  Little tribute to my first creation: Cass Moon.
  

  Last one is a tribute to @Dogson 's Fraenir from good old Yiffalicious. Seems like the two share quite a similar color scheme:

  

  I must admit that the boots are probably the weakest part of the setup and maybe I scrap or rework them in the future but we'll see.

  I should also rework her neck frills but I wanted to finish her for now and do the next character instead of working on her for another week.

  The name

  Kyra originates from the Greek word “kyra” meaning “lady” (a feminine take of the male Cyrus, from the Greek “kyrios” meaning “lord”). It’s also considered a variant of Kira which itself is a variant of the Irish feminine name Ciara, from the Irish Gaelic “Ciarán” meaning ‘little dark one’. What a perfect fit for the Lord of Darkness.

  Story

  Kyra is the second commander of the Seven forming the second squad together with Cyrill and Tallulah. She serves reluctantly alongside her Sister Aurelia their common leader Hoshi. Kyra is the older one of the two sisters but inhabits the aspect of darkness for a shorter period of time. After she obtained said power she marched to the doors of her sisters temple of piece and declared war to her. It lasted way to long involving many different party's with major losses on both sides but Kyra never thought about giving in.

  However, Aurelia did.

  She knew it was a personal thing by now and finally decided to surrender in order to save her Banner-man and Kyra took what she desired: land, goods and equality between the two.

  Darkness can't exist without light and the two managed to get along with each other over the centuries and reunited under the flag of Hoshi.

  Kyra is not the evil in person, but has traits some might call corrupt. She has desires for everything she can't have, searches for greater power, acts selfish and hates the idea of serving under someone. A fierce dragoness almost unnameable...almost.

  There are a few individuals she comes along quite well though. Cyrill and Kaiga might be under those individuals since their lifestyle is quite similar to Kyra's. Also Tallulah caught her eye. The small Lord of Water acts all cheeky and provocative around her, waking her deepest desires.

  Hoshi is the evil she has to bear since Kyra knows she wouldn't stand a chance against the rest of the world if she would leave the Seven Angels

  
  

  -Cyrill the Wind-

  "Flying Heart"

  Cyrill is the first dragon I ever made and he is one of my most beloved characters, even if he's not that sucessfull like others. Probably because I see a lot of depth in him that no one else has seen...till now:

  
  

  The making of

  I made Cyrill out of the body mesh of Fabienne which I scaled up in a ridiculous way. I replaced all her special traits with similar dragon features like the head, different antler and so on. I kept the textures though to show some similarity between father and daughter. In my first concept Cyrills base colors also were brown:
  
  

  Yeah, I think the final version looks a lot better...

  Since I was very bad at making custom textures back then I used the eyebrow texture inside the app as decal group and started to place some to create that face-pattern. It was however quite the fun piecing those patterns together to create on whole face mark.

  Story

  The Lord of the Wind is roaming the land never staying in one place for a long time. He moves the air and flows with it to any place he gets carried. So it's no wonder that he has at least one girl in every town.

  He is a Casanova, a scoundrel and a jerk, not caring about anything at all. His way is paved with broken hearts and he swore to himself to live life to the fullest, having as many girls as possible.

  But that hasn't always been so. Back in the old days when he lived in Greek with his love Anastasia he was a very kind and gentle person. The two decided to settle in a small forest in France, away from the turbulent civilization. A save place for Anastasia to stay as guardian spirit and also a secure home for their daughter Fabienne. But as Lord of the Wind Cyrill still had to travel and only had to chance to see his family a few weeks the whole year but he treasured the time and stayed loyal toward his wife and he loves his daughter more he would ever show.

  One day though he returned to his home only finding a field of ash left from the beautiful forest. He searched months for his family but they were nowhere to be found and one day the bitter grief overwhelmed him, grasping the thought he would never see them again.

  He turned his back on the world, assuming Anastasia and Fabienne died because he wasn’t there to help them.

  After a few weeks he was found by Hoshi, encouraging him to join forces with her to make the world a better place. He accepted and started to roam the lands again.

  He got to know Eilidh the Lord of Fire on one of his missions for Hoshi, leading to an intense and pretty longer lasting relationship. But when things started to get serious and Eilidh suggested to stay together for the rest of their lives Cyrill left her without a word, fearing that he would lose yet another family.

  Whenever he meets with Hoshi he tries to get closer to her but it seems like she is the only female that can resist his charm...for now. To get between her legs is one of his big goals for now which brought him lot of trouble with his elemental rival Thelonious who tries to defend Hoshi against him.

  He works together with Tallulah the Lord of Water and first daughter of his close friend Kaiga and has a strong affinity towards his commander Kyra, following her lead to wherever it may take him.

  Trivia

  The name

  Cyrill is a name originating from Greek meaning “Lord”. That makes kind of a pun translating his name: “Lord the Wind” which made me call him “Wind-Lord”. Also ancient Greek is full of mythology so it's kind of nice to pick a name from that language.

  The title “Flying Heart” Refers to his Casanova-like attitude.

  Game references

  I placed the Crest of Macuil/ Wind Dragon Sign from the game “Fire Emblem : Three Houses” on his forehead as an Easter-egg.

  
  

  Macuil is the “Windcaller” a dragon that can be encountered and since I like that design I got a bit influenced by that concept artwork:

  

  Later on I decided that all element related dragons that I'll make should have one of those symbols.

  
  

  
  

  -Admiral Tallulah O'Brien -

  "The Water"

  Tallulah is a special one, no one would doubt that. It seems you folks love her so much that she is till today alongside with her fellow companions Aurelia, Kyra and Hoshi still on the front page of the best characters in 2021 which makes me feel really proud!

  She can be seen as a milestone in my "career" since she is the first character featuring tons of custom meshes and I really learned how to use skin splatter effectively to make her skin look realistic. Now, with running garment system I once again tried to go all out and create a nice and fancy outfit for the little angel:

  

  
  

  The making of

  Oh well, I had quite the fight with all those fins, ruffles and webbing of hers but also wanted to improve her further as well as my skills in shaping things in blender. Tallulah also marks the turning point on how I do shading.

  The initial concept was without any concept at all >.< I just wanted to use the shark head for the first time and played around a bit, mainly focusing on gray colors (real live shark style). What came out was something pretty wierd with the look of a mole or something. I saved it as a template that later, down the road, ended up being Michelle. I changed the color scheme entirely to the blue side and that went quite nice. Later on I decided to throw all those fins and stuff on her, turning her into a real unique being. I decided to call her a half-dragon for those reasons, an gave her a place along the ranks of my Seven Angels.

  She was the first character featuring skin-splatter and transparency in such a manner like no other character of mine did before and got showered with love from you folks for the realistic skin shading. Thanks a lot!
  

  Lately I experimented with some pieces of loincloth but the results were pretty poor. I do believe I have to wait until new tech comes over if I want her to wear such things but now I changed her style over to a more classic fantasy cloth and leather dexterity character.
  
  With the latest update I made a quite drastic change on her once again and gave her the look of a One piece style Admiral of the navy. I'm pretty happy how she turned out, it'S a lot of fancy stoff on her now!
  

  Trivia

  The name

  The name Tallulah is a girl's name of Irish, Native American origin meaning "leaping water". What a perfect fit for the Lord of Water with her origins from Ireland.

  
  

  Another O'Brien, huh? The big sister of Niamh and Stiofán also deservs to have her surname mentioned.
  

  
  

  Game references:

  Tallulah is heavily inspired by Nintendo's Zora race in general and also by Mipha from BotW:

  

  I also got a bit of inspiration from FVNE-Team's Viola with that head-fin.

  
  

  Tallulah wears my interpretation of the Zora Saphire from "Ocarina of time":
  

  

  
  

  
  

  And the last one is the Crest of Indech or Water Dragon Sign from "Fire Emblem : Three Houses” that can be found on her right thigh:
  

  

  The name Indech however is not only made up by the Fire-Emblem-Team:

  Indech mac Dé Domnann ("Indech, son of the god Domnu") is a legendary figure from the Lebor Gabála Érenn of the Celtic mythology of Ireland (no joke here, check the wiki ). So in here I have Ireland once again as well as the background of someone who has a god as father. Pretty good going for my Lord of Water!
  

  Story

  Tallulah is the oldest daughter of Kaiga O'Brien, former Lord of Water and Sea-King of England. She has one younger Brother, Stiofán and a younger half-sister, Niamh, since her father married again after Tallulah's mother died in war. There is a huge age gap between the three but they come along pretty good and look after each other.

  Tallulah has no wings but with the help of her fins she is such a fast swimmer that you might call that flying too. She is a happy, cheerful, playful maybe even cheeky and naive young woman and the ocean is her daily playground.

  She loves Irish music, beer and whiskey and she can drink practically any non dragon being under the table with ease.

  Her father taught her everything he knows about his magical ability, his swordplay and and gave his best to raise her properly so she can one day become his successor as Lord of Water. This day however came way earlier than Kaiga imagined after he got severely injured in battle, causing him to loose a huge portion of his skilled swordsmanship.

  However he found a way to seal his power into his necklace and after giving it to Tallulah she has been able to control water like her father making her the new Lord of Water.

  Tallulah is the elemental rival to Eilidh and the two woman don't come along in any way so Tallulah tries to be the reasonable one or avoid Eilidh as much as possible. She is teaming up with Cyrill and Kyra while they are on missions for Hoshi and she has developed quite the interest on both her teammates. She takes her role as member of the Seven Angels serious but acts most of the time pretty over confidential, a trait she has definitely from her father.
  

  
  

  -Kaiga O'Brien-

  "The Rainmaker"

  I'm super excited to finally finish my work on this monster and I'll have to say: My goodness! I love him A LOT! He might be one of my new favorites...we'll see. So let's dive in:
  

  

  The making of

  So first of all -yes- I can't help myself but to create yet another dragon. As you might noticed I recently worked on Hoshi and that, as well as my updates on Stevie and Niamh and writing a lot of background lore lately all lead to him. Of course I had a lot of inspiration from several things but for now let's talk a bit about the basics:

  His body model is made out of Tallulah's just up-scaled and some parts replaced to get me started. The last time I did something similar was when I decided to do my very first dragon Cyrill and back then I used Fabienne as a template. That worked pretty well so why not do it again. After I had the dragon head on his neck I went over to blender to do some funny head shapes. I dragged out his forehead in the same way as I did with Niamh (since she also is his daughter) and did a few adjustments to the eye region and the muzzle to give him a really long, sharp snout.

  Now the second mayor thing I did to him was literally crushing his right shoulder. He is a veteran of war and had a mayor injury handicapping him now. In order to show this I used the draw sharp sculpt tool and cut across his whole body. The scar reached from his right shoulder across his chest to almost down the left waist and was...way to extreme (especially with textures on). To keep his sex-appeal but to also show this feature I scaled the brush a lot down and did sort of a wiggle back and forth in a way smaller area. That worked certainly well better and is now what you see. It's subtle but it's there and that was the goal.

  Next one was hair antler beard and flipper so in short the body features: The hair and the beard are made once again with “Curve → Circle + Path” technique in blender, for the antler I took Tallulah's head-spikes and extruded some areas with the subdivision surface modifier added to the mesh. The flippers are old meshes I have for a year now and it seems they still serve their purpose well. Just some scaling and there you go!

  Clothes are the basic shapes of the pullover and pants inside simply cloth pro blender addon, all I did was some scaling to make it look wider on him as well as wrapping the kimono in the same way I did with Hoshi. The belt is also “Curve → Circle + Path” mesh.

  As I also mentioned earlier I went a bit into creating weapons and I really had a lot of fun doing this mad katana!

  Coloring was a bit difficult in the beginning but after a bit of testing I made a gradient base color and worked everything around that with the metal/smoothness style I already used on Thelonious (yes, I know his section is gone for now but I'll bring him back after his rework )

  To get all of that going I had a good bunch of inspiration for all those shapes, colors, his name and all the stuff that's going on so let's go check them out:

  Trivia

  It all started with the idea that Tallulah lost her father and now joined the ranks of the Seven Angles on his behalf but the more I started to think about this background story the more "sad" I felt that I would never be able to create him because I buried him a long time ago.

  Meanwhile I created pretty much the whole O'Brien family and over the time I started to think about how he looked like and what kind of person he must have been. The idea to revive him by simply re-writing lore felt like the right step and on this point it simply doesn't matter at all. Maybe it only matters to me, tying lore on that large scale to my characters even at this point of FVNE but that's how I work and how I keep making up those characters you get to see.

  Anyway.

  His certain death changed to a sever injury causing him to call it quits and I have permission to swing the hammer:

  With this MTG-card for starters:

  

  You can tell that I adapted a good bunch of this head shape and antler as well as the Chinese beard and the color. However initially I went for the name (yes, it is spelled “Keiga” but I used “Kaiga” for a good reason)!

  The name

  So, this time I went a bit over board (maybe?) but let me show you a few funny little geeky things:

  In Japanese, there is a culture of Kanji which is a set of characters that originated from Chinese characters, and the meaning of the name changes according to the choice of Kanji characters.
  The greater number of kanji variations, the more common name is in Japan. On the other hand, a name with a few variations of kanji is unique and not very familiar to Japanese people.

  “Kaiga” has a total of 17 variations.

  Sounds like a lot?

  Not really. Just to set things into perspective “Kousei” (you might even heard this one if you're a bit into that stuff) has 264 variations and “Kouki” has even more, like 417 variations. So you can assume that Kaiga is not that familiar to Japanese people. So why all this ruckus? Well, the first thing is that that he is a mixture between a European and an Asian dragon, and his parents chose this name because it was so unique. The second thing is that those variations of “Kaiga” describe his person simply perfect: we have a lot combinations starting with “ocean” and adding things like “refinement”, “elegance”, “grace”, “sprout” and my favorite: “fang”. Come on, “ocean fang” is a super nice name for a water dragon, don't you think?

  Title section over here and hell he has a lot. As a former member of the “Seven Angels” Kaiga held the title “Lord of Water”, in England he is known and often referred to as the “Sea-King” and due to his personal favorite magic abilities he is also known as “The Rainmaker”. Maybe that's why the english weather is so bad all the time...

  Inspiration and references of all kind

  Color and further inspiration comes from this bad boy that all Monster Hunter gamer among us recognize as a Lagiacrus:

  

  The shape and style of the katana was sort of a major variation of “Yoru”, Mihawk's black sword from “One Piece” manga/anime series:

  

  
  

  It gave me a bit of a direction but as you can tell by now it looks way different (just to show you from where I get my ideas).

  Last ones are once again the Crest of Indech or Water Dragon Sign from "Fire Emblem : Three Houses” that can be found on the back of his right hand:

  
  

  And the pendant with the shape of the Zora Sapphire that he gave to Tallulah after retiring from his duties:

  
  

  
  

  Story

  Kaiga is one of the oldest members of the Seven Angels along with Thelonious. His Father was a Dragon from the northern Europe region while his mother had her origins in old Japan. Kaiga was raised in Ireland but after his father passed away making him the new Lord of Water he decided to explore his Asian roots and left the Island for a long period of time.

  He met with Hoshi, became her disciple and should soon be known as the best swordsman of his generation surpassing even his mentor.

  Kaiga came way closer to Hoshi than any of the other members of the Seven Angels and the two have a few secrets to keep but in the end after accepting Hoshi's offer to join her ranks he returned to Ireland, restored peace and established the union of his homeland.

  He married his first wife, Rosie and had his first daughter with her, Tallulah. After the tragic death of Rosie during a rebellion his bond to Tallulah became extremely strong and it took Kaiga over a century to marry again. With his second wife, Shannon he has now two children, Stiován and Niamh. The family is pretty open minded about the way of life and as Kaiga states himself but they all hold together despite the patchwork.

  He is a calm and gentle person but there is more than the eyes can see on the surfaces. Despite being a gentleman Kaiga likes the rough play-style between the sheets.

  Cyrill had become his best friend and those two formed sort of a unstoppable dream team back in the good old days with Kyra as their squad leader. However it took Kaiga and Cyrill just a few weeks to force their leader into quite the submissive role after any complete mission and this trio discovered a great way to relax.

  One thing Kaiga had to learn the hard way however was that overconfidence is the greatest enemy.

  He massively underestimated the pure strength of his enemies attack causing his guard to break and he got severely injured. Even though the wound got treated well the damage done to his shoulder joint couldn't be undone. After this battle he never had been able to fight like he was used to. Still being a formidable swordsman and spell-caster Kaiga carried on for a few years but after he found a way to transfer his water magic into his pendant he told Hoshi to resign from his post and that his daughter Tallulah will carry on as the new Lord of Water.

  Nowadays Kaiga has still a big amount if influence on Hoshi and the rest of her council but he focuses on his administrative duties towards his country.

  Conclusion

  I must say I never thought that one day I would come this far. It is really a big thing for me sitting here and looking at those characters that I made up out of my imagination calling them Seven Angels and getting such a resonance from you folks. If you check out the dragon tag inside the app you'll find most of these characters here on the very top of 2021 and that means a lot to me. I'm looking forward to add in all these guys in one picture with some cringy poses and I will HD-print that out and hang it on my wall for sure! With Thelonious "finished" all members of the Seven Angels are fully equipped and ready...for now. It has been a hell of a journey and I have learned so so many things about 3d modeling in general and doing clothes and coloring in many different ways. I would have never imagined that.

  All that is left to say is: Drop me a line of what you think and thank you for all your support!
• Blacky

  August 2021 edited August 2022

  -The Savage Union-

  -Rock Band Project-

  
  

  Entering the hall of fame in furry music history

  This is the third project of mine. It got basically kicked of by Cassidys background story I made up and I'm super happy to show this crazy bunch to you:
  

  The making of

  Feels pretty good to have all of those characters assembled here like this...

  
  

  
  

  It is a colorful bunch for sure so let's just take a look at what we have here:

  From the very beginning of my "career" as a character creator inside FVNE I made up the Idea that my first character, Cassidy Moon, is playing in a band. I mentioned this in her text inside the app because I wanted to give her a bit of a background in order to make her stand out a bit more than the rest of the content that was made back than.

  Now however I considered to use this as a base for some new characters and I started to bring said band started by only a simple background text info over here. With the "Seven Angels" dragon project finished I needed something new, something that gives me kind of a basis to work with and why not go build a band! So let's do it:

  In this project there were several things that kept the train rolling. It started with the general Idea to do more male characters. This goes well with the idea of a rock band. By that time I already had a lot of girls that would fit nice in a local event hall scene where some kind of rock/metal band is playing their gig. "How would that look like?" I asked myself.

  I'm in love with the shark head as I mentioned many times before and a grinning shark as the front man, playing guitar would go pretty nice so Stevie was born. After a short distraction with yet another very successful potential groupie -Lina- I decided to pull trough and do the rest of the band while trying to be as innovative as possible. The pun on the character "Drumstick the Rooster" from Nintendo/Rare made me do the rock star version of said character inside FVNE and by that time I already had concepts for the rest. I thought I needed someone a bit more extravagant as artists sometimes are and pretty fast I made up Julius' concepts. Claude was only a port from my existing "Rock Band" Game character to FVNE so all I had to do was simply DO it.

  The name

  So "The Savage Union" it will be.

  Why?

  I had the name after Stevie was complete and I decided that they would play some kind of hard rock/power metal. Now, there is a song called "the savage union" from the band Edguy. If you check them out you'll see that they have five guys on board:

  Two guitarists, lead vocals, drummer and bass guitar.
  

  There you have my concept.

  So yet again I decided to name my project after a song like I did the last time with the "Seven Angels".

  Midway I decided to give Julius a double role with the idea to let him play keyboard which would be no longer a classic rock band but I'm not entirely sure myself how I will do it in the end if it comes to animating some kind of concert scene or a music video. For now he's on the key's.
  

  Time to take a look at those five characters that form The Savage Union:

  -Cassidy "Cass" Moon-

  -The Rebell-

  
  

  Since I already covered her in her own section I won't repost all the suff again to prevent you from endless scrolling

  
  

  -Stiofán "Stevie" O'Brien-

  -Flamboyant Frontman-

  

  The making of

  Once again I found myself using the shark head, since I really fell in love with the deformations you can make and also I used basically the exact same color pattern like Tallulah's...with the exception that I added green and purple areas all around Stevie's body and became creative with tattoo painting inside blender. The two fish-like tattoos are from google though!

  Got a bunch of new things here for Stevie and it all started with me listening to a bit of Irish folk lately. After changing Fabienne to her current folk-style outfit I decided to give Stevie a polish in this direction too.

  Maybe you know the Irish song "The Wild Rover"?

  I've been a wild rover for many's the year
  I've spent all my money on whiskey and beer
  But now I'm returning with gold in great store
  And I never will play the wild rover no more
  
  And it's no, nay, never
  No, nay, never, no more
  Will I play the wild rover
  No, never, no more

  And so forth...this goes well with a guitar and a violin and after turning Fabienne into a fiddler-girl it's just the next logical step to adjust Stevie's outfit to his origin.

  So I threw the jacket on top of the two already existing garments and changed the color and texture of the shirt quite significantly, but don't worry. The legacy version still remains within the very same shirt, all you need to do is to enable the "Hawaii" layer in the color section and it will overwrite the existing texture. Same goes for the tank top which you can switch between white and black.

  Since I already made a flat cap for Fabienne I had to do only a few adjustments to make it fit Stevie's head as well.

  Threw some new glasses together and with the new shorts he is also ready for a stroll on the local beach. As always you can go in there and combine all garments to your liking, however I must admit that there will be some clipping. Three layers for the torso are quite hard to do because with every layer you have to go a bit further away from the shape of your character and that will cause trouble. This will only be increased by the fact that I want to create garments that look a bit more natural. With all those wrinkles it can come to unwanted effects quite easily.

  Also those pants turned into sort of a nightmare...it is really hard to make those work properly with balls between the legs to be covered. The system will bind quite nicely but when you move things around the parts that are bound to the balls will clip in and out of those bound to the legs and thighs. I don't now how to solve this properly for now but I guess we can live with that. It is definitely possible to pose him.

  
  

  Trivia

  The name

  Fancy guys need fancy names... nah just kidding: Stiofán is the Irish version of Steven, so hes nickname is Stevie and I gave him his surname O'Brien (also Irish) because he is the brother of Niamh O'Brien, also a character of mine.

  Game references

  He is like Tallulah heavily inspired by the Zora race from The Legend of Zelda and his tattoos are partially those of Mikau from Majoras Mask:

  

  Other

  He wears a necklace with a Sapphire, but a way smaller one than his half-sister Tallulah to show the connection between these two.

  Story

  He is dressed like a tropical fruit salad and a rock star-wannabe at the same time, living in chaos but with a big warm heart grinning almost the whole day. He's a goofball, a bit of a rebel and has a natural talent to cheer people up like he did with Cassidy when they first met. After a few weeks the duo started to play together and soon they decided to start their own band: “The Savage Union”. Stevie plays the lead guitar and has the backing vocals and -fortunately- a lot of people behind his back to get this project started.

  Stevie comes from an a very old family with Irish origins. He is living in Dublin with his two sisters: Tallulah and Niamh. While Niamh is his direct younger sister Tallulah is only his half sister since his father Kaiga, a dragon also known as the former Lord of Water, married again after his first wive had passed away.

  So technically Stevie is half shark and half dragon like Niamh, but he is not the type of guy to boast around with such things.

  Since Tallulah is way older and inherits the power of water there is no need for him to be worried about duties like saving the world or such things.

  Instead he can pull up the easy chair and do as he pleases...until Cassidy comes over to kick his lazy butt.

  He is devoted to his music and very caring and protective about his family and friends. Some might say he really has a golden heart.

  
  

  -Dale "Drumstick" Jackson-

  -The Legend-

  

  The making of

  Drummer and third member of the "The Savage Union"!

  I thought about doing a rooster for quite a while and googled something like this for references:

  

  Classic, pretty colorful and so on but it didn't come to life like this. I never even started to work with this. Instead I figured it would be time to do the drummer for my rock band project so let's combine this:

  ...Drums...

  ..."Drumstick"...!

  There is a furry character called Drumstick out there:

  

  This is "Drumstick the Rooster" from the game "Diddy Kong Racing", released in 1997 by Nintendo/Rare.

  His name made me think it would really be fun to throw him over to furryVNE, revamping him a bit and add him to my roster.

  The beak is made with a mixture of custom painted texture inside blender and the dragon head with little deformations. This also is not invented by me but by @Pthalo and I took his Aves as a model to learn how to do it.

  The feather textures are probably made by @Chyanna since he has the oldest avian models up on the cloud so I took those for the fluff instances. If they are made by someone else, correct me and I'll reference them instead!

  Jacket and pants and overalls are made in blender with the simply cloth pro addon.

  For the overalls I took a model for male pants and after the clean up process I extruded along his chest. For the straps I took a mirrored curve path and used a elliptic form as bevel object (that's the same technique I used to create the zipper pieces for Lina's jacket).

  With the same curve path I also did the rooster crest on his head by scaling the different vertices.

  Jacket is pretty much the same as Lina's but this time I connected it with the zip-line rather than have it open. If you don't know what I'm talking about check out my tutorial inside the forum here:

  http://forum.yiffalicious.com/discussion/3152/cloth-tutorial-linas-jacket#latest

  The glasses are reshaped from the base model I used on Roxane earlier.

  Drum kit is made with the help of this youtube tutorial:

  
  

  Trivia

  The name

  First to be clear about this nickname pun that's running wild here:

  A "Drumstick" is the complete lower part of the leg of a chicken or rooster, so this has nothing to do with the "drum stick" that we use to make noise by hitting drums. But since this name is so weirdly fitting to his person and his future job and also is a reference to the original character from Rare I couldn't resist throwing it in.

  Now "Dale" is just a name fitting for a farmer like he is and it creates a nice alliteration with his nickname.

  "Jackson" is in here because it's a powerful name in music. Like speakin' of Michael (R.i.P. my man! And don't worry I'm not intending to compare you to a chicken!)

  
  

  Game references

  Ok, this section is a bit broken since you already know that he is basically a video game character but there is a bit more I'd like to tell you.

  I made up part of his story text by using some release dates from the original game series:

  He states that he is now 37 years old and started his racing career in 1997 (date of release for "Diddy Kong Racing" on Nintendo 64) so that would mean he was like 13 or so when first sitting in a race car which is quite young. However If you check the rest of the roster from that game that could be very fitting even though he looks way older than that in the game. But he stayed for 10 years which makes him 23 when he quits his racing career in late 2007 (Diddy Kong Racing was remade for Nintendo DS in early 2007 and concludes the series with no further titles to be announced).

  Of course video game timelines won't work like this for the age of their protagonists but like I would care

  Story

  Dale was born as a simple farmer boy in Arizona. He is a many talented yet down-to-earth guy and loves making new experiences of any kind. He used to live on a large farm with his family and by the age of five he started to learn to play drums. Quite the nuisance for his grandmother but his father saw Dale's talent. Merely ten years later Dale discovered his fable for go-cart racing and only a few years later he won practically every title in the local racing scene. Right after his 21th birthday it was time for the big city and only two years later Dale reached the apex of his racing career winning the "The Mint 400", the most prestigious off-road race in the U.S.
  By that time everybody familiar to the scene had known Dale "Drumstick", however soon after this massive triumph he retired and went back to music and a bit of boxing in order to keep his shape. It went silent around the legend for quite a while but Dale was found by Stevie O'brien, who was in search for a drummer for his newly found rock band. It took Dale about a week to decide whether he would join this project or not but in the end he felt like he would have the time of his life. So here he is!

  -Julius "Lord" Sinclair-

  -Eccentric genius-

  

  The making of

  I had the name, I had the Idea, but turning those into reality to this state you can see here consumed a lot more time then I thought.

  Do you know that feeling when you search for something like forever and finally you find it, but it was so obvious and directly in front of you that you might die immediately for being so dumb? Yeah, that's me right now.

  I searched since the beginning of FVNE for an effective and unique way to do hair. I made it fluff, I made it with mesh, I checked out dogson's tutorial but I felt like nothing was my style, nothing really worked the way I wanted it to look like. Don't get me wrong, I really like the way may characters look now, and some hairstyle would be such a pain to do in blender on mesh basis (like Cassidy's) but I longed for more than just adding fluff. So I found this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqWYgrXw7Jk

  Now, that's awesome right? Well it's hard to do with the triangle limit we have now so I had to un-subdivide two times in order to cut down triangles to a usable amount. Looks pretty decent in blender but in FVNE...I don't know. The first version of Julius was done with the hair shader, the second one with texture and normal maps but those hair wouldn't come out the way I wanted them to see. I went on and made Claude's hair from a sculpted sphere, also with the normal map and hair texture on but I really looked crappy in my eyes. An then, after all this time I had the idea to use the fur shader...and it looked so nice. That's how I want hair to look like. Why the hell did it take me so much time to realize that.

  -facepalm-

  Anyway, moving on:

  Trivia

  The name

  The name Julius may be derived from Greek ιουλος (ioulos) "downy-bearded" or from Latin Jovilius "devoted to Jove". Yeah, you know it all, nothing special here besides it's old as time itself and suits him well I think.

  Now Sinclaire is way more interesting:

  The Scoto-Norman surname Sinclair comes from the Clan Sinclair, whose progenitors moved to Scotland and were given the land of Roslin, Midlothian by the King of Scots. Roslin is a village in Midlothian, Scotland, 11 kilometers (7 mi) to the south of the capital city Edinburgh.

  So I decided that Julius comes from an old Clan and that's why I located him to Edinburgh Scotland.

  Now to the title of “Lord” is a little joke I made up while writing background lore: He is no real Lord of Sinclair or whatever. While in school Stevie used to tease him by calling him “Lord” because of his behavior, attitude and way of speech. The shark managed that soon everybody called Julius only Lord and it remained till today.

  
  

  Story

  The concept was to create the counterpart of Stevie. Someone not impulsive but thoughtful, not chaotic but organized. The mastermind behind the scenes, the eccentric, self-loving being that manages everything. The multi-talent!

  Julius can be an extreme bitch, prick and a very strenuous person in general, but he is also a genius and the one who takes care of everything behind the scenes alongside Amanda. Not only that he is able to play a wide variety of instruments like piano and guitar but he is also the songwriter of the band since he used to write poems almost his entire life. He lives in his own bubble but treasures the deep friendship towards Stevie although it might not look like that all the time.

  The two learned to know each other after Julius moved with his parents from Edinburg to Dublin while he was still a little boy. The two connects a lot of years in school togeather with party's, orgies and a lot of other stuff that don't need to be mentioned here. While Stevie has been the trouble maker most of the time Julius managed to get them out of any situation due to his charismatic character. He is someone you can count on when times get really rough. This is also why he responded immediately to Stevie call. Starting a band was not Julius' goal in life but he is willing to take the opportunity and they both know if this should work out they need each other.

  
  

  -Claude Ross-

  -The Golden Boy-

  

  The making of

  Madman or messiah, that's what I ask myself a lot lately because of the horrendous amount of time I spend on those characters.

  The easy part of Claude was the concept. I played the game Rock Band 1-3 quite a while ago and I used to be the vocalist back then. So, in case you don't know, in those games you can -sort of- design your character and dress them up and stuff like that. Claude here resembles pretty much what I did back then.

  So the concept was already here, just a matter of transforming it into a furry character. I first decided to go with the bunny head, but scrapped the idea after the newest release. The mouse head came in so handy that I decided to try it out and it worked pretty well from what I can tell.

  Now the big "challenge" at first was to do some kind of afro-hair style for him and I found a pretty easy way to do it so I'll tell ya: In blender add a sphere with the subdivision surface modifier on it and go to sculpt mode. Using the "Snake Hook" tool alongside the "Drag" tool is what you're aiming for. Just experiment around a bit until you find your own flow and after roundabout an hour I had what you see here. First I went on with normal maps and textures but in the end enabling the fur authoring tool of FVNE was the way to go.

  For the rest of the garments nothing really new here.

  The tie and belts are made with the curve path+circle technique I mentioned inside my tutorial for Lina's Jacket and every other part is made with simply cloth pro addon inside blender. Shoes are modified freeware from the net. Gloves are duplicated cut outs from the hands of the original mesh exported to blender.

  If you have any questions just drop me a line and I'll try to get you covered.

  Trivia

  The name

  Starting off with the surname there is one famous guy with afro-hair that goes by the name of "Ross". I'm speaking of the American painter Bob Ross, some might know. So my original character from Rock Band indeed was named only "Bob" and looked like that but it felt simply wrong to use this combination on my smut so I changed his given name to Claude.

  Claude is a relatively common French given name for males originating from the Latin name Claudius, itself deriving from 'claudicatio' meaning "limping" or "stuttering".

  Well this time it was definitely the sound of the name instead of the meaning that made me choose it for him. I knew that he would be a Claude from his look but it has nothing to do with his personality for this time.

  Game references:

  As mentioned above already he is the furry version of my "Rock Band" character from the good old days

  Story

  Claude is the overzealous, noisy and pervy one of the band, good at going everybody on their nerves with his running mouth. He is always on the hunt for girls, with an ego probably twice the size of his body, but he really has the hots for Cassidy. She seems not to be interested in the slightest way and refers to him only with words like "kiddo" or "shorty" since he is younger and a bit smaller than herself not taking him serious at all. This however doesn't stop Claude, instead it encourages him even more to go on.

  He is kind of a rival to Stevie but also admires him for his ambitions to make a living out of their hobby and to become famous.

  Speaking of which: Claude is the lead vocalist of the band with a voice so powerful and high to shatter glass or bring back the dead. He is a bundle of energy, never standing still what makes him the perfect front man and he loves to be the one cheered at after a song is over.

  In his "normal" life is is a bit more down-to-earth though. He is working in a hospital and singing was just one way for him to relax until he found out about Stevie's plan on starting a power metal band. What perfect opportunity to jump at!

  
  

  Conclusion

  There are always two sides of the medal finishing projects like this. I'm very happy how they all turned out, I learned a ton of stuff which will help me in the future but it leaves a hole. Seems like the band is complete and so this chapter will closed as well. Fortunately I have a lot of concepts on the table and I can do probably roundabout three new characters in this universe without much thinking and I also have a lot of concepts for the oldies in terms of refinement and garments. The journey goes on and I'm glad that I managed to finish this project so fast.

  
  

  If you like what I do or if you have criticism drop me a line.

  
  

  I really enjoy the time that I can work on all those characters and I hope that it can continue a little longer.

  
  

  Till then!
  
• Blacky

  August 2021 edited December 2021

  It's that time again. Me sitting here, writing yet another chapter of my little universe. This is the fourth project I'm working on already, can you believe it?!
  

  -The Demonic Realm-
  

  Last time when I wrote a “few” lines about Kaiga I teased a little bit: Who would be so powerful to break the guard of the best swordsman in my universe crushing his shoulder and crippling him for the rest of his life?

  Well, HE certainly is:

  -Samael-

  "The Beast in Black"

  
  

  The making of

  While I made Kaiga I already had concepts for Samael in my mind. That's because I made up a scene in my mind where the two would have a epic battle. Maybe one day if that animation system and my skills would allow it I will show you what I mean but till then just enjoy some static poses

  I started of with the muscular male bovine template and did a bit of custom offsett to the canine head to get a more individual hyena-like head shape out of that base model. Also tweaked his body a bit, but nothing too fancy on that matter

  Body coloring happened the same way like on Eilidh: painting inside blender then after finishing all patterns use the fill tool inside the UV panel to get that boarder lines that I use as contour. I'll show you:

  We are Inside Texture Paint mode and I've already painted some white areas on his whole body inside the "material section 0" resembling the body mask for FVNE.
  

  

  So after you're finished with all your areas that should have a contour to them go over to the left hand panel and click the "Fill" tool:

  

  With right click change your color to black and as you can see after using the fill tool on that chest area you'll automatically get the contour of that layer you've painted earlier:

  
  

  So you have to go in there and fill every white area with black color and you'll get this:

  
  

  Ok, so the outlines are here, but it looks a bit wonky and sharp, so we'll use the soften tool on the map:

  

  With "F" Key you can adjust the radius of your brush. Be careful to select a strength value of "1" (which is default) and nothing higher than that or else you'll get strange results. Now go over your map with a few strokes, don't overdo it or you'll get mud

  

  That looks pretty decent to me, so you'll now have to save your image and put this layer on top of your base color inside FVNE:

  

  Since this outline contours are nothing else but the very edge of your map painted earlier you'll have to make sure that you add it on top of your base pattern or it won't show. There is no scaling or other magic

  
  

  Main focus however was on that heavy coat he is wearing. Tallulah's jacket which I did earlier this month was sort of a test if that belt-thingy would work and after cutting down some faces on those belts I managed to make that coat fit within the limitations.I used -as always- simply cloth pro inside blender so get a basic shape for the coat and extruded along his torso downwards and around his neck upwards to get what you see.
  

  Maybe I'll do a more advanced tutorial on clothes in the future like on Lina's Jacket.
  

  So as always nothing is disabled and he is fully functioning...besides the fact that some of his fluff still pierces trough the coat no matter what I do and at certain poses the back of the biceps area is clipping through. Second issue probably comes from un-subdividing the mesh but most of the poses work pretty decent and fixing those little details would require a lot of remodeling and testing...

  Aaanyway

  For the battle-ax I followed along a little tutorial on YouTube. If you are interested in making weapons in general or a specific shape you'll find a LOT there. After half of the video I saw enough to go on with my own design and so here it is:

  
  

  Maybe I'll add some more decals further down the road after I established more of the demon realm, we'll see. It's a pretty simple shape, but with that blunt backside it can be also used as an impact weapon.
  

  Trivia

  The name

  Samael ("Venom/Poison of God" or "Blindness of God, Left Hand of God") is an archangel in Talmudic and post-Talmudic lore; a figure who is the accuser (Ha-Satan), seducer, and destroyer.

  Although many of his functions resemble the Christian notion of Satan, to the point of being sometimes identified as a fallen angel in others he is not necessarily evil, since his functions are also regarded as resulting in good, such as destroying sinners (text from wiki).

  I really gave him a powerful name and that for a good reason: He is the main antagonist of the “Seven Angels” and is the leader of a bunch of “demons” with the goal to destroy the Seven once and for all.

  Now his title “The Beast in Black”. This goes hand in hand with his character description text. As I already declared there those aren't my lines but out of a song called “The fifth Angel” from the band “Beast in Black”. So again same thematic as on the meaning of Samael. Fallen angel, seducer, destroyer.

  Also today is the release of the latest Beast in Black song from the new album. Coincidence? Of course not Call me a madman.

  Gosh have I ever told you how much I love doing this little trivia sections?

  Story

  It seems someone managed to open the gates to the demonic realms once again...

  Samael, leader of a feared squad of grim reapers enters the world of mortals once more and they clearly know what to do: Take revenge on the celestial dragon Hoshi and her six followers who banished them from this world!

  Samael is known as an ancient evil. No weapon on this earth is capable of taking his life and his body never ages. He swings his battle-ax “dragon's nemesis” with unholy might and he will hunt down any dragon he can find.

  He is a cocky hotshot and has never had a fable for planning things but he is extremely good in adapting to the given situation and his two friends and follower appreciate that trait of him. Over the ages he has turned a bit...crazy, mad or insane. Put it like you want. However all those things make him a qualified leader for demonic standards.

  -Asmodeus the Eternal-

  
  

  
  

  The making of

  So, I finally decided to do some WIP-Stuff on Fur Affinity. If you're generally interested in those things check out my FA-Account over here:

  https://www.furaffinity.net/gallery/blackdragontemeraire/folder/1047865/WIP-s-leaks-and-spills/

  I'll post WIP every now and then over there and it's always funny how things turn out.

  Alright, it's finally time to fill the ranks with some real demons from the other world and for that I decided to do a big bad cobra guy with a bit of Egypt style clothing and the classic tribal-flame-whatever marks exclusive for those characters.

  I will probably add in a bit more jewelry on him like doing some arm and leg rings and stuff since I have some triangles left but I also wanted to show him around like NOW. I will probably take a break for a week and I felt like releasing him 85% finished is better than wait another week to finish things up.

  Also you might notice he has no...tail.

  Yeah, I thought I leave it out on him, simply doesn't felt right or it never felt that something is missing on him so I had no need to add a tail till now.

  
  

  The name

  Asmodeus is a prince of demons mostly known from the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit,

  in which he is the primary antagonist. In Peter Binsfeld's classification of demons Asmodeus represents lust. The demon is also mentioned in some Talmudic legends; for instance, in the story of the construction of the Tempel of Solomon. In the New Jerusalem Bible translation, he is described as "the worst of demons".

  So he is truly not a good guy, but he is not Egypt by lore. I first decided to give him clothes like Samael and Kaji but another metal styled guy would be way to repetitive and so I chose this outfit for him.

  So those wiki-texts are funny and all but I had a completely different reason why I named him Asmodeus the Eternal:

  Back when I was a child I watched a TV series called "Redwall" in which a giant snake called Asmodeus was one of the main antagonists. His voice was only a whisper and the most common sentence he said was something like "Asmodeussssss, come, I will show you eternity" just befor he devoured someone. Creeped the hell out of me back then. So I took this memory and carved this guy out of it.

  Also notice the pattern on the front side of his crest: I hid a pretty evil something in there:

  If you look at him directly from the front you can see some staring eyes and a freaky face looking back at you, just like something is accompanying him... locked away by the piercing chains he wears on his crest.

  I love doing those details I tell you.

  Story

  Asmodeus is an ancient evil demon with the body shape of a cobra. Some might say he is the worst demon of all. He is the right hand of Samael and he's known for his manipulative character.
  You can never tell when he's lying or telling the truth and he is able to sense the feelings of those around him and thus he can assume their thoughts.
  Asmodeus is not the man of big words in conversations, commenting things only if it's absolutely necessary or when he's asked directly. Most of the time he is lost in his own thoughts, staring in one direction without focusing anything creeping his fellow companions out. He enjoys being the freak and psychopath of the gang and doesn't do anything to change his position or reputation. He is loyal to Samael without questioning his motives and he is a cruel ruler towards his own underlings.

  
  

   -Kaji-

  "The Black Flame"
  

  

  
  

  The making of

  Furry VNE Team released their Akari quite a while ago and I was certain I wanted to do a kitsune myself but of course with my own style and maybe a male. She would need someone to play with after all. So time passed and I was working on concepts but never really found the time to properly think about how he would look like. Then I created Samael and came up with the idea to make some antagonists for my dragons. As I made clothes for Eilidh I decided to add a tail of a fox to her loincloth belt and once again my lore-making-brain kicked in.

  I made him in the same style as Samael, with texture and contour masks and decided to give him a similar clothing style since they are both on the same 'organization'.

  Needless to say I had a lot of fun designing this jacket and pants for him
  

  References:

  Of course some might have already noticed that Kurama from Naruto series stood model for him but just in case:

  
  

  Trivia

  The name

  Kaji is a Japanese given name for males and means "blaze". Since he is a kitsune (terminus for foxes in Japan) it is really fitting to give him a name from said land. Also his red fur and his title and background has a lot to do with fire. We'll get to this in a second

  Kaji obtained the title "Black Flame" from his family after mastering the unique ability of summoning black fire for the first time (also notice the pattern on his back). This is a very special kind of magic to which dragons have no access to, not even the Lord of Fire unless they posses a part of a kitsune. Black fire has the ability to burn everything no matter what material the target is made of. The kitsune however have a codex which prohibits them to use this magic against other living beings.
  

  Story

  Kaji is a charismatic guy, with a sharp mind and sometimes a even sharper tongue. He is a powerful spell-caster and a good strategist but he's no show-of.

  Kaji was a humble young man, dedicated to his studies about the different worlds that co-exist without touching and knowing about each other but that changed after the day his village got invaded by dragons, seeking the secret behind the spell that creates black fire which consumes everything.

  The commander in charge of this assault was a young dragoness named Eilidh, decorated with the title "Lord of Fire", possessed by the thought of being the first of her kind to be able to use that legendary power. Seeing only one way out of an incoming massacre Kaji explained to Eilidh that this kind of magic can only be performed by a kitsune himself or by someone wearing a part of a kitsune on his clothes. Eilidh suggested to let Kaji's people live if he would give her such a part and he willingly let her cut one of his tails.

  Eilidh held her word and let the remaining villagers live but Kaji swore to take revenge for his people and take back his tail, removing this way to dangerous power from the dragoness once and for all.

  From his studies he knew that he would theoretically be able to make contact with another world, finding someone who would share his goals...and he managed to do so.

  Kaji called for someone who would help him fight dragons and Samael answered. He was, of course, pretty thankful to get access to this word but after the two spend some time together they grew extremely close friends.

  However there is one thing that stands between them. While Samael wants to get rid of the order of dragons known as the "Seven Angels" Kaji still believes in the good among them and he only wants to take revenge on Eilidh in particular to restore balance but for now he decided to travel with Samael and his gang of reapers.

  
  

  -Miyuki, Lady of Winter-

  

  The making of

  I'm finally done with another massive project. Miyuki gave me quite the hard time over the last two-three days but I enjoyed it so much! Most of the time I tend to say it was “easy” to do some characters but she was way different. Fuck off it was war!
  
  I refined her over and over and made lots of changes while I was working on her to create something unique. I changed her face literally 15 times or so and started over completely from scratch midway as I noticed that custom offsets won't get me where I wanted to go.

  So the plan was the following:

  -Female mate of Kaji thus a kitsune

  -Cute AND "lady-like"

  -Long legs, slender body but busty

  -winter theme

  -is part of the demonic realm project thus needs some evil traits

  I worked on her face for an entire day to get what I wanted to see. The first version was with the fox head but with a way to thin snout. the second version was already big-canine head but I messed up with the offsets so I had to reset everything until I gut here. I also had an entirely different plan for the hairstyle and color but it simply didn't look right so I scraped that too.

  I refined her over and over and made so many changes while I was creating her to get a pretty unique character but now it feels good.
  

  
  

  As special installment you can drag down her thong and the thing I probably like the most is the fact that she has two faces. Her cute, original one of course, and the mask-face turning her into an evil monster:
  

  
  

  It's quite interesting how everything on her immediately changes to the look of an evil witch when she puts it on.
  

  Trivia

  The name

  Miyuki is of course a name of Japanese meaning when written with the right Kanji "beautiful snow". I chose this one like a month ago when I didn't even know how exactly she should look like but it's a super cute name and well fitting for a winter themed character.

  
  

  Now the title "Lady of Winter".

  
  

  Like Kaji she is a tribe leader and in japan there exist two mayor types of fox-species, namely the Ezo red fox and surprisingly the Arctic fox. While Kaji represents the red colored vulpine Miyuki comes from the north being a polar fox spirit.

  
  

  Lady of Winter is also the name of a song (yes, music kicks in once again) By Allen-Lande. On day I simply decided to do a character fitting those lines:

  Captured in a frozen smile
  

  Snowflakes in the wind

  She is cold as ice within

  
  

  Winterborn December child

  Do you ever dream of spring?

  When the birds begin to sing

  
  

  Silver moon in the sky

  Lonely witness to her silent cry

  
  

  Lady of winter

  I've been waiting in the cold

  Now my love is growing old

  Lady of winter

  Will you ever show me light

  Or is it dark behind your white?

  
  

  I think it's pretty beautiful but also sad and dark.

  
  

  Game references

  I also got a lot of inspiration from the game Okami and those curved jewels surrounding her are my interpretation of the Tundra Beads Rosary (「勾玉 Magatama; Curved jewels).

  
  

  
  

  It's a class of Divine Instrument that Amaterasu and Chibiterasu can obtain. When equipped, a Rosary appears as a string of magatama beads circling their neck; when used, it whips out a long chain of holy energy.

  
  

  Also imitated some patterns and stole a lot from myself to create a look that is well rounded.

  
  

  Story

  Miyuki is a pretty young fox spirit living in the northern tundra of Japan. Her parents both died in battle when she was a little puppy. The tears she cried after that loss froze solid immediately awakening her true magical power. She got raised by her grandmother, teaching her everything she knew about fighting and magic and Miyuki decided to become the strongest magician among the whole kitsune tribes. Her hard work soon bore fruit and she became "Lady of Winter" the title for the leader of the northern kitsune tribe. Soon after that she started to negotiate with the southern tribe known as the Blackflame-clan meeting Kaji, their tribe leader for the first time. She immediately fell helplessly in love with the kitsune and fortunately Kaji showed his interest as well. The two came close to each other pretty quick and decided to unite the two tribes with a pact. Though every tribe has it's own territory the help each other out instead of just co-existing without interacting with each other like hundreds of years.

  Miyuki has a playful nature and she cares a lot about the spirit realm but for the "normal" world she has no feelings at all.

  She is protective about her kind and she would do anything if it helps Kaji...like really anything.

  After Kaji lost his tail to Eilidh the two decide to march against the dragons and take back their stolen power in order to retore balance.
• Blacky

  August 2021 edited December 2021

  
  

  -Lina Bergström-

  

  The making of

  I'm not the only one who had the idea to create a reindeer with those belts and bells all over them but since no one did it inside furry VNE yet I thought I give it a shot! I got inspired by Scappo's "reindeer games".

  But you know me. It wouldn't be a Blacky character if there is no other garment or a bit of punk-rock flavor.

  So I simply took the idea and did what I can do best: Piercings, colorful wild hair and a lather jacket.

  Since @Static_snowflake already asked me to share a making of for those garments there will be a separate detailed post so stay tuned!

  Trivia

  The name

  Do you know that feeling when you look at somebody and you could tell his/her name by just doing so? Yeah, that's what happened here.

  I googled around and since Lina is a name mostly used in German, but also in Sweden I checked some Swedish surnames and went with Bergström because "Berg" means "mountain" and I really love mountains. Also love the Sky Temple map inside the App most which sits on top of a mountain and the winter theme is nice for a winter animal.

  Fun fact: reindeer are very popular in Sweden too so...let's go!
• Blacky

  August 2021 edited December 2021

  -Naomi "Ace" Blake-

  -The Unicorn-

  Ace is finally here and what a journey she had. I checked the date and it was the 12.12 of 2020 that I worked on her for the last time...until now

  

  The making of

  Half a year ago it was clear that I want to create a unicorn. Back than @THEGGH released the first version of his Amalthea, the first character with the unicorn tag. I was making my own unicorn back then but layed it in ice for quite a while.
  

  Her working title was just "Ace" for a reason. She has a big ace of spades like tattoo on her back.

  Now, you might say that this is a good start, but to me it just looked way to generic and a bit like Rarity from MLP. I'm no fan of copyright characters so I put her on ice, not knowing what to do with her...until yesterday while I was updating Sophia.
  

  With some fresh inspiration from my own character I decided to make a horse (yes, a horse) in the style of Cassidy and Sophia. What better template to use for such a task than my very own from half a year ago, just without the horn. The fundamentals were already set. The collar, the tail, the style of the hair and mane and the big tattoo remained, but I changed her color scheme completely, removing the latex gloves and throwing in some fur and fluff. I changed her from a mid 30 looking to a 23 year old girl. While I was working I finally noticed that I had disabled the horn, so I turned it back on, changing it's color also and decided it can stay since it fits her so well.

  Story

  Naomi is the best friend of of Sophia back from high school and the two are quite close to Cassidy as well. While they all enjoy the hard'n heavy type of music and sex they live completely different lifes.

  Naomi is a very kind and social person and she makes new friends so easy that she thinks some kind of magic is happening around her. She moved out from her parents home into a shared apartment with Sophia and is now very eager to discover herself and her sexuality.
  

  Trivia

  The name

  Naomi simply means "pleasant one" or "beautiful" and has it's origins from the Old Testament so it's a Jewish name. Fits her well in my eyes

  Blake as surname has two meanings "black of hair" or "pale"...pretty funny to have a word meaning two opposites, but I like this one a lot, so no deeper sense in this one.

  Now since "Ace" was the working title here and I wanted to carry over some of that legacy of a old character concept of mine which never saw the light of day I let it become Naomi's nickname. The big tattoo also remained so I'm quite happy with that nickname for her.
• Craket

  September 2021

  Happy to see you put so much effort into these characters and finishing up a roster. Especially love what you did with the garments feature, you are a monster with that! I dont have the patience to digitally sow a character their clothing in detail like you did. I might end up stealing from you if you dont mind :P
• Blacky

  September 2021

  Especially love what you did with the garments feature, you are a monster with that!

  My goodness @Craket! I guess that's THE comment I longed for this entire time.

  So thank you very much and...yeah..the idea was to go all out on that garment system!

  Hard to tell by now who really was the first with clothing inside the app but fact is that my very first build of Cass Moon from one year, two months ago already had boots and glasses! I always wanted to do more than just the "blank" character.

  I do believe we had this conversation elsewhere but since you are the master of fluff and fur I will try to become the master of clothing. To reach the next level however I'll have to learn how to do real texturing not just coloring the individual parts of those clothes but on the other hand...I don't know if THAT effort would be worth.

  I might end up stealing from you if you don't mind :P

  Glad to hear that so yeah, come on board 'cause that's what it's for!

  Someone has to carry on that legacy of mine when I stop creating things over here one day :P

  Nah everything fine for now. Can't really tell for how long I'm gonna be here. I set myself milestones that I want to see finished and creating a rock band was one of them. To be honest, back when I did the dragon project I didn't believe I would finish that at any time since I was way slower in creating things than now.

  Next milestone is get every character of mine wrapped up in textiles...except Valencia. She's already wrapped up with that harness good enough
• Blacky

  September 2021 edited December 2021

  -Valencia de la Vega-

  "The Spanish wildcat"

  So today let's talk about one of my flagships, the lady with one of the most votes in my entire roster...by far!

  Valencia is currently placing around the lower top 10 characters of the entire year 2020, which makes me a very happy guy.

  
  

  Tanks for your votes!

  
  

  The making of

  The Iberian lynx can be found in Spain and I love the look of this wild cat so I transferred the characteristic cheek-fluff and ear coloring to Valencia. For the rest of her body I decided to go with a simple lion-like color pattern. That's why she states she is half lynx and half lion.

  I imagined Valencia secretly being a lot more submissive than you might think when you see her first, so I figured it would be fun seeing such a big, muscular character with harness and ball gag, eventually adding more such features in the futur...as triangle limit might allow.

  The funny thing is thath while I was working on her I had the feeling she turned out pretty good though I never thought that she would be so good. To be honest she hasn't been one of my favorite characters till now, but don't worry, I still like her quite much and she will get what she deserves in the future.

  Story

  Valencia is a very harsh and direct person. She says what she thinks and does what she likes.

  In the past no guy could give her what she needed, they were all "little wimps" in her eyes. You can probably tell by now that she never had any close friends since she affronted everybody sooner or later.

  Having such an unsuccessfully social life she decided to do her own thing. While she was in high school she discovered weightlifting and bodybuilding for herself, soon being very successfully and make a living out of that, but frightening away the males more than ever.

  The few relationships she had were very short living and not that happy to even mention and she became frustrated especially because she reached the age of 30 by that time. All she ever wanted was being understood by someone and giving up control just for a short amount of time. Being strong all the time is very exhausting and Valencia had to be strong her whole life.

  She decided to search for a way to get in contact with the type of male she desired and here she is, ready to submit.

  Trivia

  The name

  Valencia is a Spanish girl's name meaning "brave, strong" and I figured that that name would fit perfect for her by all means. She is a tall grown woman with a pretty muscular body shape, a true beast so to say.

  Her surname however indicates that she might be part of a high class family, since De la Vega, meaning "of the meadows" was popular among the Spanish nobility. I tried to resemble this aspects by adding the anklet and the big jewel on her tail.
• Blacky

  September 2021 edited December 2021

  -Katherine "Kate" de la Vega-

  -Shut-in-

  
  

  The making of

  I had Valencia in hand and I was thinking about making clothes for her, but with that bondage harness on her and pretty much no triangles left that wouldn't work. However I also had concepts for over a month on a new girl that got stalled because of the Savage Union up there.

  So I grabbed Valencias base model and scaled her down a bit, changed pretty much every slider to give her a really slim figure and went into custom offset mode. I dragged out the shoulders and hips to create a bit of a rugged surface for the fur to settle and it worked pretty well for that purpose. Also did a bit of a tweaking to her body to make her like really thin indicating even the rip cage a bit. Now comes the most important thing: the face! I grabbed the eye-area and dragged it up for quite the amount this required a bit of testing and switching back and forth from blender to FVNE to make it look right, adjusting sclera and pupils alike to give her a cute look when the eyes are wide open and a really devious one when she closes them half.

  I feel like I'm in painter-mode these days, working with my favorite color scheme so I made a few textures for her like those killer eye-shadow and placed some dots on her body to round things up. Placing fur authoring on top of those dots and lines gives quite the nice effect. Her pattern is also almost completely non-symmetrical to make her a bit more natural.

  Have I told you already that I hate symmetry?

  I made some custom hair too, but scrapped the idea entirely for a simple reason: it was way so long and would have covered up her face to much and shortening it would have looked simply wrong so in the end I decided that the good old fluff would do nicely on her.

  Now, garments: I stole from myself and grabbed Michelle's bra and the ribbon from back then. With proportional editing on inside blender it's no problem to adjust those to your liking.

  Panties are kind of new with old ideas: put some transparency onto the important places! For that I extruded all the deep purple area you can see and extruded again along the edges at random to get those wrinkles. Slap some texture on and you're finished!

  Trivia

  The name

  The name Catherine (yes with C) is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "pure". Catherine is one of the oldest and most consistently well-used girl's names with endless variations and nicknames. The Catherine form feels more gently old-fashioned and feminine than the more popular K versions.

  Aha, that's good to hear because my Katherine is not old fashioned so she'll get the K!

  Most stylish nickname for Katherine right now: Kate...simple as that!

  De la Vega...where have I heard this one again? Oh snap! Of course Valencia!

  De la Vega is meaning "of the meadows"like I covered on Valencia's article but just to make things whole. It was popular in Spanish nobility so the two might come out of a high class house after all!

  Story

  Yeah, it's of course no funny coincidence that I had chosen this last name. Like I said in the making off Katherine is made from Valencias body and has a lot of body features in common with her...except the enormous bust maybe. Both have purple/reddish hair features and both are quite sporty. Now while Valencia is a real boaster and tends to shy people away with her extreme open and blunt way of speaking to them Katherine is a complete different person.

  She is timid when engaging new people and feels only comfortable when she's alone in her room, closing the door, locking the world away. She lives the digital life and tries to speak to people as less as possible. She knows of her "disease" called social phobia but all to well. Now however she recognized that all that lead her to depression and she decided to fight against her sometimes strange head.

  Katherine is a gentle soul and definitely not body shy but it's kind of hard for her to let other people near her so you have to do some work to get close to her but you won't regret it I tell you!
• Blacky

  September 2021 edited November 2021

  Alright, it's finally time to speak a bit about my evil kitty cat!

  I missed out on her for way to long but now's the time to show her around:

  -Shiro McQueen-

  

  The making of

  Shiro was the second feline I made because of Valencia's huge success, but this time I wanted to create a domestic cat. I kind of took the Siamese cat as reference for her but really soon started to make my own thing out of her:

  

  Doing garments for her was a pretty spontaneous thing but I figured that those really almost nothing type lingerie would suit her pretty well. I gave her that curvy body after all to wear such things...

  Also got inspired by @DankusCrankus hot pants model for their Vanessa Fox.

  Always wanted to do a blouse with knot optic but never had the character for that but then came Shiro! All those four pieces go well with each other and I really like how she turned out now. I play with the thought to give her some kind of shoes but not sure how they should look like so that's postponed for now. I still have the capacity though.

  If you have any suggestions feel free to let me know!

  Story

  Shiro is a real bitch. She has a spiteful and moody nature and is over all straight to the point. She only needs guys for the one thing and doesn't believe in things like "true love" or "steady relationships" at all after she got dumped the really bad way back in high school. despite being a real asshole she knows how to play her cards to get what she wants. After the fun her "partner" is allowed to leave and she relly enjoys the priceless faces after saying that directly to the poor guy. She has high standards and had become a little sadist over the last two years, however there is one person she seems to be attractet to more than she would ever admit: her best friend Giuliana Moon. The two went to the same school and had become close friends over the time. While Shiro was the older and braver one she always felt protective about Giuli and started to develop feelings towards her that became stronger than simple friendship...

  Trivia

  The name

  Shiro is a Japanese name for males and means "the fourth son".

  -WTF Blacky, you messed up like hell on this one!-

  Nope, didn't xD

  Shiro also means "white" or "whitey" if you consider it as a name for a dog or a cat. Shiro is just the noun version of the adjective shiroi, which means "white" as well, but can be used to describe something that is white. For example, shiroi ookami is "white wolf". Since Siamese cats are in general mostly white and come from Asia (Thailand) that would be the perfect name...but I went away from the pure white palette and decided to give her more yellow and brown tones. The name still stayed.
  

  McQueen is a English-language surname derived from Scotish Gaelic. So basically she is like Giulia and a big bunch of my characters from the UK. I also picked that name for a second reason since "Queen" in her name would suit her character and behaviour quite well.
• Craket

  September 2021

  Holy shit, those posts start to run out of hand! I never thought I would write down like 4-5 pages of text solely on one character and I really have to stop now because I'm sitting here way to long already.
  
  Who reads this anyway???

  
  To be honest, Im not reading everything. I kinda skim things since there really is too much to take in. But it is befitting your thread tho so do whatever you want really.
  
• Blacky

  September 2021

  Yeah, I thought so too xD .

  Anyway this will become sort of an archive for ideas when it comes to animations.

  ...so do whatever you want really.

  Always will do
  
• Blacky

  September 2021 edited November 2021

  -Anastasia Dubois-

  "Nature's Spirit"

  Time to make my queen of the forest really shine!
  

  
  

  The making of

  There were two things that made me start to work on a female deer:

  -I was planning to create Fabienne's mother

  -I saw many other creators who made their own deer and I was like: I can do that better  (no offence there!)

  So I grabbed the ears of Fabienne, made a new antler model and to give her a unique touch I deformed the old bracelet of Cass to make something like a tiara. Working the Hair-Fluff around this tiara was a really fun process. Fun fact: I worked almost the entire process with the canine head model until at the very end; I reconsidered using the horse-fantasy head. Good decision, believe me 

  Now in terms of garments bringing her to the next level was quite challenging and it took me a while to find something that would suit her. The red dress I had on her the last time was pretty good, but the new one felt even better so I decided to focus entirely on a new outfit instead of working things around the old one. I always thought she's more like a classic fantasy character then a regular deer and so I checked out some fantasy elf designs to come up with what you can see now. I planned to do even more for her but the triangle limit came in the way and this time I couldn't cut down the faces without losing the beautiful shape of all these ruffles and I also wanted to have those chains on her antler in (planned that the last time already but forgot about it <.<). Better keep some high quality pieces than having a ton of average things on her. So this time no three layers of clothes packed on her like on others.

  Anway.

  I hope you enjoy her!
  

  Trivia

  The name

  There are several reasons for me naming her Anastasia:

  The names origin is in the Greek language which is the first connection between Cyrill and Anastasia since both of their given names are from Greek. Also ancient Greek is a nice place for mythology
  

  The meaning of her name is "resurrection" which refers to one of her ability's as a guardian spirit. She will be resurrected after she passes away.

  The Surname "Dubois" is from French and English (Norman and Huguenot).It’s a topographic name for someone who lived in a wood. I chose this one because of her background story I made up for her. She's a guardian spirit of the woods

  Story

  Anastasia was born on Kefalonia, the sixth largest island of Greek. Her parents were the guardian spirits of the woodlands there and she was told that one day she had to travel to find her own forest. She is a playful and very kind soul and loves nature more than anything. On a bright yet windy day she decided to leave the forest and go for a walk on the beach where a dragon landed right in front of her. Brave as she was she asked him about his name. All he answered was "I am the Wind" and he left with a bright grin on his face. From that day on Anastasia couldn't think of any other person.

  They both got close to each other and years later they decided to search a new place for Anastasia to stay.

  She found a new home in a small forest in France, where she gave birth to her daughter Fabienne. By that time she already knew that she would be alone with her child for most of the time since the Wind can't stay in one place for too long.

  One day however, a few days after Cyrill had to leave once again she woke up by the smell of smoke rising to her nose. Responsible for setting the forest ablaze was a group of Kitsune lead by Kaji to capture Anastasia and Fabienne to blackmail Cyrill. Anastasia however managed to help her daughter to flee from the ambush and stayed to fight against the intruders with little hope to success. Kaji insisted to let everyone flee and only challenged Anastasia in a one on one combat. Losing her power while more and more trees started to burn Anastasia finally surrendered herself over to the Kitsune. Kaji promised that he means no harm to her but is only interested in her husband and the other dragons calling themselves the “Seven Angels”.
• Blacky

  September 2021 edited January 2022

  -Fabienne Dubois-

  "Bard of the Wind"

  Fabienne is my second character ever made and I am quite happy with how she turned out despite having pretty much no idea what I was doing back then. She certainly is an individual of her own.

  
  

  The making of

  So, you might ask yourself "what is she?". Yeah, good question. I decided to declare her as a half-breed between a dragon and a deer, because of her antler, the fancy tail and wild hair. I had fun experimenting around with fluff deformation and started to make my own meshes so I wanted to create something unique which I do believe was a success. Because of her wild hair I decided to give her some kind of affinity to the wind element (like in JRPG's) and I went with that bright green color. The little sign on her forehead is also a symbol for the wind and rounds it up.

  Now the idea to turn her into a bard with an Irish folk touch really took some time to develop. In short again background story helped me out and while I was working on the Savage Union project I listened to a lot of Irish Folk Punk Rock whatever music, sparking the idea to give her a more sassy and cheeky personality and with that the clothes came in on their own...more or less at least.

  
  

  Trivia

  The name

  Her first given name Fabienne by her mother is the French form of the Roman name Fabius and therefore has a Latin origin. It probably goes back to the word "fabis", which means "noble". The interpretation of the name would therefore be "the noble". Another meaning however goes back to the word "faba", which can be translated as "the bean" and leads to the interpretation "little bean". So either way both interpretations kind of fit :P

  
  

  Her surname Dubois is of course the same as her mothers since Cyrill has none.
  

  
  is's from French and English (Norman and Huguenot). A topographic name for someone who lived in a wood.
  

  
  

  Story

  Fabienne is the first born daughter of Cyrill the Wind and Anastasia Dubois. She grew up in a small forest in France with a father loving her over all things but never be able to see her more than a few weeks the whole year and a very caring mother. Anastasia told her daughter that her father was the Wind itself and he had to travel the land for reasons she would not understand yet.

  Like her father Fabienne never sits still, venturing around her forest and beyond it every day but also returning to her home every now and then after finishing her adventure. One day however she had to flee from her home once and for all since it got burned down and plundered by raiders, leaving her mother behind and till today never returned but traveling around the globe to find the only family she believes she still has: Cyrill the Wind.

  She acts a bit cautious at first when meeting new people but she also has a very nosy, sassy and bubbly personality.

  Since she has dragon blood and the powers of a forest spirit Fabienne is capable of many magic things and has quit a long life span. Her violin play inspires people around her and enabling them to surpass oneself. She is a born bard some might say.

  She can hear other half-dragons calling her in her dreams and it was only a matter of time till she would find herself on Ireland, domain of the Lord of Water with his three children.

  Fabienne comes along extremely well with Niamh and Stevie, developing feelings for them pretty fast but after some months of playing Irish folk music alongside Stevie’s band she decided that she had to leave once again to find her father.
• Blacky

  September 2021 edited December 2021

   
  
• Blacky

  September 2021 edited November 2021

  It's FINALLY time to talk about Niamh for a bit. She's always been the more exotic character in my roster and now I decided to lift her up a bit:
  

  -Niamh O'Brien-

  -Water Princess-

  

  The making of

  So Niamh started as an experiment in every way. Be it mesh as garment, coloration or messing with shaft shapes.

  All started with me checking my characters and I thought something like: Tallulah was quite the success, let's do it again. I took her body model, changed a few sliders and made that crazy head shape thingy. Now that we have custom offsets inside FVNE I was able to transfer her unique look over to her head rather than using mesh as garment with normal blending. All I wanted to do was using a limited palette of colors, some nice transitions of those and a bit unique shape. If you check back the very first build of her she doesn't look like a classic character of mine. Niamh has always been bit of a playground and that's why I changed her assets so often and so radical. I never had concepts nor an big idea what to do with her besides the fact that I would call her Tallulah's sister. Now however with all that lore I started to make up I feel like she's ready for the world.

  Trivia

  The name

  So I was looking for an Irish name with some connection to maybe dragons or mythology in general and what i found was this: Niamh is an Irish feminine given name meaning "bright" or "radiant", In Irish mythology Niamh is the daughter of the god of the sea, and one of the queens of the land of eternal youth.

  Well that's so fitting I can't tell you how much I like this background:

  Story

  Niamh is the youngest daughter of the Sea-King of England, Kaiga O'Brien, the former "Lord of the Water". She is half dragon, half shark and has an older brother, Stevie and a way older half-sister, Tallulah. She has a bubbly nature around her close friends and her family but acts rather distant when meeting new people.

  Even though Niamh has dragon blood in her veins giving her extreme longevity and maybe even magical power she doesn't care much about that. She's going to college and is struggling with her future. Niamh has always been sort of an outsider. Her apearence made people wonder and the fact that she's no normal girl wasn't helping at all. She's been the freak almost her entire life but fortunately she has a family backing her in every situation, especially her brother Stevie.

  She admires Tallulah for her strong will and sunny nature and want's to become like her. This also lead to a little secret affair between the two but ended after Tallulah inherited the title of "Lord of Water".

  Soon after that she started to question herself if there are other half dragons like her out there and how they would be like. Only a few weeks later after a party she stumbled over a little girl with antler on her head and green hair. The little one introduced herself as Fabienne Noelani and almost immediately the two felt some kind of strong connection between them. They noticed really quick that they are on the same wavelength which lead to a pretty intense relationship for a few months but Fabienne told her she had to move. She promised Niamh that she would stay in contact with her and return after her search would be finished.

  Conclusion

  Working on Niamh is always a spontaneous thing for me but now I actively decided to fully equip her and give her some background with Fabienne. Also you might have noticed that I had to do some lore changes by reviving the Sea-Lord of England. So you can tell by now that I'm planning on bringing another real dragon over to FVNE with a lot of custom offsets. Don't know when this will happen but Kaiga will come and pay you a visit!
• Blacky

  September 2021 edited November 2021

  It's finally time to bring back someone really special to me. I never touched her ever since the first release for many reasons, but lately I returned to her and instantly fell in love with her again. I decided to wipe out the major problem on her: the trunk. And if you ask: but it's still there? WTF???

  Of course it is, as a offset of her very head!
  

   -Shasta Acheampong-

  "Traveller between worlds"

  

  The making of

  Being a pioneer is what I truly love and what I' aiming for. I try to do something new every now and then just like here and I also try to increase the diversity in my roster so, yeah, let's do a elephant!

  almost half a year ago I played around in blender and I thought like: "hell, an elephant character would have been the perfect fit in old yiffalicious, why not bring it to FVNE!"

  Yeah and then I realized that I suck at 3d-modeling and it would not happen since I'm not that good.

  Well, now I am.

  Since the fantasy horse head feels like a "jack of all trades" head to me I went with that. The old version of her featured a trunk as a garment but it felt kind of hard to connect it with the head to make it look right and the biggest problem for the future would be that her expressions would have been completely frozen since it is was just a mesh head replacing the old face like a mask. Now with the custom offset function I returned to her and decided to go all out once again and give her a real face 

  My plans would be that I will make some 'expressions' inside blender to move the trunk left and right and maybe curl it up or something like this. Since those expressions are slider based you would get all different positions out of that and it seems to be a pretty good option for animations to make her come alive. So the reason why I haven't implemented that is simple: Maybe in the future there will be soft-body assignments and I could use that for the trunk to give it real physics. Who knows? I certainly have plans and for those who thought I would drop her: Nope, she's way to awesome to me

  Clothing is nothing super special, however I love how the sandals turned out. I also used some African-style texture on those as well as on her pants. All in all she is now pretty well rounded and I guess I call her finished for now.

  
  

  Trivia

  Shasta is a pretty fancy name, but I picked it for a specific reason: originating in the Sahara her given name means "Precious Water". Very fitting for a 41 year old matriarch guiding her herd around the savanna to the next known water location in the desert.

  Acheampong on the other half is an African surname meaning "destined for greatness" and hell she is. I hope one day she'll make me rise to fame

  Quite the ambitious way to express my believe that she will skyrocket and everyone will speak of her...yeah let's keep the feet on the ground.

  However I do believe that she is quite unique in many ways and I want to inspire and encourage you folks to do your own things as well and start thinking outside the box. The custom offset feature is such a sick implementation!
  

  Story

  Shasta lived her live always on the run. She never stayed in one place longer than two nights and had seen pretty much everything what you can see.

  Meeting new people was her daily bread and while she was on her way without a destination she learned five different languages.

  Being born as an child of the savanna she soon wanted to know what's beyond the horizon and desired to break out of her family clan driven by a strange force inside her. Some kind of inner voice told her that there must be more than walking around in circles, living a tradition life in the desert with her people. As soon as she turned eighteen she left without a word, searching for an answer.

  In that time she experienced multiple escapades of many kinds and after she had seen every country she decided to settle down and find herself a partner for the more quiet but passionate days.
• Blacky

  October 2021 edited December 2021

   
  
• Craket

  October 2021

  Thanks for the contour tutorial, I was about to do things manually
  
• Blacky

  October 2021

  You're welcome. Yes, I figured such thing after you wrote those lines inside the app. Always glad to help you out as well
  
• Blacky

  October 2021 edited December 2021

   
  
• Blacky

  October 2021 edited December 2021

   
• Brownmane

  October 2021

  @Blacky
  

  All that is left to say is: Drop me a line of what you think and thank you for all your support!

  Congratulations on reaching this milestone! You've been going at quite the breakneck pace, something I definitely can't boast. I've fallen hopelessly behind on my learning and it's the major sticking point with every project I've got in the works; always run straight into a wall of I-don't-know-how-to-do-this and then get discouraged by the amount of tutorials to skim through in order to find the few specific things I need for a given problem. Haven't even gotten around to figuring out Substance Painter yet so I can do some work on normal maps, for instance. With IRL bullshit always getting in the way, I can't really make time commitments where the estimated time required is a big, fat question mark. Hard to plan around an X-factor like that, as it turns out. Hopefully, one upcoming bit of IRL bullshit will be of some help here, though, as it involves study of 3D art. Should be easy enough to sneak some work relevant to my FVNE projects into the mix, and then properly finish things off on my free time.
  
  All in all, everything looks good. I do wish you'd have higher resolution shots on display in this thread, though, some of us are too lazy to fire up the game to check things out in greater detail. Only thing that could use improvement, from what I can see, is the texture of the embroidery on the kimonos; it look a bit flat. Guess you're in the same boat as me and need to tackle custom normal maps next, eh? From what I've seen, it looks to be simple enough once you know the tools; just paint on the mesh and watch the illusion of depth appear. Since you don't seem to suffer from chronic procrastination like yours truly, getting to know the tools shouldn't be much of an issue.
  
• Blacky

  October 2021 edited October 2021

  Congratulations on reaching this milestone! You've been going at quite the breakneck pace, something I definitely can't boast.

  Thanks for your words and no need to hurry! I am a ambitious and passionate individual and when I decide to go all out I do it. I also got way more efficient at what I'm doing and I'm willing to hone this to perfection.

  always run straight into a wall of I-don't-know-how-to-do-this and then get discouraged by the amount of tutorials to skim through in order to find the few specific things I need for a given problem.

  I kind of know what you're talking about but maybe do it step by step. I decided that I want to do katanas so I picked the very first tutorial on YouTube that popped out and followed along. Now I can do katanas. Yes, it sounds so simple and also a bit asshole-ish but I learned a lot by simply doing things and every step forward brings you to the net step and you are adding up so many things that you consider things simple that were impossible a month ago. I consider myself as a quick learner and good at understanding things though...

  I do wish you'd have higher resolution shots on display in this thread

  Yeah, something that bugs me also...I use ultra settings for the app, export the screenshots to imgur and post the URL to get the pics in here, but it seems that a lot of detail is getting lost on that journey. Maybe I try a different screen capture method than the in game screenshot function or if you have any concrete methods you are using I'm happy to hear it

  Only thing that could use improvement, from what I can see, is the texture of the embroidery on the kimonos; it look a bit flat.

  I'm definitely on the same page with you, although I already use normal maps. They are just so small tiled that they don't show up on shots from far away. If you check out a close up shot inside the app they show up and I don't want to overdo it by turning them up that much since it would look like the cloth is super rugged. Maybe I'll have to find some middle path on that in the future. Leather and such things work pretty good though.

  Since you don't seem to suffer from chronic procrastination like yours truly, getting to know the tools shouldn't be much of an issue.

  Yeah, I'm a workaholic...kind of. Also my time is pretty limited so I want to pump out as much as possible. The goals for now is full equipment on every character of mine. Meanwhile I'm working on the next character in the style of Samael.

  It's gonna be awesome I guess
  
• Craket

  October 2021

  Just you wait until you have to maybe update them

  But regardless, yeah you do have the most elaborate characters currently. Your use of clothing is awesome and I wont be able to get into that any time soon myself. Im just still focusing on good nudity Although, I do realize that a clothed character makes their nudity even better oddly enough.
  
• Blacky

  October 2021

  Just you wait until you have to maybe update them

  Yeah, you have a point there indeed, but I am confident as ever that I'll manage to get it wo work as well. In fact having only half as many characters as you might it make easier

  Nah, just kidding.
  

  While I'm creating all this stuff I also see a lot of issues that currently aren't working well and I don't want to imagine how it would look like in motion. Male pants are an excellent example for this. It will be hell to let balls disappear while a character is moving with the current binding technique.

  Also those pants look super wierd if a character has somewhat bigger things down there...

  Im just still focusing on good nudity

  And you're doing it extremely well! If you have the talent for one thing hone it to perfection! For me your Ollier and SijeSije are indeed one of the best looking nude characters out there.

  I also learned so much from your last critic even at this state of development I really was blasted away! Thanks again ;D

  Although, I do realize that a clothed character makes their nudity even better oddly enough.

  Yes, and undressing is always fun, don't you think?

  One day I'll only post fully clothed characters and you all can enjoy undressing them bit by bit without spoilers.

  However I believe that most of the community doesn't think that way since I'm lacking behind quite a bit in comparison to naked characters. People just look for porn while I am focusing more and more on individuality and giving them -well- a "character". That's maybe also the reason why I'll lose my pole position of monthly best character (currently Samael) to the "FemaleCheetah" of snowleopard. I don't want to be hateful, I know it's always about the taste of the people but It's pretty much a uploaded template with a bit of tweaking and that's already enough to outrun me? It makes me kind of...sad, you know?

  Anyway.

  I'll focus on doing my thing and update the next one
• Brownmane

  October 2021

  @Blacky
  

  Thanks for your words and no need to hurry!

  True enough, but I'm becoming increasingly annoyed at myself for flashing cryptic sneak peeks of the stuff I've got in the works and then failing to follow through on delivery of a finished product in anything approaching a relatively reasonable time frame. I wish I could dedicate more time and effort towards resolving that, but I'm living with the reality of constantly having to drop everything at a moment's notice for shit that involves lots of travel and precious little privacy. Needless to say, that tends to have a rather negative effect on my productivity.
  
  

  if you have any concrete methods you are using I'm happy to hear it

  Personally, I just go the old-fashioned way and press the Print Screen key, then paste into Photoshop, cropping as needed. Imgur doesn't play nicely with me for some reason, so I've been using a service by the name of ImgBB for hosting the images instead, since it's simple, no-pagelinking-nonsense and doesn't require registration. Here's an example:
  
  
  
  I also go a bit of extra distance and click on the image while writing the post and put a hyperlink to the image's URL on it (the button for it is right next to the image attach button), so it's a simple matter for the reader to right-click and open in a new tab for detailed inspection, since especially widescreen shots will be resized to fit the boundaries of the post.
  
  The character in this example, by the by, is one of the many I've got that haven't progressed beyond this stage of rough bodyshape experimentation. I've got a bit of a series of dragon characters of my own planned, a set of three based on the classic precious metals; bronze, silver and gold. Aeniolus was the very first character I made back when the first playable release of YL2 dropped, so I figured why not think up designs for the other two metals? This one would be silver, all tall and slender owing to the delicate nature of the metal and its association with the moon. Gold would be more on the plump and voluptuous side, naturally.
  
  

  If you check out a close up shot inside the app they show up and I don't want to overdo it by turning them up that much since it would look like the cloth is super rugged.

  Oftentimes embroidery is quite rugged, especially when there's lots of detailing. Besides, when stylizing, exaggeration is a very effective tool. No need to be overly cautious with it.
  
  
  @Craket
  

  Although, I do realize that a clothed character makes their nudity even better oddly enough.

  The human imagination is a powerful thing. All one need do is suggest something and the viewer will do most of the mental footwork, and their imagination is, obviously, far better tuned to their personal tastes than the artist's is. That, and it's a good trick for grabbing the viewer's curiosity and attention, with which to tempt them to go further.
  
  
  @Blacky
  

  While I'm creating all this stuff I also see a lot of issues that currently aren't working well and I don't want to imagine how it would look like in motion. Male pants are an excellent example for this. It will be hell to let balls disappear while a character is moving with the current binding technique.

  I suspect there will be a lot of interactivity with the upcoming physics system there, so I wouldn't worry too much about it just yet. Better to wait and see how it's going to work rather than waste effort on something that will likely require major reworking later anyhow.
  
  

  Yes, and undressing is always fun, don't you think?

  Indeed, and I wonder what the devs have planned for that. Would be fun to do some stripteases, but it'd probably involve some pretty complex physics simulation and/or animation work. Again, better to wait and see rather than jump the gun early.
  
  

  I don't want to be hateful, I know it's always about the taste of the people but It's pretty much a uploaded template with a bit of tweaking and that's already enough to outrun me? It makes me kind of...sad, you know?

  Such is the nature of porn, unfortunately; one can go far with relatively little effort. Still, there's certainly a market for more involved productions out there as well, the question is if it's worth pursuing when you can get almost the same numbers for a fraction of the work? It boils down to whether one is in it for a bit of quick money and/or fame, or whether one wants to challenge oneself, at the end of the day. People tend to remember and loyally follow the latter far better than the former, I've found, so there's some profit motive to consider there as well, mind you. And the amount of effort put in is going to matter a lot more once the interactions are in, I suspect.
  
• Blacky

  October 2021

  @Brownmane
  

  True enough, but I'm becoming increasingly annoyed at myself for flashing cryptic sneak peeks of the stuff I've got in the works and then failing to follow through on delivery of a finished product in anything approaching a relatively reasonable time frame. I wish I could dedicate more time and effort towards resolving that, but I'm living with the reality of constantly having to drop everything at a moment's notice for shit that involves lots of travel and precious little privacy.

  This sound exactly like my personality from like four years ago or so. Just a idea of mine because even if I'm not that much of a perfectionist like you I think we're both quite similar in some way:

  My concept or imagination of Cassidy Moon was from the very beginning that what you can see now but I was never able to do it because hell it was so much to learn I would never imagined that I'll manage to do all of this and it took me seven updates and one year, three months to finish what I envisioned how she should look like.

  If I would have waited this whole time I would never be where I am now, since all the other 27 characters that came after her were also teaching me stuff. What I want to say is:

  If you really want to release things and even if they are not perfect by all means do it. Aeniolus is such a nice one, I remember her from the old time and when I first saw her I was like: Whoa I want to do that too!

  I also like the concept of silver and gold dragons so go for it!

  
  

  Gold would be more on the plump and voluptuous side, naturally.

  Sounds like my Aurelia Nice!

  Oh and also thanks on the picture tutorial. I'll look into it as soon as I can and rework this section!

  And on the whole cloth-inside-interaction-section: you're absolutely right and after I realized that it would go that way (New physics and so on...) I stopped wasting time on detailed pants. They are still here and reworking those will be easy after I know how it would work in the future. I consider them as a solid foundation to work with and something that the folks out there can look at instead of bottom-less characters ^^

  People tend to remember and loyally follow the latter far better than the former, I've found, so there's some profit motive to consider there as well, mind you. And the amount of effort put in is going to matter a lot more once the interactions are in, I suspect.

  Yeah, that sounds nice I only started this whole thread or being active inside the forum just a few months ago after I realized that I get pretty good attention from the community. So I wanted to start speaking with my "fans" and of course pretty much everybody is fishing for compliments and being acknowledged. I love that too.
• Blacky

  October 2021 edited October 2021

  Moved things around a bit, I decided to throw all characters who belong to one group inside one post, deleting all double posts. That's why you can find those odd "Placeholders" everywhere now (can't delete the comment entirely, don't know why).However those will get filled with the missing girls and guys once I'm finished updating them.
  
• Blacky

  October 2021 edited December 2021

  Found some time to bring my evil cow girl over here as well:
  

  -Sophia Coy-

  

  The making of

  This was a journey; I tell you...Sophia was in fact the first character marking the turning point where I decided to go on doing more "metal" or "punk" stuff. It was kind of a return to the roots for me taking Cassidy as a reference enhancing ideas I already had back then but wasn't able to make them come to live.

  Sophia is also the one influencing the girls that followed her quite significantly like Roxane, Naomi and the one who you love the most: Lina.

  Ok, so let's go into the work process a bit more:

  Her first installment had a lot of piercings and those flesh tunnels in her ears. For those I exported the ear model to blender, cut out some vertices and added a torus on each side. That's it, so it wasn't that hard to implement. the other piercings are kind of basic sphere, torus and cylinder shapes.

  Now the boots...hell that was no fun back then. I used a public model and reworked it via deformation to make it fit her feet but it ad waaaay to much triangles. At this point the garment system didn't even exist so it was no big deal back then. Now however I had to manually remove and merge edges to not lose the whole topology (the decimate modifier would do them really bad) in order to keep them on her while also adding in the new stuff.

  Her general outfit wasn't that hard to make once you get the hang of blenders simply cloth pro so I spent most of the time adding a lot of texture layers to the skirt to make it look more unique and designing a cool jacket using the assets of the boots to create a well-rounded style. I also added a shape key so you can open and close that jacket. After I did the basic lingerie I was like...she still needs a little something and I came up with that corset like crop-top thingy. I had to shift some clothes to her body triangles since it doesn't matter for now but in the future if it's technically necessary I'll probably cut the bra and keep the crop-top. We'll see...

  Trivia

  The name

  Sophia is a classic Greek name meaning "wisdom." The name was put on the map by St. Sophia, celebrated by the Greek Orthodox Church, and was popularized by European royalty during the Middle Ages.

  Tell you what: This time I didn't look up the name's meaning untill now, but I choose it because of a more ironic thought giving someone like her a pure and elegant name like Sophia

  
  

  I checked her last name though: Coy has a few more different meanings and I'm once again especially interested if it has some Irish content and yes I'm a luck one: Coy is the short form of McCoy and sometimes McKoy, an interesting surname of Irish, Scottish and Manx origins. It is a developed form of the Old Gaelic Mac Aodha, meaning the son of Fire.

  So I can put her on the green island as well...I'm taking this way to serious though
  

  Story

  Straight forward and knowing what she wants Sophia isn't always easy to handle but most of the time she is a nice person visiting every rock concert and festival possible for her and her close friends Roxane, Naomi and Lina. She took Cassidy Moon kind of her role model but also wants to finish her education as a nurse. She lives with Naomi in a shared apartment and the two really have their fun inviting some guys over.