Fursona Design Changes

I don't know if species change counts as design changes, but..
I originally started out as a Snivy, just a smug cookie-obsessed grass snek.

Sneeve.png

Then I saw CamuuShamuu make the skulldragon species open and wanted to design my own skulldragon.

Skulldragon Sneeve.png

Some time later, and I made a full ref sheet of my skulldragon.

Skulldragon Sneeve Ref.png

It's been about 5 or 6 years since I first created my skulldragon.

So I actually started out as a wolf and hard some art drawn by some of my most dearest friends, The first two images are by my friends but sadly the third image is from someone I no longer remember the name from but I still treasure these 3 images dearly


The 2nd image is actually what I stuck with for the longest time until that same friend who drew the 2nd image ended up doing a mootober sort of theme and I managed to snag a slot and really liked the cow image I'd gotten then another friend of mine (That can't find anywhere on the internet anymore ): ) I commissioned drew a tf piece (that is NSFW so I won't be showing it) and made it official .
Here's that mootober piece btw:


I could go on further for my other shapes but that's basically where I started :>

Ohhh boy. My fursona has gone on a whole journey. Lemme lead you through it.

Rather than dig up example pics that already existed, I decided to just draw 'em all in one spot--it was a nice exercise and it was strange feeling the familiar shapes of the older designs as I doodled 'em.



MallowCat
My initial "sona" was a marshmallow with cat ears and a face. It wasn't done...seriously, I just needed a face to attach to my work and marshmallows were easy to draw. They still count but barely, since next to no consideration was given to their design apart from "easy to draw" and "technically has animal elements."

Karl (Mean-Spirited)
And then...hoo boy. Karl's old design is so weird to look back on as I become several years removed from the state of mind that spawned him. I had accepted, to a degree, that was I going in more sincerely on this whole "furry" thing, but I was going into it kicking and screaming, and my fursona design reflected that. I had a lot of self-loathing to work through about a lot of things and Karl showcased all of it in uncomfortable detail. (Honestly, a lot of my art, furry and otherwise, from that period had a mean-spirited core too. I'm embarrassed by most of it these days. All it really did for me was endear me to a bunch of detached irony-poisoned weirdos, most of which I'm no longer in contact with.)

Karl (Sincere)
...and then at some point I got over myself at least enough to start drawing Karl as a much less mean-spirited, more traditional fursona, literally just...myself at the time but a bat, more kindly and neutrally represented. At some point, I started drifting away from identifying with them though (oh, yeah, later Karl also finally adopted my pronouns, vs. early Karl who was he/him in part cuz I was very private about being nonbinary still at that point). Bats were my favorite animal, sure, still are even, but I didn't feel like a particularly batlike person in too many respects. So Karl became just an OC, and has slowly developed in axes different to me since they're no longer anchored to me that way as I began contemplation in earnest for what kind of animal I was more like.

Riot (Early)
...and hilariously, arrived back at "cat." (I do think it's funny that I went from cat (sorta), to bat, back to cat.) Riot came to me in a rush of inspiration that may be the closes thing I've ever experienced to a manic state; 80% of them popped into my head fully formed and I scrambled to do the first drawing of them before I lost any of the idea. Their initial screen face was just a rectangular one awkwardly slotted into their facial plane--the most direct rendering of "screen for a face" you could really do--and they had a much longer jaw in attempt to fit it better, which I think was also leftover design language from both versions of Karl in hindsight.

Riot (Modern)
In pretty short order (I think the early Riot design only lasted 3-4 pics) I made some design tweaks, and this is where we're at now. The screen became a wholly different shape that fit a face better, inspired by the visors of motorcycle helmets, and the jawline shortened and rounded out to be more reflective of actual sphynx cats' fairly triangular faces.

Thanks for taking this lil' trip with me!