It's viral marketing for Toy Story 3, see. I usually gag in response to viral marketing but I gotta say... they did a pretty good job on this one.

My latest fixation: two costumes, two characters. Both characters know each other. One is dominant, the other submissive. In fact, the former is in charge of the latter, and you have to go through him in order to "rent out" the subby little whelp.

Oooh, now that I think about it, it'd be even better if these two characters looked virtually the same, except for some minor detail, like the color of their nose, or the angle of their ears. People have a really hard time keeping track of these kinds of minor details about peoples' characters! "Excuse me? You sayin' I'm anything like that little fucking runt? Huh? You wanna take this outside?"

Hey y'all, do you know what I'd like to see more of? Stories. Fiction. That sorta thing. Does anyone know of any reading material that might line up with my various procilivites? Tales of an adult nature are especially appreciated.

I've also done the unthinkable and signed up for a formspring, so feel free to ask me those anonymous questions you've been dying for an answer to.

Those of you who are still waiting on commissions (Turbine, Johnny, Miria, Sedric), you may not see them until late April, early May, at which point they will probably all appear in a clump. That's because a lot of shit is going down in my non-fury life in April that I'm having a hard time concentrating on. A lot of it is really great stuff that I can't talk about here, but let's just say that some of it directly applies to fursuit building! But it's intense and a lot of it is overlapping and I need to concentrate on that. It's giving me brain problems just thinking about all of it.

I gotta let 'yall know when your commissions are going to start appearing so you don't think I've totally flaked out on them! They are very much on my mind, and I've already mentally gone through quite a few design iterations on some of them.

So hey, let's just pretend that paint TF is actually a thing in cartoons. Sure, there's Duck Amuck and that other one in the same vein whose name I forget, but are there other examples of characters repainting or redrawing or erasing parts of their bodies or other peoples' bodies? I can't remember anything specific! There are vague examples (like... Tom getting his face tattooed back on after having it erased, somehow, I forget this cartoon) but nothing I can youtube.

Help out a 'toon, willya? :D

Hey folks! I am taking commissions again! These won't be so timely because they require more work, and I'm on-again off-again busy for the next month or so, so I'll be doing them when I have a spare moment.

I am doing fake novel covers! They are $25, and I want you to supply me with two bits of information:

1- The title of the book.
2- The year it was published in. (1960-2000 would probably work best, for stylistic purposes)

You can also suggest characters and such if you so choose. If you don't, I'll either pick one of your characters myself or I'll make some up that suit your title.

Example: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3542870

Comment below if you'd like to fill a slot. If I take you up, note me with the title and the publishing date and I'll note you my paypal and then I'll drum something up. Slots are first-come, first-serve!

1-  matrixcodex
2-  larathelabrat
3-  turbinedivinity
4-  johnnytanuki
5-  Miriafox
6-  Sedric

They're so gorgeous and inspirational.

I used to think they were kind of campy and silly, and some of them are. I realized a while ago that these book cover illustrators have an amazing skill: they can condense an entire story into a single image and make you want to find out more about it. Take all the text away from these covers, remove the suggestive title, and you get an image that is incredibly potent. You instantly begin to project a story onto it. It leaves just enough threads dangling to get you going, but doesn't prescribe too much besides.

The best thing about these is how often they're not literal depictions of scenes from the book. They take a location, or a prop or a character or concept, and make it really interesting by divulging a few points about its nature. They're also key to setting a mood, and once you get that mood in place it makes the scenario depicted that much more immersive. And once you're immersed, it's that much easier to infect the viewer with... certain fantasies. :)

It's a challenge, for instance, to draw a really hawt TF without depicting the actual transformation. But the reward is that the viewer IMAGINES the change taking place, which is a million times hawter than anything you or anyone else could possibly draw.

Here are some links, more to come:

Ed Emshwaller

Tim Jacobus (illustrator for the Goosebumps books)

Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell who, despite being synonymous with the campy dreck of fat sci-fi paperbacks, are actually pretty intentionally fun.

Frank Kelly Freas

Harold W McCauley (the way this guy draws women cracks me up for some reason)

Suggest more if you know of other book and magazine and comic illustrators that you fancy!

So it turns out that furry fetishists and the "clean" furries are basically indistinguishable from one another, except that the former draws porn sometimes. What's tha deal with dat?

It's been a dull murmur at the fringes of FA. The AUP has been changed:

"Fur Affinity does not permit illustrated images of human/proto-human minors in mature situations (aka "loli" and "shota") to be uploaded to the site. "Proto-human" is defined as elves, dwarves or neko-style characters (otherwise fully human characters with the addition of ears, tails or paws)."

Commence histrionics!

I'm all for free speech, natch. But sadly, the legal system draws much more conservative lines, and the Christopher Handley trial set a precedent [EDIT: no trial took place, no precedent was set, Handley plead guilty and I was misinformed] for convicting people for possession cartoon porn of underaged characters. It's super easy to put your foot down and say NO to censorship, but it's much more difficult to pay a lawyer to defend your right to peddle child smut, even virtual child smut, in an American courtroom.

People seem to be turning this into an issue where the mods are using any excuse they can come across to ban cub porn (which is something they have not done) and thus we must stand our ground like it's some warzone or whatever. Uh, no. FA has a pretty clear history of explicitly allowing cub porn, despite causing severe consternation among furries who want to see it go away. Remember when everyone left FA on account of the mods stood up for cub porn? Yeah.

But facing the real potential for litigation, you should understand WHY it's not an option to allow certain kinds of drawings on FA anymore. Do you want Dragoneer to go to jail for you to get your rocks off, for not only OWNING obscene material but for proliferating it as well? Or even just get caught up in a legal battle and have to resort to the ACLU? There are a gaggle of mods and coders who make FA happen. This is their site. When people say "it's Dragoneer's site and he gets to decide what happens on it", it also means that he is responsible, legally, for what is hosted on the server. That means he needs to go to bat while you sit at home jerking off to cartoon children. That is just unfair, you guys. You can't just expect anyone to go out of their way like that for you.

Yeah, it sucks that freedom of expression ain't what it used to be. I don't like the idea of underaged characters appearing in porn but I understand the difference between reality and fiction enough to know what hurts people and what doesn't. I would begrudgingly defend peoples' rights to post whatever they want. But I wouldn't be able to go to court for it, and I certainly wouldn't want to go to jail. I can't speak for him but I can only imagine Dragoneer feels the same way.

Capisce?

It's impossible to know who's keeping up with the dang thing over on livejournal where I'm releasing each chapter as I write it. Knowing who is reading it will help me know what kind of fetishy content to put in it. This has absolutely no bearing over whether or not I continue the story, I am simply curious about who I'm reaching!

As a young man, Phthalo apprenticed Chromomancy, which is a school of magic that uses paint for transfiguration and illusion. His first step was to repaint his body, his choice for a more lupine appearance was mostly due to him being a total furry.*

After gaining enough experience, he moved to the bustling city of Onemoon in search of notoriety and pleasure. He is a classic artfag, a starry-eyed romatic. Sadly, shortly after moving to the city, he fell in over his head and began experimenting with more complex chromatic magic than he had ever had to deal with before. One morning after a sleepless night he attempted a dangerous color separation ritual, which resulted in two different-colored Phthalos. The blue one, soft-spoken and contemplative, fell in with the Maddragon district. The green one, a bit more assertive and serious, found the small district of Gaudi to be more his liking. But Gaudi sucks, so never mind that one.

Phthalo is always after casual, pseudo-romantic relationships, and is a cuddle fiend more than a horndog. As an artist, he's a little bit more in love with himself than with anyone else. His charming egotism ties in well with his fetish for clones and limb-excess. In the bedroom, he enjoys bondage via body alteration. He has a bad habit of merging with people while they're sleeping. He nerdgasms over teapots.

He can travel to other worlds by just painting them on canvas and walking through. So he can technically exist in any dumb universe. :)

Where Swatcher is my alter ego, Phthalo is self-insertion.

His name is spelled ph-th-a-l-o. Not Pthalo or Phtalo. Definitely not Pitalo. I mean, you can spell it like that, but it'd be wrong.

*In his continuity there isn't really a name for our particular affliction.

Swatcher is a mischief maker. As a cartoon critter gallivanting about in the real world, his power is limited only by human imagination. That sort of thing is common in cartoonland, but on Earth he is near godlike. He takes advantage of this fact in the same way a supermodel employs their good looks: abusively. He loves humans, as most 'toons do, but what he loves even more is messing with their heads.

Of course, as we all know, since the Pacific Ink Event quite a few cartoon crossovers have manifested themselves. Swatcher is but one among many. It's not clear what show he was originally animated for—P.I.E. experts suggest that he may have been a background character in one of the many self-reflexive Saturday Morning Cartoon (SMC) of the mid-1990s—but he displays a dark, surrealist bent and a penchant for adult humor which places his original timeblock somewhere in the late evening.

In comparison to the others, Swatcher's a cheeky charmer, marked with a developed but necessarily non-sexual libido. That is to say, he doesn't understand the function or purpose of genitals as sexual organs, much like you may not understand someone else's bizarre fetish. They're much more interesting to him as props, due to the giggle-worthiness of boners and company. Nevertheless, his nose is a very focused erogenous zone, as well as being the containing locus of his cartoonish abilities. It is frequently stolen. Revenge is inevitable and terribly messy.

He mostly hangs out with his cartoon buddies. To the humans, run-ins with Swatcher can be a little bit... INTENSE! the gang of 'em sometimes team up on unsuspecting (and very appreciative!) humans for a laugh.

Bookeraux isn't a major demon, he's just a devil. He curates the books in Hell's Library 69,647,003, which is but a lowly node in the byzantine linguistic collection that forms the software of The Word, the backbone of demonic and divine power. Yes, he's a librarian, but he's also somewhat of a linguist. His library is about the size of a suburban living room—and is nearly as significant as far as the universe is concerned—and is full of books in languages you and I wouldn't recognize as languages.

He has two mouths, the second of which was a gift to him with his promotion to librarian from his previous job as an imp. He's hoping to get promoted so he can get more books, and along with the prestige, perhaps he'll get more faces in surprising places, like many of the higher ranked demons.

Of course, being demonic, Bookeraux is subjected to much DEVILISH BUREAUCRACY, and his hornèd heritage makes him especially susceptible to the DARK ARTS in terms of wards, holds and summons. He is also particularly vulnerable to ITEMS OF HOLY COUNTENANCE, especially of the ABRAHAMIC variety. He will often engage mortals in KABBALISTIC NAMESMITHY, due to his well-read nature and boastful attitude, but he is often caught by clever Rabbinical traps that are enjoyable to all parties involved. This is okay, because if you're Jewish then technically Bookeraux doesn't exist, so it's pretty alright, theologically.

So that journal the other day kind of freaked a few of you out (I know because you told me, thank you) and quite a few of you came down on either side of the fence here w/r/t blocking people because of meme use. I think I came across as angrier than I meant because I WAS pretty angry at the time. Now I'm not, so I figured it'd be a good time to clarify my stance on this issue.

I've never considered that anyone has "commenting on Swatcher's pictures" very high on their list of priorities in life. Nobody seems to take that privilege particularly seriously, clearly, unless it's threatened to be taken away. Blocking someone from commenting doesn't stop them from looking at the image, nor does it stop anyone from linking to it or reposting it elsewhere for commentary, or talking about it in private, which I support 100% if you have something snarky to say. I've reposted images myself to other sites for the express purpose of getting snarky comments, because I think they're funny in the right context.

Specifically about the memes though, I've adopted that policy because folks who use 4chan-style jokes are generally repeat offenders (you all know EXACTLY what kinds of comments I'm talking about here, this isn't about 4chan specifically, and has never been about 4chan specifically), and because I associate the style of humor with Bad Things, it frustrates me like hell to see them appear on my submissions or on my shout page. I've stated many times that I find them infuriatingly stupid.

For every person who is otherwise nice but says the wrong thing at the wrong time, there are five to ten who just don't know when to quit with the jokes. Every time someone who's just made a mistake gets blocked, yeah, it's unfortunate, and I usually end up unblocking them after I make sure we see eye to eye. The fact of the matter is that I can't tell if you're a spammer, a troll or a casual memester based off a single comment and I'd rather pre-emptively add you to my spam filter and fix it in post than tolerate a problem that I do have some modicum of control over.

As for those of you who have been commenting for a while, you know exactly what pisses me off, and it's not a hell of a lot. You know I'm not asking for much.

Lastly, and this is sort of my thesis statement whenever shit like this crops up, I'm weary of dealing with people self-righteously justifying their right to be dicks on the internet. Trolls are not champions of free speech to be lauded or even tolerated. Using the block feature for its intended purpose, to prevent unwanted comments from troublesome individuals, is hardly a measure of skin thickness. I'd like to think that even at worst, I keep the histrionics to a bare minimum.

I only do this whole blocking thing very sincerely, which is why I'm only softening the blow here, not backing down. There's no reason why I can't unblock people after I've blocked them, but this is what it's going to have to be from now on.

Hey y'all, I'm taking digital sketch commissions for $10 a pop. Black and white or two colors. No sequences please!

Example: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2705491/

Only six slots are available! I may take more, but here's six to start.

1- Flir
2- Zho
3- Minh_Ande
4- HazzardWolf
5- ShadowFenris
6- turkranma

If you haven't received the fullsized pic, let me know! I may have forgotten someone!

I read every comment I get. Please don't waste my time by posting the same jokes I've read 100 times elsewhere which were witless to begin with. I don't read 4chan, I don't appreciate your references, and having to read your pathetic, insincere attempts at humor makes me enjoy my time here that much less and I'm not really going to time for that shit anymore.

4chan memes or catchphrases earn you a place on my block list, even if it's as a joke or done ironically. I hate to do it this way but I am sick and tired of that dull tint of humor and I don't want it anywhere in my vicinity. If you can't be bothered to write what you feel in your own words, well, that shows how much you think your comments are worth to me and really I guess it wouldn't be big deal to you if you get blocked.

EDIT: Maybe I wasn't totally clear. If your intention is to show off how badass and detatched you are from my work by posting something like WHUT, if you're so cool and ironic that the only joy you can derive from interacting with me is to make me angry, or get me to post something sincere that you can then make fun of, or just generally waste my time, then you've kind of given up the right to be surprised and indignant if I block you.

That's all, thanks.

So on a lark I started reposting stuff to e621 because I'm a sucker for abuse and also they react hilariously to anything that's not fairly typical or images you should probably clear your browser cache after looking at or maybe not look at in the first place, that might be better. I can't take it as an insult if I tried, seeing as e621 is penultimate* to the nadir of good taste in furry porn—and that's saying a lot.

Anyway.

After I started posting I noticed a glut of +watches coming in so I'm assuming (probably wrongly) that there's some sort of correlation going on. So if you've come over from e621, hi! Thanks for watching! :)

* the ultimate nadir of good taste in furry porn goes to lulz.net, natch.

I was reading this interview in Raph Koster's blog and instantly gravitated toward this section where he talks about roleplaying characters and what they reveal about people:

"People tend to think that muds alter how people perceive one another. That gender and race and handicaps cease to matter. It is a noble vision, sure, one shared in general by these frontier netters. In truth, muds reveal the self in rather disturbing ways. We all construct 'faces' and masks to deal with others. Usually in interpersonal relationships, the masks can slip, they evolve and react, and they have body language and cues. On a mud, on the net, whatever---they cannot. And people see specifically this: what you choose to represent yourself as, and THAT is more revealing of your true nature than gender, race, age, or anything else."

He goes on to say more on the topic—and I suggest your read the entire interview, it's very interesting—but you get the general idea.

What binds furries together into a large clump goes a bit beyond just liking imaginary human/animal mashups. For those of us who choose to wear the mask of a fursona (a word that's as useful as it is ridiculous), what does that reveal about our true nature? Well, it's not necessarily all that flattering. Our understanding of what we are doesn't jive with the popular notion of what it means to be a human being. Furries are misfits one way or another, and it just so happens that stories about being an animal living in a whimsical, childish, easy to understand world resonates with our malaise. Case in point, Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers likely has more of an impact on the fandom than Art Spiegelman's Maus ever will, if there were a way to measure such a thing. It's not because we don't have taste! Er, okay, maybe it is because we don't have taste. But maybe we don't want taste, and that says a lot about the kinds of people that we are.

So specifically, what do our characters say about our personal nature? How different or similar are we to specific media and sources? If I think of Swatcher, for instance, what does it reveal about me that he's a cartoon character, snow white, four feet tall, and sexless but not genderless? Well, a lot of things. He came out of my desire to create a somewhat blank-slate critter that could be anything and would be full of potential. I guess I see myself as being kind of burdened by expectations and emboldened by privileges that I find incredibly frustrating, and the immortal blank-slate indestructible being that is the cartoon character allows me to defy expectations and mess with reality in a way that gives me absolute control and protection in the event of any problem. I mean that's not really all that flattering and is full of self-condradictions. The fact that I want to be a magical realism all-powerful cartoon implies that I don't believe I am fully in control of my own reality, which is true, but it also implies that having that degree of power is desirable, which goes against much of my wannabe-zen-buddhist philosophy. I'm a wreck! Raph is right about disturbing revelations, isn't he?

Do you see anything in your character choice that's particularly revelatory? Lay it on me!

You Are A Fursuit has finally edged Peeling out of the most favorited submission in my gallery! The latter has been at the top of the list ever since I posted it, basically, so this is quite an upset. ^^

Most views goes to Anatomically Incorrect for reasons I cannot fathom, seeing as it's 31st in the comments ranking and 4th in the favs.

Most comments goes to The Dotted Furry Line which is not at all surprising. ^^

More dumb theory. Feel free to ignore this one.

I am ping-ponging between two kind of problematic worldviews w/r/t furry art that are probably simultaneously true.

On one hand, I think furry art as it is now—media created by furry fans, for furry fans—has its own history and culture of meaning that is independent of the institutional art world. The influence of MUCKs on furry art shouldn't be ignored, for instance, and yet roleplaying and pseduonymity are a fringe interest at best within the art world. The art world, I should clarify for the sake of argument, represents a system of public and private galleries, artist-run centres, collectives, critics, curators and intellectual theorists, government agencies providing funding and exposure like the NEA, magazines and journals, and post-secondary arts colleges and universities. As it's technically outsider art, it's okay for it to be somewhat naïve, unconcerned with intellectual pursuits, and somewhat utilitarian. See: porn. It has its own standards of quality and beauty, and defines who is mainstream (the special guests at cons) and who is transgressive (guest pervs on the Tyra Banks show). It's outsider art at its core and shoving it wholesale into a white room brings about the same problems as exhibiting any other kind of outsider or folk art.

In brief: who gives a shit about the art world anyway! We have our own thing going and it's a lot of fun. Why mess with a good thing?

On the other hand, there are themes within the furry fandom that are very interesting when you compare notes with writers of contemporary art criticism and cultural theory. For example, I find the idea of having a character or "fursona" that has consistent physical traits independently of media (as opposed to a game avatar, which exists mainly within a game, a furry character can be a drawing, a story, and physically acted out in the form of a fursuit!) to be really important as we start to lean more heavily into online social media where the role of the body in what it means to be you is becoming increasingly overshadowed by a more abstract identity management game. We furries have a potential solution to this problem, which is to acknowledge it as playing pretend and to take these online identities with a grain of salt. In a contemporary art world which is very in-tune with this type of theorizing and game-playing, furry culture can make a big splash.

In brief: the art world would benefit immensely from furries taking part in it, and it would give us furries a chance to examine our own visual culture within the context of a much larger and well-connected one.

It's the difference between Furry art and furry Art. Both perspectives are appealing, and while they're both almost mutually exclusive, there's some sort of paradoxical middle ground that's really interesting.

Hey folks, it's time for dumb movies! I'll be showing DUNCAN THE MAGIC DINOSAUR: FIREFIGHTERS (See Fire & Rescue Men & Women In Action!) and maybe another movie afterward.

At MIDNIGHT EST.

Here on livestream: http://www.livestream.com/swatcheroo/

EDIT: It's over, ladies and gents! "Toon in" next time for another regrettable evening!

Whether it's a fetish or just a whimsical fantasy, our own transformationistic scenarios have their own flavors and focuses. It's fairly clear... certain segments of a transformation sequence have always received more attention by the author/artist than others. That said, I bet you can tell a lot about a person by what they focus on with regards to TF. Certain patterns seem to crop up again and again. Looking at the hands, for instance. Seeing your reflection in the mirror. Exposure to the public. A tail bursting out of pants. Clothes ripping, or falling away as you shrink. The eyes changing color. Making animal noises. New senses. The feeling of hooves on the ground. Putting the rubberiness of your new skin to the test. I mean, those are just a few examples!

As for myself, here are my recurrent themes:

Touching or tugging at the face. The nose forming first, or at least very early on. An eventual potentially humiliating public "reveal". Immortal and powerful beings toying with humans for pleasure. Having one hand be more transformed than the other. The final form being on the inside edge of fascinating and unnerving. An emphasis on tightness and stretching. A conspicuous disregard for anatomy. The act of methodically "proving" all of the new features of your body. Violations of one's sense of what is physically possible to do (walking on walls, coiling around a pole, being pulled apart or merging, general realityfuck).

A few of those are kind of redundant but you get the idea!

What do you focus on when depicting a transformation scene, either in writing or in pictures? What elements keep cropping up, subconsciously? This goes for any type of TF, not just human to animal, and I'd nudge various growth/shrinking things like inflation and
age reduction under this umbrella too since they're close to the same thing.

Ah yes, the Ursa Major Awards! Is it that time of the year already? Alright!

What a ridiculous prospect, winning an Ursa Major. I would rather not. It turns out I might get my way, on account of the Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association trying to protect their reputation by blocking the nomination of anything that's "obscene, libelous, or otherwise detrimental to the integrity and good standing of the Ursa Major Awards and the anthropomorphics fandom."

Read the whole story here! If you don't want to do that, here's basically what happened: they opened voting for nominees to all furries, and they nominated Softpaw Magazine. People freaked out because cub porn might be celebrated instead of ostracized the way it is now.

So I guess it turns out that the Ursa Majors are a big whitewashing gambit? WHO KNEW, right? Casting a good light on the fandom indeed. For whom, exactly? Who are we trying to impress? Even with a separate award show for porn... isn't that just kind of ghettoizing it? Furry porn is WAY more interesting and relevant to contemporary art than its more PG alternatives, IMHO, and just sweeping it under the rug to protect furry fandom's rep (LOL, I can't keep a straight face!) is ignoring the underlying phenomenon that makes it popular enough to compete.

Avatar was frustrating if you're already familiar with sci-fi and even objectionable if you're not a fan of colonialism, neither is Twilight a good book by academic standards, but these things have touched some sort of nerve in pop culture. It's probably the most important culture! The same thing goes for Softpaw—which isn't a diss on Softpaw, or at least I don't know if it is because I've never even been in the same room as an issue—a lot of people obviously love the thing enough to nominate it for an Ursa Major so something must be going on there.

Now I appreciate the desire to reward ambition, especially in the furry fandom where social capital seems so arbitrary. Us artistic types want to get recognized for the effort we put into our work, even if it makes the vox populi emit a politely quiet yawn. But to make ambition synonymous with the already flagrant ghettoization of pornography and deviant sexuality in "high culture" is a terrible mistake and is ignorant to boot.

It doesn't make sense. We celebrate good food, which serves a basic human need in an aesthetically complex manner. That's fine. Why should sexuality be any different?

For someone who's really into fursuit TF it is weird that I do not actually own a full-on furry costume, despite multiple attempts to pull one together. It's just so intimidating! I want it to look top drawer or it's not worth it!

Anyway, gee, I want to have a costume I can gad about in. Let's call my two silicone masks (Phthalo and Duke) off limits, due to a lack of funds. Silicone is expensive stuff, and so are the paints to finish it with. D:

In terms of characters, that leaves Swatcher and Bookeraux. The former doesn't translate well to human proportions, and the latter isn't very murry OR family friendly.

So really my choice is thus... I can either translate Swatcher into suit-form, which would be significantly off-model and difficult to make look right, or I can come up with an entirely new character that exists mainly as a fursuit.

My problem, you see, is that I am intimidated as fuck by the idea of making a full costume. No wonder I've procrastinated so long! It's an undertaking, and I want all of that hard work to pay off!

Let's just say I start from scratch. Come up with a whole new character. The field is wide open for ideas. Oh god, what the hell am I going to do? Let us continue to say that there's a few design restrictions that may be condusive to a suitable look and a suitable character, no pun intended. Keep in mind, this is a character design conundrum more than a suit construction issue!

- This character should be appropriate to be in polite company.
- I'd like to have open eyeholes for visibility and aesthetics. Plus it's an unsusual fursuit look that doesn't get done often enough.
- It should be easy to put on and take off, ideally with no lengthy makeup applications or prosthetics (not that I don't love this kinda costume, I'd love to have an open-faced suit with a prosthetic face, but not for my main 'suit that we're talking about here!)
- The character should not be skinny. Top heavy, bottom heavy, either look is cool with me.
- The look should be a little bit cartoony, or at least storybookish/whimsical.
- Foam latex is an okay material to use, but no more silicone, for the love of Christ, that shit is expensive and I really have no clue what the hell I'm doing messing with it in the first place. Any foam latex parts should be removable for storage and occasional replacement should they get kinda gross.
- I'd like to avoid the wacky/zany/tewtally random 'toon character archetype because it's waaaay overdone. I do like playing villains, henchmen, lackeys, scumbags, foul tempters and general seedy types. I also like playing rather serious pseudo-intellectual types. I'm open to way more possibilities than these two things, they're just the type of character I play more often than not. I wouldn't mind trying something new.
- The usual practical stuff. Should be easy to clean and mend, easy to take a wee if nature calls, relatively cool or cool-able, simple to take off in an emergency.
- Any species is good!

Polling the audience now... should I make a Swatcher suit first? Or should I make a new character from scratch? What kind of character could it be? The possibilities are so vast that I'm vacillating.

So I am going to sit up in bed and draw! This is the plan of action I draft, more often than not, at the end of the day when my mind is prone to wandering. But once I'm under the covers all my desire to draw evanesces, and the hot iron of inspiration cools to a frustrating, impenetrable ingot.

IT KEEPS HAPPENING

I really should draw at the desk. c.c