Well, I mentioned I didn't know much about this guy so far, but this is what I have and what I've come up with tonight.

So a bit first about how he got to where he is. Originally, I was thinking of commissioning  ZEN for an avatar, because I had the idea for a cheetah with blue hair and bright green eyes. I figured that was too close to where I got my name from, though, with  autumn_sunrise's character's blue hair, and wanted to do something a bit different. So it became a cheetah with one blue eye and one green eye, hair color going through various choices until I decided it would be easiest to just have bangs extending from his fur when I started doing it up in Flash, since, as noted, I suck. Thing is, I've always hated heterochromacy as a character design trait, so eventually it fell on a cheetah with brown eyes and I just modified my Flash project for that. It sat on my desktop that way for months, but quite frankly it looked like crap, which is a large part of why I never put it up. Like I said in my journal, I'm more experienced with pixels, and while it's great to be able to drag lines around, it just ended up getting things attached where they had no business and ultimately being an unworkable mess.

After finally getting those icons off my desktop, I decided to make his hair brown instead, but figured I wanted to add a bit of interest, so I gave him a pair of asymmetrical glasses with blue and green lenses to mirror what I'd wanted with his eyes. I always liked Spider Jerusalem's design despite never having really read up on the character or even known his name until recently, so I decided to switch out his red lens for the blue one. Problem is I remembered his specs backwards, and by the time I realized it, the image was already stuck in my head. I still was considering handing it to Zen, but then I had some free time in the morning and decided I could at least give it a shot in pixels since avatars are now all in GIF format and alpha is no longer possible anyway. This is basically what I drew up on the first try.



So onto the final product:

John is a guy headed off to college, green at 18. His mother is a cheetah, but his father is human, so he has features of both, which isn't all that uncommon, but depending on what species he has kids with, they'll either turn out cheetah and cheetah hybrid or cheetah hybrid and human. His glasses have different colored lenses to help correct his dyslexia (yes, this actually works IRL), but have flat lenses, as he has 20/20 vision. He liked Spider Jerusalem's glasses, but the red and green gave him massive headaches and his parents got the design flipped and weren't shelling out another hundred dollars for a new pair over it after they got it custom-fit to his muzzle. While it may look like it's just sitting there, it's actually held in place with pads on the back similar to normal human glasses and the spring force of the flexible bridge. The small lenses are so they don't get in the way of his normal vision, since he only needs them for reading, and he has to take them off for anything faster than speed walking or else they'll bounce off. Eventually his doctor switched the red lens out for blue, which solved the headache issue.

John loves orange, hates red, and is overall an average guy, nothing special. He plans on coasting his first year and seeing what sticks, since his parents have told him that his plans of being an English major are vetoed because 1) English majors are basically unemployable and 2) he's not actually that good with English anyway. He's thinking of becoming a teacher of some sort, since he's good with kids, but he's not sure what he could teach yet.

Sexually, he's in the "I don't know" category and is basically holding off until he figures it out. He doesn't claim any strong attraction to either men or women of any species and is taking the opportunity to focus on his first year of classes. He was raised in a family that didn't need to drink to have fun and while he's curious about smoking, he knows better than to start, since it's an expensive habit and his parents would kill him.

John isn't really an introvert, but he's not an extrovert, either, and leans a bit toward being shy. His parents worry he's going to get lost in the shuffle his first year. They've stressed the importance of making friends right away when all the connections are still forming and attending study groups to meet new people. They also hope he finds a nice girl and have made it no secret, giving him the impression they're afraid he might be gay and just not telling them despite him having already explained his situation. They've also told him they'd still love him if he was gay, but he can't help but feel they'd be disappointed, which isn't mutually exclusive. They don't seem to comprehend the concept of being asexual and have never read any of the web pages he's emailed them on the topic.

His life is taking a turn, with him being pushed off into the wide world of life away from home with naught but a kiss on the forehead for wisdom and a small portion of his stuff to decorate his dorm room. It's off to a life of adventure and new experiences. Just hopefully not with other guys, or girls who wouldn't meet his parents' approval.




So, what do you think? ;)