scrungo

dear god

Late 2014: concept

In early 2013 i went thru some sort of phase and felt the need for a new more “mature” fursona: no sparkle, no weird anatomy, just a plain brown dog. Of course since this was just a phase i soon grew unsatisfied with them. by late 2014 i longed to have a sparkledog fursona once more, but i didnt want to go back to the very juvenile design i had made as a 12 year old either. A whole new character was in order. the initial concept for them was still a little conservative as far as weirdness

Late 2014 like 10 days later:

a 3 day hypomanic episode was what finally drove me to bite the bullet and create a ref sheet. at the time i was obsessed with aliens and outer space, and during the episode i was under the delusion that i was an evil genius and would one day conquer the earth. i was kinning iggy koopa super hard too so part of their design is based off of that. the rest of it is.. unfortunately quite derivative of another person's then fursona, if you know you know. i'm still ashamed of how obviously i wore my inspiration on my sleeve, and if they ever read this, i'm very sorry if i made you uncomfortable, and i hope their current design is differentiated enough now that it isn't a dead ringer. things you do at 16 i suppose!

Early 2015:

after awhile of inconsistency regarding the colors on the hands and tail, i finally tweaked the design in a way that i liked. this is also where i solidified the body and face markings. This design stuck around a long time, and is what i generally regard as the basis of the current version.

2017:

first ref with an eye color, and the ridged ears first seen in the original concept finally make an "official" comeback. other than that the design is the same. very rough and ugly looking but i wanted updated art. also stopped being so strict about "glasses MUST be worn at all times"

2018:

since the previous one was so rough it wasnt long before i had a new ref sheet. same design, just further in depth. WAY too busy. the background, though i do love the artwork, definitely doesnt do it any favors. idk what i was thinking lol. i started to despise this ref sheet only a few months after i created it, for various reasons. art is overworked, too much telling not enough showing, a few handwritten typos and weird phrasings... yuck. i hated it so much that whenever someone asked for a ref i would give them a different picture instead. some things about it i still like though, the doodles at the bottom got repurposed into my current sheet.

2022:

The 2018 ref stuck around for a long time, despite me hating it so much. i didnt have the drive to make a new one since i was pointing people to other artworks. what finally tipped me over the edge was a change in design. i had already been thinking about it tentatively, but never made any actions. then all at once i realized: Cosmo's design was fucking boring. i dared call them a sparkledog? when the design was so basic? i dared call them an alien dog when there was hardly anything alien about them at all? how embarrassingly unimaginative. so i finally just nutted up and made a new ref, complete with a new redesign. i really tried to restrain myself more on the text this time, with... moderate success i suppose..... curse my impulse to clarify as much as possible even when things are plainly visible... but i like it. what matters more is that it's 100% less busy, the art isnt overworked to the point of me hating it, and the design is more fully realized

thanks for coming to my ted talk

my laptop's busted for the time being. ive still been uploading traditional art on twitter @ cool_helmet and tumblr @ coolhelmet

are kiribans still a thing people do? well. kiriban at 100k pageviews. still got a ways to go but whoever gets closest will get a free drawing ^__^