So, I was reading (re-reading) the webcomic Transe-Generation, by Matt Nishii, and the idea for this hit me in the face at about the time I got to this comic. WHICH IS TOTALLY MY FAVORITE ONE. I'm easily amused, what? Anyway, I got to tying a ribbon on your penis, which I would so do, and decided I reaaally needed to do this idea.
Basically, this came from some songs sung at a pagan group I was a part of in Carbondale (before the group dissolved), the two parts are sung as a sort of round, and all together it sounds pretty cool. I was always drawn to the "Hoof and horn" part, but relegated to "We all come from the Goddess" with the ladies. Whoo-hoo. So, this sorta plays with that thing. I dunno, maybe it won't come across. Maybe my handwriting's illegible. Definitely, tho', I don't really care.
The two parts of the song with sheet music and writer credits (Z Budapest and Ian Corrigan, respectively) are here. Preetty awesome.
So, for the two focal characters for each side of the chant--I decided to do a swan and a stag. The swan idea came from this image, and the stag came from Cernunnos, who often gets to play the part of the Wiccan hunter god--I'm essentially a Wiccan myself, but I eschew the idea that all gods are facets of one god and all goddesses are facets of one goddess. It gets insulting to past cultures and any sense of individuality gods have. Saying Zeus is the same as Thor because they're both lightning gods completely ignores their personalities and the stories behind them. Anyway, /minirant.
...too much time with html, I guess, but I read "/" as "end".
SO! Designing all these random extras was a lot of fun! Swan lady took the longest, possibly because I really haven't bothered my ass on avian Mobians very much, but also just the logistics of translating a swan to the Mobian formula. BUT SHE TURNED OUT AWESOME SO YAY. There's a lot of bare-chested ladies here, but that's not supposed to be a reference to going skyclad. That's just my pet theory that Mobians wear the clothes they wanna wear and that's it. If a lady wants to wear a shirt or not, that's her prerogative, and no one'll look askance one way or another.
If a guy wears pants tho'...
Ha, I like to think that Mobian junk is just neatly packed away by a really good prepuce (a sheath), and that the manbits can be exposed at will. However, drawing the testes into the body for extended periods of time like that means that they're too hot to produce viable sperm (the testosterone factory's fine, as evidenced by cryptorchids (fancy word for retained testicles)). So, to have viable sperm, a Mobian guy's gotta let his junk dangle in the wind...but that's not exactly polite social behavior. Hence, a guy who's working on being a daddy would wear pants. And I like to think that that would become a cultural thing, pants = trying to be a daddy. BUT THAT'S JUST ME.
Why gloves? I just have a massive hard on for gloves and think it's fun to put 'em on everyone.
Anyway, species choice for this. The girls' side is (aside from the swan-lady) a pretty standard collection for furries: cat, bunny and fox. The guys I had a bit of fun with. I took the old nursery rhyme, "Sugar, spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of. Snakes, snails and puppy dog's tails, that's what little boys are made of." and, again, played with it (I know Mojo Jojo said "snips", but that's not how I learned it, okay!?). So, we've got a husky (puppy dog), a snail (behind the stag, he's hard to see, but there), and a snake. Then I had room, and the page was severely lacking in the hedgehog department, so I threw Cross the Hedgehog, a character I came up with about a year ago, drew once (well, you could debate twice) and then abandoned, into the mix. And drew him holding hands with the snake, so I guess he got a mate out of it. Lucky him! Incidentally, he's also an FTM character, so...I guess he's a bit more stealth than Spir, here? I dunno.
The old lady is a bear. It was important. She was so a bear. So, I have habit of acting cute when nervous or uncomfortable. Sorta a defense mechanism, I guess. It's nothing overt, nothing obnoxious, but subtle mannerisms that end up translating to "cute". Spir's doing that here. People have a habit of referring to me as "sweetie", and stuff. So, yeah, that's where that's coming from.
The coloring on this is flat and simple, no shading, no nothing, and I'd decided to do that at the beginning, since I wanted to just knock this out. So whoo! But then I didn't really set any groundwork for a background so once the characters were all colored and everything, the thing still looked off, so I played around with various colors for a flat background for a bit, and eventually went with an eye-searing cyan "sky" and crazy bright green "grass", but the blocks of color reminded me too much of what really irritates me with Phineas and Ferb, namely the shit-tastic MS Paint style backgrounds. Seriously, that show's production value would be about five times better if they just had some more detailed backgrounds. I also wish they'd shatter their formula, but at least they make fun of it. ANYWAY. So, that wouldn't do, and I added some crap-tastic clouds and grass texture for my own peace of mind. Yay.
