Lame excuse: I haven't done a progblog forever because I got well and truly stuck redoing the prehensile tail rig, but I think I've fixed it now, and made it work (to some value of work) with the pitchipoy rig (the spline and its controllers are actually on their own rig, but the spline controllers are copying the location of some controllers that are on the pitchipoy rig with additional thingies to keep them from moving too far from each other, feels a bit convoluted but it works).

jedau requested an "action shot" of Aurelius.  It may have also been a pencil sketch request but I was doing so many scribbly pen coloured ones I kind of got carried away.  Oops :S

The nsfw one was actually the first one to jump into my gutter mind but after joking about it while trying to work out what kind of action shot Jed had in mind, I said I didn't think I was ready for another one yet, and turned my attention to the first one.

The basic idea was "how I met your mother" (so this scene would happen a bit before the block I'm currently working on), theme song is Owl City: Bird with a Broken Wing.

Alternate title: Basketbok.

Why yes I can actually do portraits in portrait.  It just required flipping numbers in my render settings and I am nothing if not incredibly lazy.

Everything that is remotely to do with a springbok now has the suffix -bok.  And bmj and jackmiller managed to replace a well known and widely used cuss word with "bok" as well which made for an amusing conversation.

Perhaps I should have done a rugby ball but basketball got stuck in my head as nathanmj is mad keen about it and I vaguely recall bmj saying something about coaching but I don't know if the two ideas were actually related.  I think this guy is almost a treebok and not just because of the horns or the different picture orientation.  Reckon he'll just about stand eye to eye with some of my taller Dragonkin.

Sorry dolla, you're now a goat XD (but let me know if you'd rather be something else)

I really wanted to do a variation of the upgoat footer for his Bounce upgoats, and "wall-running upgoat" was a concept firmly embedded in my mind...pretty much since then.  And this was how that ended up.

I'm currently not sure whether the eye markings are staying or whether they'll go and the nose marking will get bigger.

And when I get around to 3d-ing these characters I am so doing a short anim of dolla and Ninj racing.

Also, I even remembered to sign this one.

I have long nicknamed whatamidoing "pineapple" due to the avatar, and when I put out the call to see who wanted to make cameos as crowd character we were bantering back and forth about how I was going to do theirs a pineapple hairdo and they responded back something along the lines of "pineapple angel", which meant as far as I was concerned a fruity Avian.

There's no pineapple coloured birds that I'm aware of so I went with something parrotish and a crested eagle crest (actual feathers on the crest rather than the fine silky feathers that's more common for Avians).

Had to have him sunning his wings as I found out the hard way that Avians probably can't sit on the ground (but crouching seems to be all right from previous playing when I was rigging).

I love doing these XD

So I started drawing, and I got carried away with a girl with a short skirt and looooooooooong jacket, and I love drawing long unrestrained hair, and then there was pink.  Soooooo muuuuuuuuch pink.  But my shadow layer was on multiply and it was making everything look so desaturated, I wanted it to be a little bit more vibrant so switched it to an overlay.  Ack! Be careful what you wish for! But we have bright colours.

And then I remembered, KubbyElizabeth said kangaroo with a mohawk.  [headdesk]

I'll fix that up with an amendment sketch that I'll group with Boomy's later on down the track (he needs tattoos, may be a Clan Flyer).

Two weeks after getting home we were back in Jurien Bay again, this time for the kids' great nanna's 90th birthday party.  As usual we were only there overnight and stayed in a different beach cottage with a backyard nicely set up for kids.

Early in December we realised we hadn't been swimming for a while.  After a hefty argument (JJ prefers swimming in fresh water, the bigs and I strongly prefer the beach and 8yo doesn't care as long as it's swimmable) we hit up Serpentine Falls with a friend and their kids.

The first thing we noticed was that the blackberry bushes had been cleared out and when we got there the top carpark closer to the falls was closed, though there were some cars in there (either ignoring the fact the gate was supposed to be shut or perhaps they were in there before it had been shut).

Blood.  Everywhere.

Blade's hulking form was crumpled in a pool of it.

The initial adrenaline rush, bordering on painful when it had spurred him into panicked, unthinking action, was subsiding now.  Trix clung to the bloodied katana like his life still depended on it, his mind struggling to comprehend the enormity of the situation before him.

They stayed there, the three of them, in a moment that lasted forever.  Trix with the murder weapon.  Blade, the not-so-innocent victim.  Sable, curled up in a corner.

"You fucking idiot! I told you to run!"

Sable only ever screamed at him when he'd done something really stupid, something that really made her mad.  He knew he'd done something unspeakably terrible.

"Trix!" He could feel her shaking him, somewhere far away in the distance.

Blade's dead.

The relentlessly hilarious @meesterboom requested a Dragonkin with a mohawk, no colour preference.  It was so, so very difficult not to give him a hot pink mohawk.  Gave him an extra long ratty but no tattoos as I'm not sure if he's a Tribe Flyer or not.  If he is I think one of the tattoos is going to be blue stripes like in Braveheart:

Sketchy for approval.