The Sofox fursona has gone through a lot of evolution for the long time I've been online.
Gen 1 - Tails Sprite Recolour
It's first version was a simple Tails recolour.
I had joined this message board called The Moogle Cavern. It was created by a great person named Kulock who wished to create a great Final Fantasy fansite and succeeded in creating a brilliant Sonic fansite and community.
Most people in the message board had their own character, complete with a name and icon, for posting. Most of them were edits of sprites from classic (less classic back then) MegaDrive Sonic games. For example: TL Echidnoyle character was a echinda-gargoyle hybrid (Echidnoyle) with an icon that was a Knuckles sprite coloured greens with wings and additional details edited in; H Hog's character was presented by a Sonic sprite coloured orange and their chest pattern edited to make a "H" shape; and Scott Prower... added some green shorts to a Tails sprite. I wanted to make my own character to fit in, so I figured out how to rip MegaDrive sprites using the Genecyst MegaDrive emulator and got the pose I wanted. A simple sprite rip didn't seem original enough to represent myself online, so I recoloured them purple (good ol' recolours), based on an old idea I had for what I imagined Super Tails would look like (this was before I played Sonic 3 & Knuckles).
I called my character The Flying Fox. It was a pun you see. Tails himself is a flying fox, and also the sprite capture was of him a flying fox (zipline like device)! I later learned its also the name of a bat. Oh well.... Didn't stop me from making a website with that name:
Credit to Edweirdo for the logo, because even if it was a long time ago, credit is important!
Anyway, I was The Flying Fox for a while. I also used that name when playing Furcadia, a graphical furry chatroom that is also still going. Furcadia tended to delete accounts after a few months of activity. This led to a repeating pattern where I would play for a while, give up for a few months, and come back to it later having to create my account all over again. I registered as Flying Fox the first few times, but when I got a "name taken" (maybe by an actual bat character) I changed my name to "Soaring Fox". I still loved that sense of freedom and flight and that was one of the things that drew me to Tails in the first place.
Gen 2 - Tails Sprite Edit
A bit later, the Moogle Cavern had a reboot to a new message board. For a while I'd felt that a simple purple Tails wasn't distinctive enough, so I took this opportunity to also "reboot" my character. So began my first serious effort to design the character that represented me online. I sketched out possible designs with pencil. I still wanted "fox" and "purple", but I wanted to ditch the twin tails (way too derivative). I still wanted to be able to fly because flying is cool, but in a different way to how Tails does it which is by helicoptering his two tails.
Honestly, I should have given my character wings, but I felt wings were too overdone, or that I wasn't cool enough to pull them off. I any event, I came up with another idea:
Sofox the Soaring Fox!
The idea was simple: their tail would be like an upside down umbrella with no stem. It would unfold itself to be able to glide, sorta like a flying squirrel. The tail would be cyan with blue spokes, and when folded it would look like the tail was striped blue and cyan.
By itself the tail could only glide (assuming it was open), so I added rocket shoes that would enable the character to not just glide, but legit fly!
As for their face, I had these yellow stalk things that were meant to start at the nose, and go by their eyes and up over their forehead. I think I was inspired by Shortfuse from the British Sonic the Comic comic. I wanted to make their head more unique, especially for cameos in various comics that members of the Moogle Cavern tended to make.
I was enthused with the character for a bit, even did my own art of them for my message board avatar.
While clear my skill was lacking, I learned some basic lessons from this such as how red, yellow, white and blue work with purple. Whether cyan works is something I've played around with since but am less sold on.
The reception of the character was decent. In my intro post, some thought "The Flying Fox" suited me better which made me a bit sad. Still, it was more distinctive, and like its predecessor, turned up in various community endevours, add on stories, and sprite comics. For example, The Horror #75 by H Hog.
While there was sprites and template edits, there was very little hand drawn art of either of the above character designs, an exception being an awesome piece by Raiettei (gotta love those boots!):
Over the years, the message board community fell away and I drifted into other communities, including some that were more furry fandom adjacent. I decided I wanted a really new avatar. Despite my changes, I was still splashing features onto a Tails recolour. I wanted something that was more individual, also with more "anthro" proportions (eg. a muzzle). Something that could be rendered in a variety of styles.
Gen 3 - Beanie Design
Only problem is that I still lacked any real character design understanding. So I found an artist I really liked and commissioned them to design my new character, giving them only a few basic ideas on what I wanted and no real details.
The artist was Beanie, who along with her cool art also did comics such as Sixpack of Otters and Pimo is Awesome! When I said they didn't need to fly, but still wanted that feeling of optimism and flight, she inorporated bird markings into the purple fox base (yes, still sticking with the purple fox).
It was nice, and a cropped head from the digital version of that commission became my avatar for many years.
There was a lot going for it, optimism, good colours (a mix of purple, dark blue and yellow). Really the main thing I wanted to capture about it was that it was optimistic and hopeful as the character strives out into the world, and Beanie TOTALLY nailed that. She did a wonderful job and totally moved the character forward from anything it had been before.
However...
Well, the colours Beanie used were wonderful, but I couldn't totally get behind the marking pattern. It's hard to describe, but I feel that markings have to have their own logic to them and I just didn't "get" them. Also, when you take away the markings, all you're left with is a regular purple fox, no distinctive silhouette or shape.
Despite not being as distinctive as I wanted, that was who I was for a long, long while. My icon, profile pic, and who people would draw if they ever needed to depict me.
This is by Arach, a fellow Irish furry who I met at a Galway furmeet. They drew it for me as a prize for arriving first to the meet!
And this is by Em, aka MythicFables. I made her laugh at Anthrocon, and she gave me this gift art in return, so nice!
Looking back, I have to appreciate the artists. There was no refsheet for this character, only Beanie's art that didn't even go below their stomach (or show the hands). I really didn't know what I was doing in terms of understanding character design.
I mean, I wasn't even sure what my character was about, yet I'd have awesome artists like Merlin making me this:
So the years went on. I'd get the occassional gift art, and other times I commissioned someone at a convention, getting a nice variety of Sofox con badges.
Top left playing card one is by Mune Sol. Top middle is Beanie's one again, and was my primary badge for all the years this design was my main sona. Bottom left is by Chrispy Paulsen of the awesome Precocious webcomic, middle bottom is by Draike, and the big right one is an awesome one by Genesis Whitmore (which incorporates an "anime blush" style sunburn that I received as a result of my trip to Florida that she thought was so hilarious she put it on the badge).
I also commissioned Foxena do a Door Sign for myself and Tapewolf. We printed it out and stuck it to the door to our room at conventions we were together at (if they allowed us to do it), but also ended up being used in our HeadwingsGaming stream for a while.
It wasn't just other people's art, I tried my own hand at drawing my own character. There was even a brief newspaper style slice of life webcomic.
Even back then I was still wanting to rework the character.
Also of note, I believe I asked Lucheek to do their own take on the character which drew from the previous gliding version of the character too.
What Makes a Good Fursona?
Even when I drew the character myself, I just had trouble connecting with it. I could draw the lines but didn't understand what they meant. This lack of connection had consequences. When I won a commission from the really awesome Amber of DMFA fame, I couldn't "cash it in" for years, and while fursuiting interested me, I could hardly spend over a grand on a costume for a character that didn't engage me. When I dive inside a character, I want to know what they represent, what they mean, what they're likely to do.
The "I'm planning to redesign my fursona" became a refrain for many years. It was always at the cusp of being redesigned. Looking back, I think my biggest stumbling block was that I had no idea how one designed a character. What even is character design?
Have you noticed that designing character is one of those things that people never seem to tell you about? You can find countless tutorials on stuff like lighting, photoshop brushes, pixelart... so much stuff. But actually creating a new character out of whole cloth? Barely anything. I had to kindly request one artist to do a video on it, but it was a lot of "so I decided to do this" without going into the why. Amber gave some tips, including how they started with the eyes and a tutorial. And one Eurfurence in 2017 Clockwork Creations did a fantastic panel on character creation and I got to ask both of them lots of questions about colour theory that they had answers for (Tip: Black goes with anything).
However, those were the exceptions. For the most part, you can find tutorials on how to make a fursuit head, but not how to design a fursona head. For something that nearly everyone in the fandom has to do (create a fursona)... there are barely any tips or guides on how to create one, besides a bunch of anecdotal stories on how someone decided on their own fursona (like this one I guess...)
Still, over time I was graudally able to gather a list of things I wanted.
- Identifable from just the silhouette, or at least having a distinct shape. (Common character design element. Eg, Team Fortress 2 does this heavily)
- I'm happy with them and feel I want to represent them and they represent me.
- I could happily fursuit as them and feel a glow, not like I'm hiding myself, but revealing myself.
- Agility and speed. I wanted something like Renamon, a character that could leap into a situation and respond quickly.
- Recognisable. If someone comes across the character on a FurAffinity or a webcomic cameo, they should be able to recognise it if they see them in another piece of art later by a completely different artist and in a different style.
- I wanted the character to "compress" well. For instance, still be recognisable even if turned into a chibi, had only their head shown, or be drawn in black and white, even all three.
- Recognisable even if drawn in different styles (though it might take a sec)
- Recognisable even if naked. (not too reliant on clothing for identity)
In terms of personality: Energy, optimism, action, upbeat and good natured were all critical. I always wanted my character to embody the traits that I found most valuable. A sense of fun, a willingness to help others, an understanding of the situation, a drive to want and make things better, physical adeptness so they could engage with physical situations. Every version of my character so far had these to a degree. The ones based directly off of Tails channeled his optimism, his flight, and even his good natured innocence. The more anthro purple foxes were literally cartoons, ficitonal characters made to entertain people and make them happier. I wanted my character to make other people's days brigher. So I was definitely on the right track, it was just it felt like my feet were still stuck to the diving board while I wanted to take the plunge.
Gen 4 - Foxena Design
These rules did focus me a bit, but honestly, they're more for eliminating potential character designs rather than creating wholey new ones. I was still struggling, realising that character design was actually an entire skillset with countless "rules". I needed to move forward but I didn't know how. I talked about this struggle on a stream with Foxena, she offered to design a new character for me. I paid the money, saw her do it on stream, and this was the result:
I finally had an officially drawn character, complete with reference. There was stuff I really loved. The digitgrade legs, the build, the expression. Also the way the feet and hands are a different colour up to their elbows. The markings were far better organised, laid out, and cleaner. Also cute and such.
I was super excited about all this. Next Anthrocon I made sure to commision lots of cool artist, such as Merlin (Merlin is awesome), ShawnTheGirl (LOVE the art she did), and Puyon (who did an awesome job drawing the pattern from my swimsuit). Also commissioned shadow-of-nights.
I even finally started my long planned "Convention Memories Webcomic" with my new character design starring. (Art by me, Tapewolf character by Tapewolf)
So had I finally reached a design I was happy with? Well..... unfortunately not.
While the character did make leaps forward, there was one problem: I just didn't connect with it.
You'll notice that there's a dropped ear. Foxena's shot at making my head more distinctive. I agreed with this because it made it recognisable in black and white, and in silhouette, but I never bonded with it. I wasn't sure how a folded ear was "me".
I wanted the tail a bit thinner, but she said that wasn't fox-like.
Also there was back and forth over face markings. We started with a black line ringing the entire jaw (as you can see on commissions), with yellow beyond that. I found it looked better when I made the lower jaw white, but then the muzzle was less distinctive. Fox suggested a double strip which I went with, but it wasn't something I was in love with.
I wasn't sure what to do. I was dealing with the fact that I'd spent quite a bit of money on references and commissions that was for a character that I was now discovering I wasn't fully confident in. Had I wasted my money?
I tried editing the character myself, adding super unique markings like stars or tiger stripes, but nothing seemed to work. I got more advice from Amber who even helped develop some of my edits, but somehow nothing was clicking. I felt like I was slapping decals over a character that I had more fundamental issues with. I wanted it to be distinctive, unique, have its own spirit to it.
I got less happy with the design. It felt like a symbol of my failure to really represent myself into my art, especially with the money I'd put into making it work. But I couldn't go backward to my previous design, and I couldn't go forward becuase I didn't know where to go. I was stuck once again with a character I wanted to perpetually redesign. What could I do?
Then came deliverance, in the form of a Protogen.
Gen 5 - Protogen
Yes, it was Merlin, again to the rescue. After Protogen came up in a group chat, I mentioned how I could potentially 3D print a Protogen visor and Merlin quickly made the above.
I was taken by surprise, conflicted, saying how it would be a lot of work to make the visor, but then I fatefully said "Maybe just a... little bit of Protogen..." and Merlin came through again:
I was smitten. I went around making this my new avatar/icon. It was cute, it was fun, and it was a step in a new direction!
I liked the character. Notice how the floppy ear made the transition along with my colour scheme and tail? I like that, building on what came before so it wasn't just a completely different change.
I'll be honest, I didn't instantly relate or bond or deeply connect with the character, but I didn't need to. It was fun, it was made by someone I cared about, and Protogens were trendy and cool. It was a fun trip and holiday into a character that played by its own rules.
I always liked the Protogen, and I appreciated how much effort Merlin put into it. I even commissioned them for a Protogen reference, which would help solidfy things for the construction of the Protogen costume (a separate subject).
It's cute, it's lovely, it's nice, look at the cute little thing!
But as I said, it still wasn't entirely "me." Maybe its that it was too much metal and robotics. Maybe I wasn't keen how inflexbile the Protogen designs are (you need permission to even add wings). Maybe there was something more fundamental.
I was happy with it for now, but after a bit I started wondering about what form I should take when I returned to being organic.
Soul Searching
One idea was to pare back the robotics and make it a cyborg fox. Even had a story idea for them... but it didn't go far enough... I kept looking.
Sometimes I wanted the character to be a dorky but intelligent guy, others I wanted them to be a passionate energetic fighter. I kept looking.
I hate to say "soul searching" because it sounds corny, but one day, lying in my bed, I let my mind wander. I went deep in my head, to find the things I loved, what I was passionate about. I imagined, if I was in some epic animated battle, who would I want to be to defend myself and fight back while looking cool and confident?
And then I saw it: A Cheetah.
Okay, so I'd been watching (read: obsessing over) BNA: Brand New Animal in the weeks prior. Simply put: A character partially shapeshifts into a cheetah and runs really fast at one point. It's cool and fun and exciting, all things I loved. That probably helped spark my thoughts, but it's not like I never liked cheetah's before, its just that with my realisation, I got really excited and I totally focused on them.
Soon I was downloading multiple images of cheetahs, real and illustrated, and pouring over them to find what it was about them I loved.
Cheetahs are built for speed, but short bursts. After sprinting they're totally exhausted and can overheat. So capable of brillint flashes but also of burning out hard. Yep, sounds like me!
Being the best at something means actual science is behind you, how you're designed, your head and body shape, how your muscles are positioned and metabolism tuned. Fastest land animal, put simply. That's pretty awesome. And of course it gains attention when you're the best at something.
But truth is, its the tearmarks. Dammit I love dem tearmarks.
I was getting into this, looking at so many different images of Cheetah. Photos, drawn, documentary, in a relationship with Predator, fursuit photographs. I gradually built up an understanding of cheetah markings, patterns, and how artists tend to interpret them differently. For instance, artists tend to make cheetah paws whiter/lighter than the rest of their fur, but photos of cheetahs really don't tend to show this happening.
I was building up to a cheetah fursona, noting which cheetah attributes I liked the most. I planning to make them female (that's another topic I might dive into some other time). I was even imagining them in a cartoon series I was watching (lets face it, imagining your fursona in a cartoon that you like is a great way to see if you're happy with them).
But there was a snag. With every awesome cheetah art I looked at, however helpful or awesome it was, it hammered home a disappointing truth: I couldn't really tell cheetah fursonas apart.
I mean, yes, there's the difference between male and female, and there's the choice whether you have buzz cut or flowing hair. There's also clothing.... But that's it! Even I confused two cheetah fursuits until I went back and examined the photos of them side by side. If my cheetah character would just be confused with someone else's cheetah character, than what was the point?
My mind drifted back to the fox design. For all its cliché, and even the fact it was originally based on Tails (from Sonic series), I still really liked foxes. Smart, clever, inventive and adaptable (even adapting to urban environments). I absolutely adored Run with the Wind (Like Watership Down, but with foxes) which enforced these attributes like being a bit of an all-rounder, but excelling at using smarts and coming up with ideas. So yeah, I thought, fox suited me. But going back to a fox will likely put me right back where I was before I went Protogen.
Then, I had the flash of inspiration... what about a Cheetah-Fox hybrid?
Gen 6 - Cheetah-Fox Hybrid!
It all flowed from there.
I opened up Blender and started making a basic body shape which I could paint on to work out which colour patterns worked. I'd been doing some moddeling up to that point so was famliar enough with the editor that I could try out the design.
I would limit the colours: purple, yellow, dark blue, black, and off white. These were the colours used on the protogen (and I had leftover fur for). Keep the colours limited so things didn't get overcomplicated (I later had to add light blue because I forgot about the eye colour). Red and brown, both colours I like (and that actually go well with me when I wear real world clothing), are not present in the design, but can always be added as clothing. A good character has a strong base that you can build off of. I wanted my sona clothed unless the art universe/style worked better naked.
Standard purple base colour, but with more cheetah-like markings. Switch the dark spots and tearmarks to yellow, contrasting well with the purple. Give them "socks" like a fox has, but also white fingers and toes becuase they looked really good in this pic. Ears took a bit of fidgeting, but decided on yellow rims to the ears, just like cheetah ears have black rims on their ears.
The digitgrade design from Foxena's ref. A tail that was now thin and slender because half cheetah now and it makes sense, tail patterns also inspired by cheetah, the way they go from spots to rings/stripes at the end.
Facial spots heavily inspired by cheetah photos. Just simplified them and made them yellow on purple rather than dark on yellowish.
For the first time, the headhair is a different colour from the base fur. Finally wanted to admit that, yes, my character has head hair. And making it blue blanced it with the arms and legs.
By making the muzzle foxish, and the ears half fox/half cheetah, the head is distinctive by its shape. When you add in the cheetah tail, the body is made more distinctive too!
After more work on the model in Blender work and feedback from friends, I had it:
Well not fully. I'd make be making so many tweaks. But it would be enough so that I could make an official reference sheet all by myself!
It was ugly, I had to put stuff in the submission description, but I finally had something I could show to artists and say "this is my character" and feel excited about what would return. I went a bit crazy commisisoning tonnes of artists in the first month. Starting out on Fivver and moving to FurAffinity. But I ended up with some amazing art of the character. Stuff I was truly happy with:
By Tikki-Hiko
By Azaleesh
Not every commission went smooth. I got better at speaking up when something minor about the image bugged me, while also developing an understanding of all the ins and outs of my character and what to look for to make sure art was accurate. Of course, the reference got regularly updated as I made decisions on on various parts of the character. Such as saying that yellow spots should be on the blue parts of the arms and feet, that the tips of the ears should be rounded, and one of my earliest changes was simply putting white fluff in the ears.
For all these little changes, I was onto a winner. I had a fun, distinctive character, that had the colours I wanted (bright and vibrant), the markings I wanted (distinctive), it was recognisable both in black and white, and silhouette (haven't fully tried either though yet), and just kinda looked cool and attractive. It was also in character for the character to be fast and agile. Also, still love those tearmarks! And the way they stretch up to become the eyelid colour is another touch I love!
More than all of them, I just loved the new character, and I could definitevely say it was mine. I had taken a lot of different ideas and advice from many different sources, each previous design contributed something to this character, and over the course of several years I'd finally mixed them with some ideas of my own created something I was truely proud and happy with.
The Reception
The character's been getting a good reception too! Several artists remarked how much they liked working on the characters and there's a strong chance they weren't just being polite. Friends and others have said that they love the design, and while I know it's most important that I like the design, knowing others do too is just... eeeeeeeeee.... So awesome!
I've even used the character in various RPs and a bit of writing. I'd always liked and wanted to try out RPs, but it always felt a bit awkward because how can you do a pretend scenario when you don't have a clear idea of who you're pretending to be? Soon after posting commissioned art of the character, I got some RP interest which I took full opportunity of, leading to some fun times and unforgettable experiences. Now I did join a new community around that time which may have helped things, but still, it was like the moment I figured out who I was, all these doors that I barely even knew were there started opening.
I've wanted a design I was happy with for so long, but even so, it suprised me how much reaching this point actually improved my life. Maybe one or two hiccups, but those happen when you explore new and exciting territory.
I relate to this character now, feel I can do fun stuff with them, fun stuff through them! I just love it!
So, what's in the future? I'm not sure, but I know which character I'll be exploring it with!
Quick word about names
Sofox is a contraction of "Soaring Fox", as I've already explained. For the first week I used this name on the message board, it was camel cased "SoFox," but then I dropped it to the regular "Sofox." Despite this, people seem to randomly capitalise the "F" completely unbidden by me. I don't mind it too much, don't feel guilty if you've done that, it's just that, officially, the "F" isn't capitalised.
Sofox is a Cheetah-Fox Hybrid, a "Chox." When referring to Sofox in this form, you can use the term "Sochox" (coined, again, by Merlin). I use the term when I want to emphasise the Chox aspect of the character, but for all intents and purpose, Sofox is still the base/umbrella name for my purple furry online identity.
Sochox Art
I've made an entire page to art of my new Sochox character, but if you'd just like a few links, here's a list of links to Sochox art around the internet.
Headshot:
Merlin does an awesome headshot
Really love this Tikki-Hiko headshot, looks so cool.
Thigh up:
Fullbody:
Really love this pic by Azaleesh!
Khomche provides a more sombre, but still great look at the character.
TL;DR
Tails sprite recolour -> Tails sprite edit -> Beanie makes a version, I stay with it for a while -> Commission a new artist, unsure about it -> Friend encourages me to become protogen, try it as a "holiday" but still want to make one I'm happy with -> Suddenly decide to make Cheetah sona, investigate it -> Come up with the idea of doing a Cheetah-Fox hybrid! Mock up the design in Blender and get lots of artists to commission them!