Hey look, a gazelle!

You may have seen this handsome fellow's original sketch a while back. I decided to color him up in hopes of using his various stages as commission tier examples at FWA this year.

Interestingly enough, he shares a particular connection to FWA in regards to how I came up with him. I hinted at this in his original sketch, but here I can go into a bit more detail...

I first designed him way back at FWA '10, as seen here, inspired not only by my love of this particular animal but also by the creative and varied styles of fursuits I saw walking around. He was meant to be a dancer in my stories, though that too was inspired later on by the fursuit dances I'd watch, mainly at FWA, in the years after.

It wasn't until Anthrocon last year when I watched the fursuit dance competition that he made himself known in my imagination once more. Impressed by the dances I saw, I began coming up with dance acts in my own mind, pondering a variety of energetic, acrobatic moves just barely possible within the confines of a fursuit. Interestingly enough... this gazelle was the one pulling them off, not my fennec.

This creative inspiration continued as the months went by, and seeing as he developed more and more during that time, not just in skill but also in a connection to ME, I decided to adopt him into my roster of fursonae. So here he is, myself in yet another form, an alternative species to complement Aelius the fennec in the same way Kaili, Ikaia, Talon, and the others have in the past. It's only fitting that his official debut in this form will be at FWA, the same convention where he first came into being six years ago.

This is Arjuna.