It's been months, and... No, not this time, I'm not sorry... There's nothing for me to be sorry about. This is something I've had to plan as a contingency since the summer months last year, and unfortunately had to carry out. All of this has all but sapped my strength. Every step felt heavy as lead, and this prolonging only served to stretch the pain and anxiety over a longer period of time. Every moment not working on this image felt like procrastination. The size became greater than originally intended too, which made editing very cumbersome at times. This was always to be the first step, but after much thinking and introspection in the previous months, I've come to the conclusion that it'll also be the last. I can't support what all of this has become. The grand betrayal of removing Triple & Rotation Battles cannot be forgiven. If I can't support the source material with body and spirit, and do not believe in it, I cannot continue. This project has reached its end.

Project #1
Status: Failure

Source material rendered unusable. Not possible to continue operation.

Post-mortem available HERE: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/8103001/
A brief 8000+ word investigation/rant on why I think Sun/Moon has destroyed everything I've held dear, and my reflections on the future.

Also, my guide on my Triple Battle team which I originally wanted to release for the next big opportunity on the level of Battle Frontier, but which has been written now instead so that you may know what has been lost.
My Triple team guide available HERE: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/8102999/


Image Info:
This location is at the top of the Tower of Mastery. I used to look at the distances below and think of the hopeful future and what new adventures it could entail. Now, it all just reminds of what has been lost, never to be reclaimed. Who we have here is of course Battle Chatelaine Dana of the Battle Maison. Once, I felt like I shouldn't even acknowledge the place, considering my hatred of the streak format and preference to the PWT, but in the face of Armageddon, all brothers and sisters in spirit must unite. I've never had any quarrel with her specifically, so here she is the representative of I and everyone else who has been betrayed and abandoned.

Notes on background:
The sky is an outsider; it doesn't appear in the source material.
The tiling on the floor is rather hard to pin down, because of the unusual pattern and the irregularity of the tile sizes. Fortunately, the same texture is used elsewhere in the Tower of Mastery, and stepping just inside the door at the balcony, there is an area where the camera goes straight up, giving a good look at the floor texture.
The railing color is somewhat strange in-game. During the day, it seems brighter than during the night, relatively speaking, compared to the other colors. In addition the bottom half of the balls starts to light up slightly in the light, but it doesn't seem to be luminescent like a lamp; maybe the lighter texture of the daytime rail is applied to the ball's bottom half during nighttime. Bug or feature? Regardless, here it is assumed to be a simple stone ball, and the bottom half is simply colored lighter. When it comes to material, the small posts, the railing, and the rings beneath both types of posts are metal, and the base and the big posts are stone. Given the lack of detail caused by small screen resolution & other factors, this is just my own interpretation, I hope it's right. Like in the previous pic, some liberty has been taken with proportions, considering the original version is made for the super-deformed character proportions.

Notes on character:
Despite my best efforts, the temperament and feel of what I wanted in terms of composition and pose comes dangerously close to the original depiction, but I couldn't help it.

Notes on form:
This is also where I wanted to try diverging from the usual methods of operation lately. The end result is closer to the last Volcarona pic; the extreme detail and accuracy needed for the dress and background partially caused relapsing to old habits, but the end result still has lines be auxiliary and not shape-defining.

I wish everyone well, if only I could've done more...