Dated 28/10/2017

It's been a great ten years... Where do you fancy spending the next ten?

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Better six months late than never...



Hello everyone. My name is RipRoarRex. Some of you may remember me. I was once quite an active young artist around these parts. Now, I'm more a sort of dozy old drifter. A relic of a past era whom people like to blame for introducing them to furry foot smut when they were teenagers - only now they're all grown up and drawing smut of their own. Kinda like the next generation of creative perverts, really. Bless them - it's good to have a legacy.



Believe it or not, I was once a new kid on the block. Ten years ago in April 2007, still shy of my twenties, I got word there were other feet-obsessed freaks like me out there and decided to share something with them. That something was a reptilian chap by the name of Rexar - whom a few of you might have heard of.

Back then, Rexar was little more than a cartoon caricature. A fairly shallow product of teenage sexual fantasy. I'd scribbled a few pencil pictures of him for my own 'amusement', but upon discovering a like-minded audience, I thought I'd try my hand at a digital doodle of the character. Armed with a shitty evaluation copy of some paint software from a now defunct company, a plain PC mouse and a few of my copious hours of free time as a student, I whipped up a fairly crude picture of this hitherto unseen rex and posted it on the internet for a laugh.

That picture was the delightfully imaginatively titled 'Rexar Relaxing'. It was the first picture of Rexar, and indeed any character, that I had shared with the furry fandom. And, to put it bluntly, it was a bit crap.

Fast forward five years and many depictions later, I had learned immeasurably more about digital artwork, so I tried my hand at recreating that very first picture with a few twists. The result was the Rexar Relaxing 2012 Anniversary Edition. Which at the time I thought was great. But as is the perpetually changing nature of artistic self-discovery, I soon came to the conclusion that this version was a bit crap as well.

So fast forward another five years and we come to 2017. As I knew this year would mark the ten year anniversary of my arrival in the fandom, I had already made up my mind that I was going to do another version of this same picture. Only this one would be a bit different. See, when I first created Rexar, he was little more than a toony vehicle for indulging my horny teenage fantasies. But in the decade since, I had matured in myself, and so had my conception of Rexar. Not least with the help of the Snapshots series, Rex had become this fully-developed character to me; he had a history, he had a personality, a partner, a job - heck, after all the effort I went to in designing a team kit for his footballing exploits, it was a crime that I hadn't made more use of it. This therefore would be my chance to depict the modern Rexar. Not just an opportunity to demonstrate just how much further I'd progressed as an artist, but also how the character had transformed from those simple origins.

I set myself a target date. April 21, 2017. That would be exactly ten years to the day since I completed and uploaded that debut image of Rexar to the web. And since I was really keen to get it done for that date, I endeavoured to focus my efforts by telling myself that I was not going to work on any other projects until I had finished this one.

Yeah. Best laid plans and all that. If you'll indulge me, here's the full tale of how this picture came to be the single most arduous, drawn-out, painstaking load of nonsense I've ever embarked upon as an artist...



For starters, there were several things I decided I wanted to do differently, the first of which was that the picture was going to be entirely digital. In case you weren't aware, the vast majority of my pictures down the years have always started life as pencil drawings. But this creates so many nuisances: Trying to stay within the confines of a sheet of paper, the immutable nature of pencil lines compared with digital strokes, not to mention having to find somewhere to stash all those sketches so as to prevent them being stumbled upon by persons unwelcome. As such, I wanted to do this with my tablet on my PC from scratch - a process to which I am not well accustomed, and which slowed me down far more than I was expecting.

Then there was the question of accuracy. I need not tell those of you who know me well that I have always been my worst critic when it comes to my artwork, but as I was keen for this picture to be a special 'Look How Much I've Grown' anniversary affair, I wanted to make greater efforts to study the anatomy involved in a bid to avoid some of the errors now glaring at me from the 2012 edition. I also wanted to strive for a far greater sense of realism than ever before - a desire which led me to revive the 'lineless' style I had not attempted since way back in 2010.

All of which meant that by the big day, April 21, I had accomplished... er... well, almost f*** all. A scrappy sketch of Rexar's head and torso, to be precise. And I fairly swiftly concluded they were too shitty to proceed with further, prompting me to start over.

In truth, the original timeframe I set myself was nowhere near enough to overcome the multitude of problems I encountered. For one, I had decided I wanted to go back to a pose that was more reminiscent of the 2007 original, while at the same time attempting to create a low-angle, close-in perspective. That turned out to be a nightmare, as no matter how hard I tried to get positioning and proportions right - even with the use of reference photos - there were various elements that just kept looking... weird.

That wasn't helped by the fact that I once again came to realise just how hideously limited my knowledge of anatomy actually is. And I really tried with this one. In a bid to try and get my head around the maze of musculature that makes up the torso and the arms, I had to look at an embarrassing multitude of photographs of half-naked blokes - so much so that the assertion I am actually a straight guy (yes, really) would've failed to wash with anybody who stumbled upon my reference materials.

Even when I was starting to get limbs and a torso that I was relatively happy with, the face became the next minefield. I've said in the past that Rexar's design is a relic of my cartoonish artistic origins. His head is nothing like that of a proper T-Rex, and it always makes for a peculiar clash of styles that I work to put so much realism into that funny cheek-toothed scowly-browed boop-nosed face that I've come to recognise as Rexar - anything more real just wouldn't be him. I did however dare to try something a bit different - albeit I've some trepidation that folks will think it just looks bizarre.

There's another problem with striving for realism. It's that realisation that once you're in, you're in deep. That simple flat-coloured surface you would've settled with on another project? It won't wash here. You've got to texture it. In fact, you've got to texture everything. Everywhere. To within an inch of its life.

In case you're wondering, this brings us to about the last week of July. By this stage, I had somehow managed to complete a drawing that I was prepared to run with, I'd carried out the vast majority of shading and lighting work, and I thought I might only be a few days away from finishing the project. With a couple of weeks off work and optimism that I was nearing completion, I had the ill-advised idea to tease you all with a little glimpse of the work-in-progress on the promise that you would see it - I quote - "by the end of the month".

What... a... dickhead.

I did my usual trick with the scales on Rexar's body. Then I was about to start applying those same scales to the sole, when I thought "Hey, I wonder... I've always rather liked the idea of Rexar having more of a smooth, human-style sole. I wonder if that would work? I know - let's try drawing one."

So I did. I drew one. Not a texture map, not some sort of sample sourced from photographs. Not a quick few random squiggles like I did on Annihilation. No. I drew the prints. The concentric circles and contours. Everything. Line, by, f***ing, line. Undoubtedly the most insane, obsessive exercise I've ever attempted as an artist. I should've stuck to the scales. Especially as it doesn't even show up that well now I've resized it!!



Anyway, by the time I'd done that, it was... erm... mid-September, actually. Certainly not 'by the end of July'. And nearly five months on from my original deadline of April 21.

Never mind. With that finally out of the way, I thought I'd move on to the socks. I've done sock textures plenty of times down the years, though as I was stretching myself to new levels of realism, I thought I'd try a more complex, multi-layered sock texture, with different stitch patterns and such. Yes. That'll be a great idea...

What date is it now? Oh. Bugger. It's mid-October. We're now six months past that original deadline. In fact, with every passing day, this is now getting mathematically closer to being an eleven year anniversary picture than it is a ten year commemoration.

At this point, I came to the conclusion that I was going to get this done before November. Come Hell or high water, that would be it. In a year where I had become more distant from the furry fandom than ever before, it had now been ten months since December 2016's King Koopa outing became the last entry to my gallery. I released another little teaser a week or so ago to try and make myself get it finished and stop keeping you all waiting.

And so, at long bloody last, here we are. A project which should have been finished in April. Then it should have been finished in July. Now, on October 28, it is finally, finally DONE.

Was it worth it? Almost certainly not. The above struggle represents everything that I have come to despise about doing artwork. It encapsulates why I have done less and less of it as the years have gone on. I have put far too much on hold to get this thing done. It has brought me to make the decision that I am genuinely never going to attempt a project of this magnitude again. Is it perfect? No. Perfection isn't possible, and I've spent far too many years chasing it with far too little practice. I suspect within five years, if by some chance I am still drawing by then, I will look back on this picture and once again say, "y'know what? That's a bit crap."

But bizarrely, as ridiculous a journey as this project has been, carrying it out has almost served as an exorcism. I've shown myself what I can do, but I've decided I'm never going to try this hard again. Which means, in truth, I think I may have just given myself licence to abandon my obsessive self-criticism once and for all. With any future project I take on, at last, I might just be able to chill the f*** out.

Let me be blunt, folks. As you all know, my presence within the fandom has waned further and further in the last couple of years. In a way, I think I have needed it to - I am not satisfied with my everyday life, and as this picture proves, I've probably spent far too much time escaping into my art rather than exploring other things out there in the big wide world. The very nature of this picture being a ten year anniversary makes me realise just how long I've been in the fandom now - many of the folks I knew have faded out of it (rather like myself), and many of the sites I used to visit have slipped into inactivity or gone offline altogether.

I'm not quite sure where I go from here: This may merely be the first in a fresh flurry of post-emancipation creativity after ten months of torturing myself for no good reason. Or, if I feel I need my life to take me other places, it may be the last picture I ever do. I haven't really decided yet. But whatever happens, in spite of the ludicrous ordeals I've put myself through as an artist down the years, I have had a lot of fun as a member of the furry fandom this past decade. And to be honest, there's still a big part of me that wants to have more fun here in the future.

Deep, huh?



That's far more than enough waffle from me anyway. Well done if you've read all this mental diarrhoea. For all the gibberish I've just typed, I'm actually chuffed to bits with how this has turned out, and it's really nice for me as much as anybody to see Rexy in all his foot-focused glory again after what has been a surprisingly long time without such an appearance.

Just in case any of you aren't into the dirt and foot musk (or the pit musk - yes, those of you looking at that area, you're right, I was perverted enough to do it), there is the obligatory Alternative 'Clean' Version available. And if you prefer Rexar's black and red 'away' football kit, I have now produced another alternative version featuring these colours.

I hope this picture lives up to whatever you might have all been imagining from my teasers. I hope, for you guys at least, it was worth the wait. And I hope, perhaps, there may still be more to come from me yet.




RRRex