[(05/05/2025) Number 86 in the 'over 2000 views club']
I don't create new characters very often--I have enough of them as it is, and one of my requirements is that they have defined roles to play within my roster of OC's And so it is with Damian here, making his full-body color debut in my gallery more than a year after his creation since it's taking too long to advance What, me Furry?" to the point where I can formally introduce him, his SO Konani, and the cheetah Kallista. I'll eventually get there, I'm sure.

What we have here is an illustration of one of Damian's quirks--the sight of a pair of new sneakers walking through and/or sinking into a mud bog revs up his jollies like nothing else. If it wasn't for that low-hanging T-shirt, you'd probably see a boner in his jeans. As much doing it himself as it is seeing others do it, he likes wading in till only the very tops of his high tops are visible above the mud. But he has no fear of going in over the tops, flooding them with mud, and even letting them get sucked off, whereupon he retrieves the stranded sneakers and shoves his feet back in so he can watch the mud squish out the tops like toothpaste. Mud on his jeans too? He doesn't care--"they can take it.." Did I mention that he prefers doing this to new kicks?--like the Osiris NYC83's under that thick coating of mud acquired minutes after unboxing (note the box peeking out the corner of the shot). Not to worry--they're made of synthetic patent leather and will survive this dive into the goo. Hose off the outside, flush out the inside, let 'em dry and you wouldn't know what they'd went through. For a good idea of what this adventure looks like, see this video (alternate example) .

Having said this, he's not to be a one-note character. There'll be other aspects of his existence. For one, he's Konani's 'significant other'. That says exactly what it appears on the tin, though I don't plan to dwell on their being a same-sex couple, it'll just be part of the scenery in the future comics (now if someone wants to commission pics of the two of them playing hide-the-salami, well that would be canon too). For more info on Damian's development, see this pic. Personality-wise, the word that keeps coming to mind is "oily". I don't know why, but I suspect it comes down to his facial markings, which I tried to keep accurate to those of a red panda as possible, the light patches above his eyes being angled in such a way that he appears to carry a sinister expression all the time. Helping further this is his penchant for invading others' personal space as a manipulation tactic, and being a potty-mouth who dislikes it when others self-censor. Hey, they can't all be saints. This character was being developed in my headcanon for more than a year before I made a full-body color pic of him, hence why this description is longer-winded than usual :D

Technical:
This pic was digitally sketched during one of my erratic livestreams late on the night of 3/19/20, stretching to just after midnight for the inks. I spent most of today doing the color work. Initially this was to be a backdrop-less pin-up, but I can't seem to let that go. I crafted a backdrop that fits what Damian happens to be doing, and along the way took inspiration from a livestream of  peskybatfish's when landscape practice was the pic du jour. Instead of outlining the trees+grasses, flood filling and texturing, I skipped right to the texturing , overlaying countless paint-style brush strokes over base shapes, throwing precision out the window in favor of implied detail in a part of the pic that one seldom looks at closely. It came out better than expected, so now I just have to remember what brushes I used the next time I try this tactic.

Damian himself is pretty standard (though that represents an improvement over where I was a couple of years ago). The mud effects are also a departure from past pics in that they're a light-colored clay-ish stuff that I've wanted to re-create since watching it in the video linked above. Still had to fight the urge to over-detail it, removing a sharp ground shadow around the mud squashed out around his feet once I realized you wouldn't see a shadow there. Behind that, the cracked mud was traced from a stock photo--after perpective skewing it to fit the scene. The Osiris logo was filched off Flickr, split up and perspective warped to stick it on the side of the box.

Digital drawing done in Krita 4.2.8, eighteen layers, 312MB in-app, 31MB .KRA file on-disk. 5 1/2 hours editing time as per Krita's project timer. Project ID: 478