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Character Card #1: Bleakcat

I always loved collectible cards. Ironically, I don't like collecting things. Their design and the idea behind them is very cool, though, and it would be the coolest thing if there was a furry trading card game. I mean, not with furry characters, or animals or whatnot, as I'm sure there are a few collections -- even commercial ones -- like that somewhere out there, but with actual fursonas.

It would be an infinite collection, for sure, but think of all the cool character designs you'd get to see and collect! Sure, there would also be a lot of plain designs, but they complement each other. If all fursonas were intricately designed, they'd all become tiresome to look at. In a way, plain designs make intricate designs interesting and vice-versa!

I've tried starting my own fursona trading card game several times, but it always lost steam. Without a clear goal to the cards themselves, it becomes pointless to collect them. They'd be no different from badges in that sense. And why would you collect someone else's badges? But giving a purpose to cards was always the hardest part of the process for me.

As I was redesigning my Patreon, I found the perfect opportunity to implement cards as part of the experience. Big Cats can get custom art or comic panels as rewards. In order to limit the number of characters Big Cats can use at any given time in their comics, they have to use a "Character Card." They only have a limited number of those, so you have to get creative when bringing your comics to life. Using a Character Card also prioritizes creating a visual reference of the character before using it, so its design remain consistent throughout the comics.

Of course, Bleakcat is no stranger to Gaypardo, as he's been featured so much in it at some point Zodd and I joked that it was more of a Bleakcat's comic than Aracê's. But that's not a bad thing! Bleakcat is an awesome character, and more fun than Aracê, for sure. I bet there were tons of furs out there who would love to read a Bleakcat-centric comic, and now they can! Bleakcat has joined the Big Cat ranks, and there will be at least 1 Bleakcat-centric comic strip each month for you all!

Design-wise, the frame itself is from a visual novel project, "Fursona: A Reason to Live," before it was repurposed as a book. "Fursona" was a very complex visual novel in which players would identify what personality trait each character represented and then decided on their fate by settling on a final idea of what the meaning of life is. The complexity was absurd, and without millions of dollars to develop it (and a team, of course) I don't think it would be ever feasible, unless I worked hard for 40 or something years, so I decided to turn it into the book, that now is in the back burner as well.

Each character would have their own card. Cards would be separated into 3 different collections: reason, emotions and neutral. Players would be able to control the characters with those cards, and if you destroyed the card, the character would be killed.

This frame is from the first version of the card, when they'd all look the same, despite belonging to different collections. After that, I worked several iterations of different designs for each collection, and even worked with a few artists to come up with some very neat designs. It wasn't meant to be, though.

Since I'll probably never use this frame that I spent countless hours designing, I thought I might as well use it. It has a very gothic-like look, as the story was meant to take place in medieval times, so it doesn't quite fit with the style and overall art direction of Gaypardo, but I still like the looks of it, and it's a good way to put some of my old material to good use. Chances were no one would ever see it anyway, so at least now they can be used and appreciated by some.

It would take me too long to design new cards right now anyway, so if I live long enough, I might come up with a more fitting design specifically for this use sometime in the future. For now, I'd say this one works quite well!

Another interesting fact about this design is that each Big Cat has their own unique accent color that is applied to all their materials; Bleakcat's is navy blue.

Character:  bleakcat

Overall design:  kattanaita

Art:  zodd95

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Character Cards allow Big Cats to add original characters to their own custom versions of Gaypardo's spin-off, Leopard's Lair.
Get your own cards and custom comics at kattanaita.com.

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