So, as some may or may not know, this is my fursona, Mana Lai Ayerus. She doesn't really present me in any way shape or form... xDD She's just a design of my favorite animal (fox) done in my favorite colors.... and I wanted her to be part fairy and part unicorn, so she has a "black mage" form where she has wings and red eyes. Her horn is a lightning bolt, mainly because I was tired of seeing slews of characters out there with regular horns...
She also has leopard spots and tiger stripes, because I've become a animal print fanatic over the years. >.>

Character-development-wise, she's far too lacking. I hate sitting down and working on stuff like character sheets and profiles, so I did a few "joke" ones in the past, mainly for the lulz... but that's about it. I've drawn her with other characters for the lulz, and some for artistic justice... but once I stopped really drawing anthropromorphic characters, I just kind of sat Lai Ayerus on the back-burner. >..>

I think it was important for me to make an updated version of her, mainly to show to people I do trades with. When I ask someone to make me a piece of art of my fursona, I'll link them this, mainly for the horn reference, since I revamped it majorly.

This is really a dramatic creation for me, not only because she's an original design, but she shows me exactly what I've learned from practicing on challenging fan art characters.

Techniques I've learned and applied:

Central gravity- Starting with the ffx Bahamut custom I made last spring, I've developed a method of central gravity for winged customs, so they can stand on their own without any other outside support. This method is also applied to rearing and other dynamic poses.
Layering and texturing- From working with various fan art anime characters, I've developed methods for layering/improvising eyes.
Animalistic ears- From working on the Ark of Naphtism commission for Izrabeth, and the revamped version of Lord Sesshomaru, I have a sculpting method for pointy ears. (Cabbit commissions and gift art developed similar methods. XD)
Full hair- From working with various anime characters on-end, I've learned to make full hair-lines to have dramatically styled bangs, among other hair styles.
Fox tails- What can I say. From making so many fox customs, I've developed methods for making "extensions" for white tips at the tails, and to even dye a tail to look like a fox tail. =^.^=

Now that's out of the way, I'll now go into the details of this custom.

Re-haired in wisteria, and raspberry sorbet dolly hair.
The tail is fairy's breath with a white tip extension of starlight.
Ears and horn are sculpted, with custom-dyed tufts of faux fur in the ears.
Pose is custom-engineered; took a ballerina pony, and gave it the head from one of the down-cast emo-looking poses. //__T

Full body repaint done in 10 layers of acrylics- 5 layers of country tan (for the base color) and 5 over-layers of baby pink. Yellow markings are done in 5 layers of tan, orange, and yellow.
Outfit is hand-sewn, and custom-detailed with plastic orbs, ribbon, cord, and her purple sash is black faux leather with a layer of thin purple material over-top.