#princess lobelia

[shiftermod]

This started as a dumb joke Sunday evening, and has turned into a Project. 

That’s Princess Lobelia (aka “The Pea”) on his head at the right. She calmed down after pupating but was somewhat aggressive when she first hatched. 

This is in large part because that was a painstaking recreation of a screenshot from Season 6 to try and get the hang of grubling anatomy, and the only good stills I had access to at the time were of overly aggressive bug children. 

I think I can use what I’ve learned from that process to make a more detailed grubling puppet at some point later, but for now I've spent almost three days on this and I desperately need a break, so smol angy baby it is. 

I also finally sat down and switched from a gradient faked plate separation (leftmost bug) to three separate plates (middle and right bugs). This “separating the plates” is something I’ve been meaning to do since May, but I was never quite sure how to go about doing it. Something I considered was having each of the three plates separate into a number of smaller, almost square-shaped mini-plates, but I haven’t come up with a good way to do that yet, and all attempts so far come out looking weird. 

Technically this particular project started as a joke between me and a friend, but my blog is heading toward abandoning the overly-ambitious plans I’ve been slowly working toward for the past half decade and just doing a quiet slice-of-life thing taking place long after those events, maybe alluding to them here and there. This means I am well-versed with Shifter’s history, but don’t necessarily have to show the intricate details on screen, meaning I can focus on a smaller cast of characters and just make puppets for them. 

I figure these episodes may be shown out of order, meaning one update you might see Shifter playing chess with his daughter, and the next update might be him months or years earlier lounging gravidly on pillows on a couch while reading quietly. Or maybe he’ll have more than one kid. Still discussing with friends whether a clutch should be 1-3 eggs (my personal preference) or triple-digits (potentially plausible but I don’t like the idea of making that many new OCs at once). 

Anyway, here are the fruits of my labor. I’m going to bed. 

[askashapeshifter]

Ask A Shapeshifter Mod Blog

This started as a dumb joke Sunday evening, and has turned into a Project. That’s Princess Lobelia (aka “The Pea”) on his head at the right. She calmed down after pupating but was somewhat aggressive...

[I finally decided that if Shifter is having a daughter named Lobelia at some point, I’ll need modified vector puppets for before, during and after. At least it got me doing art again, even if it’s kind of ridiculous. (And even if I still haven’t finished his tail.)] 

[Concept below; it’s just a quickly slapped-together replication (ish) of a screenshot from an episode to get a basic feel for baby bug structure and facial assembly; I’ll be working on a more viable puppet at some point later.] 

[shiftermod]

Friend asked me when Shifter/Metamorphosis’ hatchday is and I bluescreened. 

Blogcanon is Flutter Ponies’ courtship flights cause flowers in the vicinity to bloom, suggesting conception in Spring (March?), 3 month pregnancy, 6 month egg development, putting Chrysanthemum and Meconopsis’s hatchday(s) in December. However, Flutter Valley is forever springtime until the destruction of the sun stone (and the rest of Flutter Valley) in the cataclysm so this may be subject to change. 

Lobelia, in contrast, would be conceived without any courtship flight, probably at the beginning of December with the bindery closing for the winter, the egg laid at the beginning of March, and hatchday in early September. 

I’ve been informed by a reliable source that a December birthday for Shifter/Morph would potentially allow Inquiry and Morph to celebrate their birthdays around the same time. 

(I have also been informed that Dream Catcher and Night Spinner were born around the same time so that is also convenient.)