#pteri

[riddlebites]

opinion on strawberries?

I feel like I haven't had a genuinely good strawberry in a hot minute..

[plushie-neopet]

Today's sketch page is nothing fancy - just some design work for my candy pteri, Swoan. He's a lovebird/cockatiel-inspired lil fella. But pink.

Nothing finalised, just working out how I wanna stylise him and what markings should stay.

[adobe-outdesign]

What are your thoughts on the super nostalgic pet styles? The new ones just don't have the same charm imo

I'm not a huge fan of most of this year's April Fools prank being paywalled, but that's beside the point. The idea of bringing back the oldest pet styles possible is pretty funny, though it does bug me that they were charging full price for artwork that doesn't even half a fifth of the effort of the usual pet styles.

Anyway, the big thing that bugs me about these styles is the inconsistency. Some pets can't be reverted to their oldest forms due to copyright issues (or just plain good taste), such as the Macy Gray (Kau), the Mellish (Mynci), or the Bruce Forsyth (...Bruce), which is fine and reasonable.

However, some pets just didn't receive their oldest styles...because? For example, we got the Tatsu for the Eyrie instead of the older Cerpull, the Gelert is not the Polypup but the Buzz is the Fleye, neither the Flotsam or Jetsam are their oldest art, and so on and so forth. Some of these even got gradients slapped on them when they never had them originally. A little consistency is all I ask for!

(Top: oldest art, middle: old but not oldest art, bottom: versions that we got)

Also extremely confusing is that a bunch of pets got "new old" art. This is fair enough for species that were introduced 2004ish or later that had normal "nostalgic" art styles, but for some reason they redrew a few Neopets that already had old art (complete with gradients in some cases!), such as the Blumaroo, Kougra, Moehog, and Techo. Why??? Maybe they thought some of the poses were too similar, but that doesn't explain the new styles looking so drastically different.

(Top: Old art, bottom: what we got)

And finally, I don't feel like the new art captures the old art's spirit well. Here's the main issues:

Several pets have styles with colors that bleed outside of the lineart, something that never happened with actual old pet art. The old pet art was also wobbly but never "scribbly", even at its worst.

Really obvious if you look at the Kougra and Blumaroo examples above, but for some reason the new styles are very "cutesy". The old pet art tended to be really janked up and just kind of weird looking or downright unpleasant

Lineart is too clean. Old lineart often (not always, depended on the artist) had way too many weird extra lines. However, with that said, the lineart was usually pretty "clean". Not any variable line weights either due to being drawn with a mouse

Below I've highlighted the best new styles, but I'm not ranking the original early 2000s artwork because that would, quite frankly, be insane.

Favorite Species:

Pteri: This isn't quite right (no highlight on the beack, blue should have a gradient, not enough finicky pointless little lines for the amount of detail), but what I do think works with this style is that it looks weird and kind of gross. It's the only pet style that feels like it captures the vibe of the early 2000s art, even if the execution's a bit off.

Lutari: Old art often had really screwy proportions, so the Lutari's giant feet and really small weird flat head do feel right. The tail design and markings have also been reduced in a way that makes the regular Lutari a believable "evolution" of this art. I think the eyes are a bit too highlighted and cutesy, but the rest of it is close.

Varwolf: The different-weight lines around the eyes aren't period accurate, but if you look at something like the old Cybunny this feels reasonably close. The proportions are off, the gradients don't make sense (like giving shadows inside of the spots), the anatomy is somewhat accurate but also not really good, etc. Not perfect, but again, reasonably on-point.

Least Favorite Species:

Xweetok: I guess this is cute enough if you just want a badly drawn Xwee, but if you want something that looks like old art this ain't it. Once again, too cutesy, lineart too rough and uneven, proportions too good, face style is very un-Neopets like in general, differing line weights, and no gradients. Also, the Xweetok being mostly brown would've been very usual for the time; slapping a blue gradient over the whole thing would've been way more accurate.

[aras-art-corner]

I love mutant pteris and their chubby lil cheeks so much :3

[cryophase]

mutant pteri

[miravariable]

new neo ocs!! 👀

their names are: Caneri (faerie pteri), Clavdius (darigan bori) and Ekoros (steampunk zafara)

[transparent-wocky]

i kept forgetting to post these, bwehhhh

new and up to date (as of 2025) refs for Allen Wrench and Sheila

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Ale is a half-alien aisha (blue), and has been on the run for years

Once upon a time, he had 2 tusks. But he broke the right one on a severely expired spiced apple pie (his formerly favorite food) and got a crown instead of an implant.

To other aishas, he looks like a hairless neopian aisha with some alien aisha quirks. Like the gecko pawpads and tail, and the L shaped spine (its completely healthy for an alien aisha, dont worry about it <3)

I didn't intend for Allen's ref to have so much stuff, it kinda just happened lol. (if u know me from arpgs ur probably scraching ur head rn since my arpg refs are super barebones)

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Sheila is a pteri (royal) who works on The Coincidence with Dr. Landelbrot and his other assistants/techs. (in this au, there's more than just Scintilly, cog stew and ionised onions on the ship)

She's quite dedicated to her work and usually handles intergalactic communications, as well as diplomatic stuff. On top of her lab duties.

A bit stretched thin and sleep deprived, to make an understatement

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allen has gone thru quite a few different design versions before i settled on this version (including being more catlike, less catlike, etc)

[apple-cores]

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