Behind the Floof: Author's notes

Hi there! If you're reading this you've probably read my Floofy Dragons and if you haven't... what are you doing here? Get over there asap! Now, here's the story of how I developed My Floofs, from concept to where they are today. This will get updated as the Floofs are ^^ (Also keep in mind this will not be particularly edited, and more just me rambling)

Sprig: The first Floof

It all started around the 11th of November, 2018, when I thought to myself that I really wanted to design a dragon I could use as an avatar on various online platforms. I already had a dragon I had drawn for fun, but I wanted something more reflective of me as a person. And so my quest began!

Step 1: Inspiration!

This stage is just me googling dragons of all shapes and sizes. Now you might wonder, why dragons? I answer you with my own, why not dragons? I figured out I wanted a cute dragon since that's the style I'm most comfortable drawing and you can never go wrong with cute! At this stage I thought about making her white to symbolize the snow here in Sweden, so looked up specifically white dragons. I then come across one with feathered wings and wondered why I couldn't make her entirely covered in feathers to be all cozy and snuggly. Of course, nothing said I couldn't!

Step 2: Drawing!

When I had a good understanding of what I wanted I got to work. The absolute first version of her was just the head, with the big ears for listening and a simple head shape. She had a small beak since I now looked more towards birds than reptilians for inspiration. In my next drawing, I figured out the body shape was going to be fairly similar to a cat's. It was in this one she got her round face without a beak because it fit better and made her easier to draw and make expressions. I then made a small reference that is nearly identical to the one you see today, and with some help from the wonderful CTK, the last details were finished.

Step 3: Colouring

While technically done in the last step, I wanted to keep to last since it bleeds into the next headline. The white thing just wasn't working I felt, so I looked into what other color schemes I could have. Someone (I've forgotten who you were, sorry) suggested I might look into birds and their markings. So made the incredibly sophisticated google search "birds" and looked at the colors. That's when I spotted the House Sparrow. I liked it's earthy tones and especially the marking near the eye. What the decision to base my Floofs markings of the house sparrow lead to you can read in the next part...

The Floofs gets a story

Having decided to color them after the bird, I thought it was only fair to read up about the house sparrow. That's when I learned people used to be very superstitious about them being works of the devil. "Oh hey, that could be really neat" and suddenly my Floof had her first bit of worldbuilding. It was around this point I knew she needed a name, and went to my trusty baby name website of choice. For some reason, I almost always know what letter I want the name to start with, and today I felt like an S was perfect. After a bit of searching, I found Sprig, meaning branch. With her earthy tones and ability to fly this felt like a perfect name! (And it's cute) So I had a foundation of my story, and a cute Floof, what next?

They're multiplying!

With WorldEmber 2018 going on around me I just had to write an article about these creatures, originally only for my own reference. When I had written everything out, mostly winging it as I went, I realized I was kinda happy with how it turned out and decided to polish it a bit. Being way more happy with it than I thought I would, and knowing some people who liked the art I made of Sprig I decided to share it around. Getting great feedback made me improve even more, and soon I was on the species list of most liked. Since it's a prize I would be very happy in receiving, I looked for more feedback and with it got more likes. Thinking it was fun climbing the species leaderboard I kept sharing, even though it didn't matter my position. when I finally reached first place, I realized that Quirillion, which had been nr 1 before, also was nr 1 on most likes across templates. I got slightly overwhelmed... Today it's still a few more days till the end of WorldEmber, so we'll see how they do out there in the cruel and heartless world. Will they get eaten, or spread Floof wherever they go? Remains to be seen...