AMKitsune: One day, the counter-terrorists will find a goggle provider that will stock Khajiit friendly goggles.
Until then, Katia's going to have to make to with just wearing them on her forehead like a badass.

Great stuff. I really like the 'stippled' effect with the shading. Really helps break up the flats and gives it a bit of texture.

AMKitsune: So what kind of clay (or clay-like substance) is this? Is it the kind that can go in the oven and emerge hardened like a colourful, shaped rock? Or regular 'doesn't go in the oven' clay?

AMKitsune: @Geravind: She's evolved into a form inconceivable to our mere mortal minds.

AMKitsune: @Armored-Struggle-Wagon: Image: Rotated!

AMKitsune: Oh my god, she looks so unbelievably happy I think I'm going keel over from adorableness.
Fantastic job :D

Also, itty bitty kitty paws :3

AMKitsune: Hah, brilliant!
It's not until you see the scene drawn out like this that you fully realise how bizarre the whole thing is.
Good stuff :D

AMKitsune: I know some other people will see this as being lewd and questionable simply because it contains nudity (partial or otherwise) but I think it's actually a very beautiful rendition of the scene.
Pose, details, lighting, it all looks like it could have been painted from a real life reference.
I have to ask, did you paint this in colour then desaturate it or was the whole thing actively painted in greyscale? The reason I ask is because I notice that she's missing the lighter colouration (or shading in this case)on the front of her torso. Just a little thing that is often overlooked but really helps make Katia as recognisable as she is.

Also, I don't know if you're aware, but looking at the histogram of this, there's nothing at the higher and lower ends of the brightness range. I don't know whether that was a conscious decision on your part, but applying a quick 'auto curves' adjustment to it really ups the contrast, making the light glow and the shadows deeper without loosing any of those glorious brush strokes. Something to think about I suppose. In case you're interested, I've made a quick comparison of the same image with different level adjustments on it to show how some of the various level adjustments can look.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pnbv9zxkpalaa45/redruin%20image%20comparison.png?dl=0

The second image should be 'mathematically perfect' (with a 0.11% clipping threshold) as far as pixel levels go, with (practically) none of your original detail being lost. The third image is just some further tweaking I did purely by personal taste. Your image will look slightly different from one monitor/screen to the next so no single image will look the best on all devices. Make of that what you will.

Once again though, this is an extremely beautifully made scene that I personally wouldn't even consider questionable. The version that you linked should really be kept up to as it's a shining example of actual 'artistic' nudity. Extremely tasteful and well put together.

I really hope we'll be seeing more of this style of artwork from you in the future.

AMKitsune: @Geravind: There is shading here (quite nice shading in fact). It's just very low contrast in some areas. It's probably the perspective of the road and Katia's shadow that's giving you a 2D vibe more so than the shading.

That aside though,
@Radian: the anatomy, pose, clothing and shading (while a bit low contrast in places) really is spot on.

If I could make one suggestion though, a good way to add a sense of depth to a picture is to both blur and fade shadows more as they fall further away from the subject casting them. Different light sources can cast shadows differently but that's a good rule of thumb for natural sunlight of other kinds of 'single source diffuse light'.

AMKitsune: I'm getting a very strong 'Wallace and Gromit' vibe from this. Excellent stuff :D

AMKitsune: This really is quite fantastic. I had to think for quite a while to come up with any critique and even then, they're only minor suggestions.

The lower part of her fight leg (as we look at it) seems a tad longer than the upper part.
Her other leg is a little on the long side too.
When standing in a 'tip toe' position, she would most likely have her toes curled upwards.
Her tail look like it's sticking out at a near 90 degree angle from the base of her spine.
The fire and magic swirleys could possibly be a little brighter to.

As usual, these are just my personal opinions and may or may not be to your tastes.
In case you're interested, I made a quick and messy edit to show you what I mean.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4vmz9vjhvcwo74y/deecio%20katia%20edit.png?dl=0

AMKitsune: @Francix: I'd whole heartedly agree, but I think we'd be better off waiting for all the models to end up in a group shot. Now THAT would be truly feature worthy.

AMKitsune: Good god, how did you get so much detail in his hood and ears? I'll be honest, at first I wasn't sure how I felt about an opaque Aggy, but after a little while, it's really grown on me. Fantastic job.

AMKitsune: @Armored-Struggle-Wagon: Aggy? Think you could make that work (ignoring the whole 'being translucent' issue)?

AMKitsune: There's something a little magic about seeing your favourite characters in real 3d space. It's even better when they look as good as this! I hope we'll be seeing shots with both Katia and QW in them. That would just be something else entirely :D.

AMKitsune: @Kazerad: Pity, that was me. Oh well, I'll just have to wait a bit longer next time.

AMKitsune: What's wrong with the image size? It's a good high resolution without being 'stupid high' resolution. The best of both worlds.

As far as critique goes, the only things that I can see that could use a little work are the shapes of her head and neck. As they are, her neck's a bit on the wide side and her head seems oddly shaped and positioned relative to her neck (her head strangely melds into her torso). Kazerad has a good example of a profile shot of Katia's head on this 'drawing guide'

http://www.prequeladventure.com/fanartbooru/post/view/999

Besides that though, everything else's brilliant. The pose and clothing are spot on, the lighting's soft but believable and the 'blinding effect' matches the comic while having it's own eerie 'realism' about it.

I hope that was of some help.

AMKitsune: @Armored-Struggle-Wagon: How about little Katia snuggling up to a 'Blanket of arcane protection', happy in the knowledge that the bad monsters and royalty can't get her? As much as I don't want to counter Kazerad's suggestion, I feel the need to offer a non-bloody alternative.

AMKitsune: More of this, more of this (adorably unmutilated Katia).
*rhythmically bangs fists on table*

AMKitsune: @Man_Of_Mer: It certainly did. Still, little doggy soul looks pretty free to me. http://www.prequeladventure.com/this/story1946.gif

AMKitsune: @Kazerad: You were a good boy, magic dog soul.
Ever loving and loyal to the end.
Loving and loyal, even beyond.
Though bound and trapped, you served without question.
Without complaint.
Without choice.

And what of when you encountered a cat?
Most would have barked and chased.
Few would have ignored.
You served.
Ever loving and loyal to the end.

May your new-found freedom guide you to pastures eternal in the hearts and minds of those you've touched.

You were a good boy, magic soul dog.
You were a good boy.

AMKitsune: @Armored-Struggle-Wagon: I think I have to agree on this one. While it's an excellent picture and by no means sexually explicit, the 'ass-centric' nature of the image coupled with the fact that she's naked here pushes this image just over the threshold of what I'd consider suitable for this booru. However, going back and re-reading the upload rules, this image does seem to fall under that questionable category as it's contains neither explicit nudity or sex. One aspect of the image that throws its position on this booru into question is the part of the upload TOS that says 'no weird fetish stuff' (or words to that effect) and I can see how people could categorise this as such. What does everyone else think? Again, it's a very well done picture, possibly not suitable for here though.

AMKitsune: @Kazerad: Ok, I've changed the program to suggest 'flash' instead of 'flashy'. Also, going on what I remember of our previous conversation, I've added a Daedric fun tip linking back to this page. I've tried to keep it as in keeping with the theme of the other tips as possible. Although, as the only tip that has a hyperlink in it, it does stand out a little. Hopefully it meets your standards.

AMKitsune: Everyone post your favourite non-Canon combinations!
From the top down, mine's 3,1,3rd colour,3,---,2,2
There's just something seemingly tropical about it.

AMKitsune: As Geravind said, her torso is a bit on the long side, but besides that, your anatomy is pretty much spot on. The subtle shading really adds nicely to the picture to.

Also, her eyes! HNNG!So shiney!

AMKitsune: While particularly gory stuff isn't really my thing, this is really cool. I don't think I've seen anyone give Katia those little 'whisker nubs' while keeping the Prequel art style. Very cool indeed.The lineart is (literally) a little rough around the edges, but that's more of a technical problem than anything and is something that you'll find your own way of dealing with in time. Great job :D. (One thing that I'd suggest that may help with cleaning up your lineart would be to use an art program that uses layers. If you used MS Paint for this, you might want to have a look at a program called Paint.NET)

AMKitsune: @TemporaryFace: Hmm, while not exactly as you've suggested it, I think I've got something that does a similar job. I've also added the 'flashy' tag. Because if my pestering Kazerad to get this booru accepting flash files to accommodate this very program happened to result in the creation of a new tag, I'd be a bit silly not to include it. Update coming soon.

AMKitsune: @Man_Of_Mer: When I started making that, I had no idea how much work it would actually take to get the program to have a believable quantity and variety of responses. The basic framework's there, but damn, if I learnt one thing from that, it's that trying to parse conversational English is hard. I'm probably not going to do any further work to it as I'm never going to be able to give it enough responses that I'd be happy with it. At this point, it's more of a learning experience than anything else.

AMKitsune: @TemporaryFace: At this stage, how the program works is pretty much set in stone as it uses quite a complicated (and by that I mean poorly organised) method for managing all the tags. Sure, I could make the actual tags appear on screen, but they would have to serve a practical purpose besides looking nice. I've tried to keep things (for the user) as non-technical and simple as possible. I've added in little bits of flavour text here and there but hopefully nothing that'll make a user think "What's this? do I need to click this? What does this mean?" One of the biggest problems with trying to develop something like this is that it's so easy to get used to your own design choices that you can forget that other people don't necessarily know how everything works or what it's all meant to do.

Although looking back at it, having the tags in some way displayed along with the question could be useful for actively teaching users about tags that they may not have known about before. I might be able to add something along those lines in if I can find a good place for it that wouldn't cause any confusion or clutter the UI.

AMKitsune: @TemporaryFace: Unfortunately, while that was something I considered to begin with, there isn't really anywhere that I could find that an 'ongoing tag list' would fit well. Plus, with recent developments in how it's coded, the actual list of presented tags is actually generated after the quiz is over (removing the redundant 'human' tag if present, adding additional tags if specific pairs are found and alphabeticly reordering all of them).

AMKitsune: @Kazerad: While I'm by no means an expert in booru managament (in fact, I know next to nothing about it), I've seen that the shimmie2 booru (that this one is based on) has flash files on it and they all appear to have the same, assumedly default thumbnails (http://shimmie.shishnet.org/v2/post/list/flash/1) (Note that, for me at least, the linked page does not render properly for me in firefox but works fine in chrome). So if they can do it, it should also be possible here to, right? I haven't been able to find much in the way of documentation for how to run and manage these boorus (and the page that lists all the booru extensions on shimmie2, while listing the 'handle flash' plugin, doesn't appear to have any documentation for it. http://shimmie.shishnet.org/v2/ext_doc). There may be a simple option to turn these thumbnails on, it might be more complicated than that or there may be something slightly wrong with installation of it that only effects flash thumbnails.

Either way, if it helps, I could always try to contact the owner of shishnet and ask them about this.

From a 'content management perspective', It would be a much cleaner setup if you were able to host any and all files submitted on the booru itself instead of relying of off-site hosting. But of course, that's just me imposing my file management ideals. As it's your booru, the decision is ultimately yours.

Also, while it feels a bit wrong to outright ask for this, if you decide to keep SWF functionality (and this tagger flash ends up staying here), would you mind making me an admin so I could personally update the file whenever needed? If not, that's fine. I always have Mikey available on steam for the occasional file change. It would just be quicker and less work for him.

AMKitsune: @CaptainLackwit: Thank you very much :D. I'm hoping to keep updating it as new tags are created and whenever problems or bugs are brought to light.

AMKitsune: @Gren: Thank you for pointing these things out. Seriously, I've never been able to get many people to test these sorts of things and report back their findings. Chances are there are still more bugs and things missing but at least you're little list is no longer amongst them.

As soon as I can get hold of MikeyTheFox, I'll ask him to replace the current one with my updated one (Hopefully some time tomorrow).

When The new version is uploaded, you'll be happy to know that:
The human tag should no longer show up in the final tag list.
Stephane wasn't even in the list of tags. I'd completely forgotten him. Needless to say he's in there now complete with a little picture.
The typo in the "Digitigrade" tag has been fixed.

I'm probably going to ask to become an admin on here simply so I can update this file myself without having to pester others to do it for me.

AMKitsune: @Kazerad: The file upload and display seem to work perfectly. There appears to be a slight problem with the thumbnail (or lack of in this case). I'm aware that other boorus tend to use 'default thumbnails' for 'un-thumbnailable' formats like flash and other video formats. This booru is not displaying any kind of preview image but is instead trying to fit the submissions tags into that thumbnails space instead. It looks a little awkward, but at least it's functional. As always, while I've tried to keep the program as grammatically correct, Americanised and bug free as possible, if anyone finds any bugs or spelling/grammatical errors, I'll more than happily get that sorted and pester MikeyTheAdmin to replace the file (I understand that people in his position can do that sort of thing). Now I just hope that someone unsure of how to tag their upload might come across this and find it helpful. As a community, we can build a better Booru!

Also, if it's not too much to ask, would you (Kazerad, upon having had the chance to read this) mind removing my 2 comments from this? I feel pretty bad about leaving comments that have nothing to do with image above. Many thanks.

AMKitsune: @tronn: There's a sweet spot in the 'eye largeness scale'. Plague Knows that sweet spot better than most and his art is all the more adorable for it.

AMKitsune: @Kazerad: While you're here (or at least 'were' here), is there any chance that the fanartbooru will be getting SWF support at any point in the future? I know there's talk of web browsers discontinuing support of the platform, but besides the fanart tagger, there's a really good Katia dress up game being produced by another fan that I'm sure he'd want to upload here if he were able. I don't know if it's something you may have previously looked into or what the impact of the plugin on the server would be, but I've had a look on the Shimmie2 site and there does indeed appear to be an SWF plugin available for the booru. I've No idea if you'll ever see this, but it's probably better than trying to catch you on Steam XD.

AMKitsune: @POMA: You claim to have no idea, yet you've drawn them pretty well. Adorable stuff :3

AMKitsune: While we're on the subject, do any admins out there know if we'll be getting SWF support on this booru at any point? My Image tagging helper program is pretty much complete at this point. It just needs a home now. I asked Kazerad about it a while ago but haven't had a reply yet (I'm just going to assume it's going to be a while). If not, I'll see if I can find somewhere else for it (for the time being at least).

AMKitsune: @MetalC0Mmander: Katia ones are.

AMKitsune: Shh, no more tears. Only hugs now.

AMKitsune: This is why you need to laminate important things. You can't tear a laminated bookmark! (not with your bare hands at least)

AMKitsune: Yeh, her torso is a bit on the thin side, but besides that, this is a pretty fantastic picture. It's cartoony but still has good anatomy, pose and expression.

AMKitsune: Katia's serious face means things are getting serious.

AMKitsune: You know, this picture just emphasises the fact that this is one of the most beautiful 'sneaking outfits' around. That's not saying much as most stealth suits are just black. Even so, as bazelini said, this is beautiful in it's own right.

AMKitsune: @MetalC0Mmander: I can't see why not. Hasn't this already held that position? I know that for a time, featured masterpieces were bestowed a tag to commemorate them as such. Doesn't seem to be the case any more.

AMKitsune: In light of the recent update, I propose that from this point on, all helmets are tagged as 'safety hat'. Who's with me?

AMKitsune: @tjk: Also, she doesn't really measure things as she seems quite happy 'guestimating' distances by eye, so we probably shouldn't take her 'measurements' as fact.

AMKitsune: She's too small to be left homeless. Won't anyone come forward and adopt her? She doesn't need much. A little bit of food, a little drink, a warm bed and a roof over her head.

AMKitsune: Hmm, I'm not sure 'crossdressing' is an appropriate tag for this situation. "Outfit_swap" perhaps?
Admins, come forth and share your thoughts.

AMKitsune: @Man_Of_Mer: Composition wise, it's very well done. What I would suggest with the quantities of snow, is that the 'patchiness' of the snow on the trees tends to indicate that it has been snowing but the snow is starting to melt in patches. Now in this picture, your Khajiit seems to be sitting quite high up on the mountain, so Id suggest almost entirely covering the trees with snow (as at that height, the snow seems like it hasn't melted in a long time and if the scene is set at the height on the mountain where the snow does regularly melt, the ground 'not-Katia' is sitting on doesn't quite reflect that). To be honest, while seeming like the more 'accurate' thing to do, with this pixely art style, it might leave the trees a bit indistinguishable.

The other thing that I would suggest would be to add some extra details to the valley below. Nothing overly detailed that would stand out against the simplicity of the rest of the picture, but perhaps some patches of forest, a town or two and a few roads/paths to join them? While it might not directly suit the scene in this picture, I suggest it because you would get a greater sense of depth if you could place a few extra points of interest in the mid and background. The background objects having very little detail (almost just blobs at that distance) with light washed out colour. The mid-ground detail having a level of detail and saturation somewhere between that of the background and the foreground (in this case the trees).

Of course, the inclusion of any background, mid-ground and foreground elements have to make sense (ideally) and feel right in the context of the picture. If you feel that there's something that you could insert to help give a sense of scale, it couldn't hurt to see how it looks. In this instance, a town/village would probably go better in the mid-ground as it would have to be so small in the background that no-one would be able to tell what it is.

As for shading, there isn't really any here. But if you wanted to add shading to this kind of picture, I'd suggest a simple 2 tone shading (which I suck at and couldn't give any meaningful advice on).

As for physics, every-thing's on the ground and nothing's floating away, so all seems well here (although this is Tamriel, so the laws of physics don't really apply here...)

These are just my thoughts. Make of them what you will.

AMKitsune: @Man_Of_Mer: I whole heartedly second this notion.