Codex’s Pets & Items Design Notes

[Codex]

Thought it would be interesting to compile some fun facts and notes about the things I’ve designed

If you’ve any questions for me feel free to ask in the Ask The Staff thread.

General notes

I use Clip Studio Paint and FireAlpaca.

I made a colour palette that I use to colour my items, this is to ensure my items across different releases don’t have wildly varying colours that may make it difficult to put together. Sometimes if I don’t have the right colour I’ll add it into my palette. The colour palette does not apply to pets.

I usually only participate in designing pets if there is line breaking allowed. Sometimes I make an exception though. My main interest and priority is in item designing.

I check the item suggestion thread regularly for any new suggestions, sometimes I hop into a random page to see if any of the prompts inspire me. I check more frequently just before events to see if anyone has any suggestions for the upcoming event.

Initially my art style was meant to be purely cell shade but I’ve changed the way I render now, which is why some of my older items may look a bit flat compared to the newer ones. Sometimes my items still look flat because I struggle to balance between cell shading and soft.

Cake designs based on UR will not follow my colour palette, it'll be colour picked from the UR pet.

[Codex]

2022 Design Notes

July Store set

The star constellation is Aquarius.

Inspired by konpeiko candy.

Internet Summer event

Inspired by the Starry Night painting.

Inspired by Stardew Valley game Home Screen.

I actually made a replica of the Window Home Screen but then I found out it was copyrighted so I had to change it.

Halloween Event

This set was initially planned to be a store set but I didn’t feel like it was one. So I pushed it into the Halloween event instead of keeping it in the back burner.

Inspired by Grow My Grandpa game.

The horns are growing from the ears, it was meant to look like it was made out of paper but somewhere along the colouring I forgot so now it just look like some sort of horns I guess.

November Store set

I had planned for it to be a perm store set but I forgot about it until it was released as a limited-- oops.

Christmas Event 2022

I drew all of the blankets of 2022 dog litters into this scarf set. I thought about making it a regular thing every time Christmas came around but I quickly scratched that because it took too long.

[Codex]

2023 Design Notes

January Store Set

The whole set was actually drawn before I became an official staff artist. It was a warm up and a practice to the art style I wanted to use here on CS. The lines here are a lot thicker because I was still trying to figure out my style. I don’t actually remember if this set follows my colour palette.

Valentines Event

While drawing, I was comparing the tree size next to a Western Dragon. While I wanted it to clip so you can see mostly the underside of the tree (to give a feel of being under it’s shade), I didn’t realise how big it was until I noticed almost a good chunk of the tree is clipped on regular sized pets :(

March Store Set

I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 recently, this set took me almost a whole month to work on because I was having trouble rendering the colours and lights. The floor and wall took the longest to complete.

The wall background is intentionally huge to accommodate for larger pets and also to give room for users to wiggle the background around to display whichever part of the wall they like.

Aquarium Hologram was made to match the full size of the background but I had only realised how badly it clipped on regular sized pets after the release, it’s one of my regrets.

These two windows were originally one, but when I tested them over the background I found it was too big. I was planning on trimming it to a smaller size but I had put in a lot of time in the window background and decided to cut it up to preserve my efforts.

Inspired by the Sakura tree holograms in one of the districts in Cyberpunk 2077. I didn’t want to draw a big Sakura tree but I thought a small plant vase would look nice.

May Store Set

It wasn’t inspired by the Treasure Planet movie until much later when looking for more nautical references. I think this set took me a month too.

This was the hardest to draw, there were so many overlapping circles I kept losing track of my layers.

CS Birthday mini event

Item suggestion fulfilled.

Mid-Autumn mini event

The items were made in 2022.

Halloween Event

The apocalyptic wasteland set was not meant for store but I almost had to use it because I didn’t have an item set ready for November. Luckily, I found inspiration at the last moment so I decided to put this set into the event. There was also a plan to include a Phoenix but I scrapped it because I could not find inspiration to portray it.

[Codex]

September Store Set

Set was supposed to be called 'Magical Hunter' because it was a mash up between 2 themes: Magical Girls & Supernatural Hunters.
I forgot to inform the admins so it was initially released as 'Galactic Royalty'

Christmas Event

Item suggestion fullfilled.

UR items Advent

The cakes were designed for CS birthday but I couldn’t get them out in time, that’s probably how they became a UR. All of the UR cakes were colour picked from the UR pets, they do not follow my palette.

[Codex]

2024 Design Notes

New Year

The Tess zodiacs were made in 2023 and my plan was to release them on the same month as the zodiac dogs like a regular litter. The dragon colours are not referenced off Homestuck but the first website I found when googling Horoscope colours. There was no reason to my choice of colours.

Edit: January is now over and I want to add onto my own notes here. I'm really sorry for disappointing the community with this set, I had underestimated the importance of the zodiacs/horoscope to people and did not do it justice.

March Store Set

I had some drafts ready in January but I had an incident with my laptop, then I had to work on an many items as possible 3 days before the deadline aaaaAAA

I might consider doing a pt 2 to upload the rest & add more columns

Easter Event

The gold dragon design was the first of the set made for LNY but my laptop broke down before I could upload them so they were never released, I offered it for Easter and was encouraged to try making more.

The dragons were inspired by art noveau usage of flowers and flowing lines.

September Store Set

This store set uses a different shading technique, I was trying to see if it would speed up my rendering process because any usage of air brush is extremely tedious for me.

The results are mediocre, does well for wood grains though.

Halloween

Items were made to fit the September Store set apothecary table.

Item suggestion fulfilled (somewhat)

Wood horses are based off: Tibetan Cherry, Snakebark Maple, and an (incorrect) Pacific Madrone. The Madrone horse lineart was made before using the tree as reference, hence the bark lineart and the inspired tree does not match.

UR Advent

Twilight Dream is based on dreamcore aesthetic, I wanted a dreamy but lonely place.It is also not meant to fit neatly onto any pet. I had designed it long with the intention to let the players choose which part of the background they like best to display, I had hoped this will give the lucky players more flexibility in their dress up. This piece took me 3.5 hours to work on, it was a long project haha

When Moon Projection was drafted I planned it to be pure white/blue, but it failed multiple revisions and I nearly released it with black metal texture. Luckily I remained stubborn about it, and I managed to maintain my concept!

The rippling effect on the moon is inspired by damascus steel rippling, manually recreating it was a lot harder than expected.

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Might have to rearrange my notes to add this somewhere
Theme/Inspiration for each store set
2022 July - Space x Backyard garden
2022 November - Biker Jackets (item suggestion)
2023 January - Scarf x random themes
2023 March - Cyberpunk
2023 May - Pirates x Astronomy x Sea
2023 July - Painting tools x Environments
2023 September - Magical Girls x Vampire Hunters
2023 November - Navy blue x Filigree x Lake
2024 January - Environments (based on multiple item suggestions)
2024 March - Marble Columns x Gold
2024 May - Swamp
2024 July - Post-Apoc x Nature

[Codex]

2024 Zodiac Horse Store Set Layering Notes

The whole set was made in 2022 when I recently joined as an official artist. Now that it has been released this 2024 I realised the set layering was a lot more complicated than it should be. Dressing up shouldn’t be this complicated…

Note: if I indicate an item as free float that means there is no alignment, you can arrange it around the intended area as you see fit. I may also end up hovering some items instead of aligning to the pet because I wanted to show hidden layering.

Aries

• Helm is free float.
• Necklace follows the spine, align to the back like in the image.
• Mane aligns to horse ears.

Taurus

• Helm is free float
• The design is based off a cross crossing trellis, align according to where the trellis ends.
• Necklace follows the spine, align to the back like in the image.
• Tail must be a layer above the rear brace, otherwise it will look like it clipped.
  

Gemini

• Helm aligns to ears.
• Necklace follows the spine, align to the back like in the image.

Cancer

• Helm, necklace, fore brace is free float
  
• Tail must be a layer above the rear brace to prevent clipping. (Unfortunately this will hide most of the brace details)
  

Leo

• Helm is free float
• All parts should align snugly to the base

Virgo

• Mane is free float.
• The widest gap in the helm is for the eyes.
• All braces can be aligned by the hooves.
• Tail must be a layer above rear brace to prevent clipping.
  

Libra

• Helm is free float but it was intended to hide the eyes.
• Necklace is meant to be hovering, free float.
• Mane must be a layer above fore brace (the shawl) to prevent clipping.
• Rear brace must be a layer above the tail to prevent clipping.
  

Scorpio

• Necklace is free float but best align to the spine.
• Helm aligns to ears.
• Both rear braces: align segmented jewellery to base.
• Fore brace is tricky, align horizontal jewellery to top of horse leg.
  
• (optional)To create a long scorpion tail, the tail must be a layer above the mane to create a continuous segment.

Sagittarius

• Helm is free float but it was intended to hide the eyes.
• Necklace is free float.
• Both fore braces can be aligned to the hooves.

Capricorn

• All parts align to base.

Aquarius

• Helm is free float.
• All parts align to base.
• Mane is intended to hide the ears.

Pisces

• Helm & mane align to ears.
• Fore brace can be aligned according to the fins near the elbow.
  
• Both fore braces have 2 particular identical scales. You can use the 2 scales to align the braces together. (This was unintentional design…)
• Both back braces can be aligned according to the fins near the ankles/hooves.
• Necklace scales should align on both sides of the neck.

[Codex]

2024 Advent Community Scarves
I created a request thread looking for suggestions on scarf recolours. Initially it was going to rng on one generic scarf but everyone's ideas were too good I tried to do at least one of each request. Some suggestions have been combined together. (user quotes have been trimmed)

2 chunky lineart scarves were drawn

-first I 100% of the time like the super thick scarves over any little scarves. I like those chunky comfy warm scarves.

I would LOVE to see a pastel fade of orange to green to a tannish cream.

Black and yellow striped

I love traditional colors like green/red and blue/white. I think white with metallic colors would be awesome - silver, gold, red, green, blues, purples.
I also love animals on scarfs, like polar bears and penguins and deer and especially birds!

Solid color scarves but with multi-colored fringes at the end. Or mostly solid with minor hints of other colors.

I'd like to see traditional holiday colors like:

Like a white scarf with blue and gold

Gingerbread

I am loving confetti patterns. That is a solid base: navy, black, cream, white, burgandy/wine, emerald but with flecks of rainbow color dots throughout.

Scarves that have a clear knit pattern. A lot of cs scarf items are solid fabric draped around the neck. What about honeycomb patterns or cable knit. Some texture. Shake it up c:

I would *LOVE* to see a more neon pallette to figuratively bring some life into an otherwise snowy world, and maybe they could be loosely based on 60's wallpapers? 👀
Pallettes: one, two, three, four
Wallpapers: one, two, three, four

I would love to see some more neutral color scarves because they go with most any pet color. Or pastel inspired scarves with these sorts of colors! I also really like 'dark winter' colors like the bottom right. They are quite detailed but I think the patterns could be simplified down to a few of the colors instead of all of them. I really love how long and chunky they are too. I prefer these types of scarves instead of themed ones because its always nice to have an accessory to match different outfits year round. I also agree with BlueEyedKite on the texture aspect of scarves on cs. I think its a great idea to do knit texture!

If it's the latter: I don't have color suggestions but I would like some wider, more muffler style scarves that could drape over the back of the pet or trail on the "floor". Also tassels!

Okay, I guess I do have some color wants. Maybe some metallic or glossy colors?
Metallic gold + red
silver + blue
copper + green

Seconding the big clunky scarves - I really like the ones that go all the way around the neck! The collar-type ones can be neat too, but the big ones are my favorite.
Or for a 2024-themed set, they could match the palettes of each event token that have been in circulation this year (easter, summer event, and halloween)

also seconding the chunky scarf idea, perhaps with some REALLY long fringes on the ends.

perhaps you could go the "ugly sweater" route except scarf lol. Fun patterns perhaps even mixed in with some cute forest-y themed animals would be neat. ^^

As for palletes, perhaps these:

pallete 1

pallete 2

pallete 3

I would really Like to See a Long flat scarf with Sakura tree Motive.
For multiple i could see different flower blossoms on different types of scarves? Longing for spring in The depth of Winter <3

I think ones that cover part of the mouth/muzzle would be cute! I also think it'd be cute if the scarfs had ice/snowflakes stuck on them.

As for patterns/colors: a dark blue with golden/yellow stars/spacey stuff would be really cool. I'd love a set with different shapes/details in basic, solid colors, pastels and neutrals (ie. Brown, grey, white, black, beige)

Some more long striped scarves but in colors we haven't gotten as much, like black and lime stripes, teal, neon, white with rainbow stripes + black with rainbow stripes.

Funky designs like that iconic 80's print, black with flames at the ends, scarfs that look patched or repaired.

thick rainbow oversized scarf :0 bright colors
or animal patterned scarves

white, with a pattern of red and green

Overall this was a fun but big project, I enjoyed it but it was ambitious trying to fulfill something for each user. I'm not sure if I'll repeat this again, but if I do I'll stick to RNGing the winners X)

Funfact: These 2 scarves were somehow missed out in the original released, so they were released at a later date, hence why they are not in the same set with the rest

[Codex]

2025 Design Notes

Lunar New Year

The snakes were based off peeling bark trees. Silver Birch, Stewartia Koreana, Populus Tremula, Eucalyptus Scribbly.