My Username is Rondell.
I don't own a foxerfly, nor have I ever tried out for one, so that would make this my first go! Nice to meet you all. ^.^ I've been a member on CS since 2008 and ignoring a few brief hiatuses for personal reasons, I've been here the whole time. In the shadows. Lurking. *waves hands mysteriously* So... I hope I did this right. ^.^
_____________________________________The Foxerfly would be Michael.
Not Mike, not Mikey. Just... Michael. Period. The only people allowed to call him anything else are his close friends and colleagues in the shop, who, in a moment of joking camaraderie, gave him the nickname 'Gobo'. Before anyone starts thinking Fraggle Rock though, it's worth mentioning that he gets the name from his job. He works in the theater business as a lighting designer - hanging, focusing, arranging, and generally managing the lights. A gobo is in fact a thin, circular piece of metal with a shape cut out of it (sort of like a stencil) or a piece of etched glass that slips down into a holder on the light. The resulting pattern can then be projected anywhere the director wants it.
His formal name, Michael, is in honor of one of my favorite teachers, who retired from the theater department this year.
_____________________________________He's a he.
Hence the male pronouns I've been using. He has been mistaken for a female before, though, and while he doesn't appreciate such misidentifications, he does his best to make jokes out of them. It's the colors that do it. People seem to have a persistent habit of assuming that pastel = female.
_____________________________________As for his wings... they're all butterfly.The main portion of Michael's wings is very nearly translucent, like the wings of a
glasswing butterfly, so it's very easy to see the lace-like network of veins that run through them. His forewings display vibrant flecks of color that mirror those on his pelt, and are entirely bordered in light gray. The most prominent feature of his hindwings is a pair of bold black eye-spots ringed in the same gray, both of which have a small dot of white near the center. As a finishing touch, bright pinkish-red patches can be seen near the very bottom of the wings - bordered by a soft green at the lowest edge.
(( ^ This reference image belongs to me <3))Michael has been known to perch on or hover just above the pipe he's mounted a spotlight on, close enough to pass his wings through the beam. Depending on how he chooses to angle them, this will either cast a smattering of brightly colored flecks onto the stage, or create abstract networks of geometric shapes and lines that are perfect for so many occasions. Remember that Michael's nickname is Gobo? This is why - his transparent wings, for all practical purposes,
are gobos. While he makes his own
metal gobos whenever he can, and has been known to stay up into the earliest hours of the morning working on especially complicated cutouts, his wings remain the simplest and most convenient way for him to create patterns of light, and he will quite often test out different effects this way before investing his time in making an actual gobo - just to make sure it's really what he wants for the show. Of course his co-workers could just as easily have saddled him with the nickname 'gel'. His wings can - and sometimes do - act as gels as well. A gel, also known as a color gel or a color filter, is simply a transparent piece of material that fits into a special frame on the lighting instrument and makes the light a different color. By overlapping the pink and green sections of his wings, Michael can create washes of these colors. Whenever he places one of his eye-spots in front of a lighting instrument, the beam turns a dark purple. This is because the spots are, in fact, not true black.
So you see? Transparent wings are perfect for a lighting designer. And Michael's are very important to his work. His only complaint is that he can't do a wash
and a pattern at the same time - it's not physically possible due to the way his wings are jointed.
_____________________________________Extra #1 - What about his personality? (570/500 words)
>.< Gah.Likes:
+Showing off
+Conversation
+Experimenting
+Having his own way
+Watercolor paints
Skilled At:
+Improvisation
+Hand-drafting
+Multitasking
+Making Gobos
+All things electrical
Dislikes:
+Laziness
+Disrespect
+Time crunches
+Colored pencils
+Dysfunctional wiring
Unskilled At:
+Compromising
+Taking orders
+Using computers
+Being subtle
+Carpentry
He's a bit old fashioned... or at least, other people tend to say he is. It comes across in the way he talks, the music he likes, and the things in his closet. He greatly prefers last century to this one.
Not to mention hard-headed... Michael has a tendency to think that his way is the best way, and that his way, while he admits that it's not the only way, should nevertheless be the way things get done around the theater. Especially in his lighting department. This naturally means that it's very hard to change his mind once he's latched onto an idea, and sometimes departmental projects turn out to be a lot harder than they need to be. Like the time he insisted all the lights be hung 'rooster' style, even though it probably wasn't absolutely necessary. It is possible to talk him around to your point of view, but it will take a healthy dose of patience and a well reasoned argument. Nevertheless, Michael can still recognize a good idea when he sees one, and will often jump on them wholeheartedly with all four paws. Just be careful that he doesn't try and take all the credit.
And then there's that sense of humor... which is a bit off-beat and relies heavily on irony. Don't let his stubbornness fool you - Michael is generally a very chipper person that can't help but make dumb jokes every other sentence, and is perfectly willing to rattle off little stories if you'll let him. It helps to pass the time at light hangs and focus nights.
But he's always trying new things... and in theater, that's a useful quality to have. Michael is always fiddling around with his light plots and instruments, trying to come up with ways to overcome limitations imposed upon him by the space he's working in, ways to get the same effect using fewer lights, and ways to create something his audience has never seen before. He just isn't content with reusing the same old designs over and over! He may take inspiration from them, but that's about it, and generally prefers to start from scratch unless he's extremely pressed for time. Why? Well, because even if it's a retuning show, Michael likes to think that he's learned enough between now and then to allow him to do a better job this time around. So why not show off? It's also worth noting that despite his long-standing animosity for computers, Michael does at least attempt to integrate new technologies into the department, even if he himself can't always make those 'newfangled whatsits' do what he wants them to do. He recognizes that he really can't avoid it. That's the way the industry's moving. And he has to keep up.
_____________________________________Extra #2 - Explaining his charm. (219/200 words)
Originally I was thinking that his charm should be a gobo of some sort, to reflect his nickname. But really, gobos are only a tiny bit of being a lighting designer, and there are plenty of shows where they aren't even used. Plus most of them are pretty complicated, so it would be hard to make a charm-sized one look decent. So I dropped that idea pretty quickly. Then I thought about having it be a wrench. Why? Well, wrenches are an extremely handy tool in general, and in lighting they are useful for tightening clamp bolts so that lights don't fall into the audience mid-show. Which... would be bad for a number of reasons. Plus lots of people actually tie strings to their wrenches so that if they loose their grip on it while they're up a ladder, it won't fall down and hit someone in the head. So the string that holds the charm to the foxerfly would make a wrench look pretty accurate. But again, a wrench doesn't really capture the
whole picture. So finally I decided that, if I win him, I'd like Michael's charm to be a frensel light. It just... fits. It's something that would automatically identify Michael as being involved in lighting, as well as being something that's essential to his work.
((I was going to draw something, but ran out of time.))
