LOONA Sculpture - SFW (Patreon)

Idk how I forgot to post about this here.

You can find her at Loona.dog

So basically I thought it would be a good and fun idea to try making a sculpture that I could mass produce and share with people. I go to a lot of conventions to deal merch of my work, and after seeing some anime figures I thought it would be really cool to try and bring that concept over to furry world. The original concept was for her to be like a "ramen topper", but the final result ended up being way too big to actually fit on a ramen lid. Did they used to be bigger? I can't help but feel like the ramen cups I got to rest it were really small somehow lol.

So yeah, I sculpted the pieces for this and spent a few months focusing solely on that. The hardest part was for sure the hair, really just so much complexity going on there and such an abstractly shaped thing. I am probably happiest with the tail, I kept looking at it and feeling happy when I did. I was like "oh yes, this is a tail I want to pet" haha. Shoutouts to the shirt and pants which were weeks-long struggles tot ry and figure out and make look right.

The photos are of a resin-printed and painted prototype that I got from the place which will (fingers crossed) make the final ones. The finished ones will be made out of pvc and created using injection molding. It should make them extremely durable and pleasantly heavy, as well as having a more matte finish (based on the tests I got anyways). She's roughly 11' or 28 cm tall, and almost just as deep from paw to tail. I am not sure the photos really do the immensity justice; that would be one thing i would maybe do different if I ever attempted this again. She's almost -too- big to be practical to manufacture, but I think her being huge is kind of awesome so I ran with it haha

After finishing the model, I knew I had to try and create some sort of promotional material to get the word out. I am always terrified of posting ads, because I don't want to just annoy people who are not interested in them, so I wanted it to be fun to watch. At least if only in a "wow they put effort in" way. But here was a whole new problem; I had never created an animation or edited video since I was in high school haha.

So I tried to start really simple, here is what I made first

https://x.com/Na7urallyCanine/status/1709309094773903679?s=20

This was a good way to learn the basic tools. But it took a REALLY long time to render. I tried to optimize as best I could, and realized that I just had to edit one 360 degree spin and then I could simply runt he footage twice. Even with this, it still took over 2 days to render, debilitating my pc for the other work I needed to do during that time. So after learning premier and finishing that, I knew I had to come up with a better solution.

For this next video, I ended up sending the file to a "render farm". It seemed pretty painless, you basically pay someone who has a bunch of gpus to render your thing for you faster. The big problem was that this method -costs-. But I was confident in the project and wanted to see my stupid little mental AMV come to life more than I wanted to keep breathing. I think almost everyone has that mental image of something set to music, I'd bene having them for YEARS, and this was the first time I got to actually crystallize it into something real. Maybe to pros it is very basic, but for me it felt like, oh my god, I made something with movement and audio sync.

https://x.com/Na7urallyCanine/status/1707857026531959289?s=20

I would say this entire project was worth it just for the sheer rush of pure bliss I felt when the video synced up tot he music and wasn't 100% a disaster. Again, I am not even sure that to anyone else this looks all that impressive, but it is so completely apart from what I normally do that it felt awesome. I think maybe the initial frame of the video is sort of not clickable; I want to recut it all and repost it to see if people like that one more. But I am still very very chuffed about having made the one that I did post to announce it.

I was also really happy we got Loona.dog
Initially I wanted Loona.paw but I guess that isn't even a real thing LOL. That's ok, .dog is cool as fuck.

So yeah, the pre-orders close on Nov 10th. I guess the other hosuekeeping is "this is unofficial not endorsed by the show", but I have heard that they don't mind people doing fanart and selling it so that was never a worry. The cost of manufacturing this is going to be astronomical, it will basically require me to put up a bunch of my own savings on top of pre-orders. I don't realistically think I will make any profit on it, at this point it is just for the sake of sharing something I worked hard on and bringing it to other people's lives. I think furry deserves to have sculptures and who knows, maybe this will lead to better avenues down the line for more like it in the future. Anime has heaps of them, and I want furry to be in that camp too. I got so sad when I'd see a cool sculpture and it was just an .stl for you to print at home; I don't have the space for a 3d printer! I just want the cool animal person haha.

Anyways, thank you for reading all of this! I really feel like I put more of myself into this one thing than maybe anything else. I know it is said often, but this -REALLY- wouldn'tve been possible without the support of everyone here. I really hope I can keep making exciting new things in the future. For now, it will be back to business as usual with the fun 2D art, but I'm really happy I got to make this and share it all with you. Hopefully tehre will be more updates on everything soon!


Oh also I will be at BLFC(Dealers), MFF (Marketplace), and FC (Night Market). I'm really shy IRL but I would love it if you said hi! Thanks so much!!!