Guardian of the Skies! (Patreon)

Happy New Year everyone!

To kick things off the RIGHT way, our first Legendary of the new decade is none other than Ho-Oh, Guardian of the Skies and harbinger of good fortune!

Ho-Oh is our most accessory-heavy character to date, and only for the fact that we can't get any good wing mods (okay, there's a few). Last week, Ho-Oh had 58 accessory slots filled up, with two rows of feathers, one row all-Orange, and the row behind white, with green tips (default color mask settings). I brought that down to a comfy 35 accessory slots. almost half!

I fucked around with the MatEditor and modified both the texture and color mask of feathers to hide their long steams (in default, swimsuit, sleepover etc slots), while also allowing them to be edited like the above. This actually makes it much easier to edit the colors of then usual.

Her outfit seen above is her "Default" for Slots 1, 2 and 5 - we'll talk about that more in a minute. Her Sprite-inspired outfit is actually moved to Slot 6, which appears like so:

Her other outfit slots, 3, 4, and 7 (Gym, Swim, Sleep), are nothing special, as usual, since by definition those outfits aren't meant to be intricate, but I took a little extra care with them then usual.

Her outfit slots 2 and 5 are the more important ones. Like Mega Typhlosion, Ho-Oh is able to engulf herself in fire, although she cannot use the move Burn Up, she can use the extremely powerful Sacred Fire:

Everything below her neck basically just goes up in flames. Yes, I had to edit every individual feather. I wouldn't settle for anything less.

Likewise, with her 5th slot, her hair and feathers become golden:

Glow effect turned off for that screenshot, but it looks great with it on. Anyways, this "golden" appearance is actually inspired by two things - first, Brave Bird attack:

A staple attack any Bird Moemon worth her weight would know.

And second, this shot here:

This shot here is probably the most memorable and iconic picture I have of Pokemon. Like many others, I sat down as a kid for the first time and watched the very first episode of Pokemon - Pikachu was cute, Ash was an idiot, Gary was a dick - and to top the episode off at the very end, when the rain clears and the rainbow appears, Ho-Oh flies by - and the sense of mystery and wonder exploded in our minds as kids.

And of course, Ash's dumb ass mistakes it for a Moltres an episode later.

Anyways, here's the card:

#250 Ho-Oh - https://files.catbox.moe/jp0v0q.png 

Few more things to note: There's no Shiny version today, it'll have to be saved for a bit later - this took long enough as it is! Second, while I try to optimize accessory placement as best as I can, the reality of all games/3d work is that there will be clipping. Let me know if there's any extraneous bugs, and I'll have them fixed when I update the card with the Shiny release later on!

For now, enjoy - and Happy New Year!