Pet sites will end me

In November of 2024 Flight Rising released the Everlux dragon breed.

Designing a new dragon for Flight Rising is always an interesting challenge. The dragons need too be unique, fit into a square, and have enough surface area across both their bodies and wings for separate patterns (genes) to go into both. This breed originated from the Light Flight, and we wanted to explore a more alien dragon design. I came up with several concepts for the breed, but a heavy-set caterpillar inspired dragon is the direction we ended up going in.

Before proceeding with a final, I decided to do some studies from reference to learn a bit more about caterpillar anatomy and how their segmented, soft bodies worked. I did several studies from photographs of monarch butterfly caterpillars. I took the opportunity to draw in my sketchbook. Up until this past year, I have not been doing a lot of practice studies, and since picking up the habit, I’ve found that I observe more carefully and learn more by drawing on paper. With digital art, it is very easy to cut, move, and warp drawings after the fact. With paper, I was required pay attention to get the proportions as accurate as possible from the get-go, and I think it helped me to draw more mindfully.

With some practice under my belt, I proceeded to tighter drawings that fit the Flight Rising dragon style and template requirements.

And here are the final templates used for the game! Between the drawing and final stage, the FR art team provided helpful feedback on the hatchling. It was determined that the pulled up leg was busy and read poorly, so it was streamlined for the final. Getting an additional pair of eyes on something is always a good idea!

she's the featured dragon AND matches the daily exalt bonus perfectly (tundra breed, rust tert, stitched primary)

A lot of the patients who come to the hospital are so worn, that their people opt to recover them (like Pojo a few weeks ago). But sometimes the humans love the well worn look and just want to reinforce their stuffed friend. So then, we line them in new fabric to reinforce them from the inside, and stitch their wounds shut to the lining. This was the case for Kacheek.

Kacheek is tiny! 4x4x1.5 inches. Here are his diagnosis photos:

For lining, stuffing has to come out, which means it needs to be replaced because it won't go back in the same, so usually lining patients have a spa too, since they're already unstuffed.

Kacheek was so small, his bubble bath photo ended up too blurry to share, but he did get a bath! Then he was lined, and got restuffed. Of course, he got a heart of original stuffing too. :-)

You can see his lining peaking through there.

And here he is all better! Fully lined and wounds repaired

You can see the lining shows where he had larger holes, but it is a texture match to his original fabric, and a color match to the original color, so will age to blend very well.

He put his shirt back on before he went home:

His person wrote:

Looks fantastic! I'm happy to see him all better and still smiling like I remember.